Eventually, his grip loosened, and his breathing slowed. Pulling back, Jessie peered down at him. “Kai?” She moved farther away when he didn’t respond. “Kai, are you asleep?”
Watching his face, Jessie waited for him to answer her. He didn’t. Carefully sliding her arm out from under him, she settled him on his pillows and adjusted the covers around him, so he wouldn’t get chilly as he slept. After tucking a stray foot under the blankets, she stared down at him. His face was completely relaxed, his full lips slightly parted as he took long, low breaths.
Even asleep, she could see the exhaustion in his face, the circles under his eyes. He’d adjusted to a lot of changes coming here, and it was wearing him down. Furrowing her brow, Jessie hoped she wasn’t one of the troubling things he was acclimating to. At least the physical changes would get easier on him. His body was just going to punish him for it first. Thinking about his multiple bee stings made her smile again. Poor guy. Not the greatest thing to have happen on his first day.
Her heart swelled with warmth as she looked down on him. Slowly leaning over, she placed her lips to his forehead. Kai exhaled and muttered something that sounded like her name. Jessie pulled back and peered down at him intently. His eyes were still closed, his face still peaceful in slumber.
Smiling, she ran the back of her finger down his cheek. “Goodnight, Kai,” she whispered.
His lips twitched, like he was smiling in a dream. Jessie wondered if he was thinking about her, then hated herself for wanting him to be thinking of her. He shouldn’t be as tortured as she was. Well, she shouldn’t want him to be as tortured as she was, at any rate. What he felt for her, besides gratitude and maybe some residual attraction, Jessie wasn’t sure. But she was beginning to understand what she felt for him more and more with every second they spent together, and it terrified her.
Leaning down close to his face, she whispered in a shaking voice, “I think I’m falling for you.”
Her heart hammering in her chest, she lightly pressed her lips to his. She pulled them away instantly, but not before she felt him minutely respond, his lips softly moving against hers. But she must have been imagining that. He was asleep. He probably wouldn’t kiss her back right now, not with how tired he’d been.
Putting her fingers to her suddenly hot lips, she swallowed the painful lump in her throat. He shouldn’t ever kiss her back, just like she shouldn’t ever kiss him. Cursing all the feelings that she couldn’t seem to shut off, Jessie stood and grabbed her things. Then, shutting off the lights, she closed his door and left him alone in his slumber.
Kai woke up the next morning from a disturbing, but pleasant, dream. Pleasant, because he’d been dreaming about Jessie. Disturbing, because he’d been dreaming about doing very inappropriate things with her. In his dream, she’d told him that she was falling for him, and then she’d tenderly kissed him. As he lay awake in his bed, his eyes straining to make out any coherent shape in his dark room, he still felt the thrill those words had given him.
He wearily ran a hand down his face. What he wouldn’t give to hear her actually say those words to him. But no. That was a really horrible thing for him to want. Jessie shouldn’t be dragged down into his confusion. It would be best for her to find a way past the attraction that he could sometimes feel from her, and only see him as family.
He was struggling with doing the same.
Kai had been isolated from his extended family for so long, that the only person who actually felt like family to him was his grandmother. Everyone else, all of the miscellaneous cousins, uncles and aunts, were nothing more to him than a long list of names on the annual family letter that Gran put together every year, but DNA didn’t lie, and Jessie and Kai couldn’t share that kind of future.
Sighing, he sat up and rubbed his eyes. Grabbing his cell phone off the nightstand beside his bed, he glanced at the time. He’d given into sleep much too soon, and now he’d woken up well before work. He would probably be exhausted by the end of the night again. Oh well. At least his body was shifting in the right direction, and Kai was sure that, given another couple of days, a week at the most, he would be in line with the people here.