“Sweatshirt off, Mr. Gallagher.”
He tried. “Can’t roll up the sleeve. It’s stuck to my arm. You do it.”
Slowly and carefully, she peeled the ripped, bloodstained sleeve up and away from his forearm. The gash underneath looked messy and painful, but Noah was stoic, pulling the sweatshirt all the way off as soon as she was done. No longer bleeding at all. Just as he’d said.
Avoiding the still raw but rapidly healing tissue, she rinsed the dried blood off with careful pats of a wrung-out washcloth, and saw to his scabbed knuckles as well. She smoothed antibiotic ointment over both wounds and bandaged them.
“This is terrible,” she fussed. “I’d bet anything you need stitches. And a tetanus booster, and serious antibiotics.”
“No need,” he said calmly. “It won’t get infected, and it’ll heal very fast.”
“But it’ll leave a scar!”
He let out a short laugh and glanced down at his heavily scarred torso. “Oh, no. Anything but that.”
“You should see a doctor,” she snapped.
“Look who’s talking.”
Before she could reply, he pulled her closer, cupping the back of her head. His masterful kiss changed almost instantly into something lingering, pleading. His tenderness melted her.
When their lips parted, she looked away, and sniffed back tears. “Don’t kiss me just to shut me up,” she said, her voice wobbling. “That’s unfair.”
He shrugged and bent down to turn off the thundering jets. There were still surging bubbles below the surface of the water. She wanted to sink into it almost as much as she wanted him to kiss her again.
“Your bath is ready. But before you get in, I have something for you,” he said.
Apprehension gripped her. “What’s that?”
He pulled the flash drive from Luke Ryan’s lake house out of his pocket and held it out to her. “We didn’t really flush it,” he said. “I’m sorry I jerked you around.”
She just stared at him, open-mouthed.
“I copied it, of course, so that we can analyze every second of it,” he said. “This one’s yours. But as a favor to me, don’t take it to the police yet. Let me see if I can resolve this somehow, without exposing us all. Please.”
She couldn’t even trust herself to speak. She didn’t know what to think.
Noah went on, his voice gruff and uncertain. “But, ah. It’s your call. Like you said, you found it, and you paid for it. And if you need to use it . . . well. Whatever.”
She curled his fingers back down over the flash drive and pushed his hand away.
“Thanks, Noah,” she said. “Keep it safe for me.”
“OK. Thanks.” He put it back into his pocket, and kissed her forehead.
It felt like the seal on a truce.
He started in on the buttons of her jeans. When they lay in a crumpled pile with her underwear and the remnants of her slashed open Tshirts, he helped her into the tub. In a startling rush, she became aware of her body again. Her nakedness. The hot amber flash of his eyes made her heart speed and brought a burning flush to her face, a tingle to her nipples and between her legs. His eyes dragged over her, lingering.
Instant energy pulsed through her. A deep inner heat. It made her head rise and her back straighten and her shoulders go back. Boobs proudly out. On display. Take that. Nipples tightening eagerly, as if his ravenous gaze were a skillful, caressing touch.
There was an impressive bulge in his pants. She wondered if it had been there all along, or if she’d just woken up to it now.
“Coming in?” she asked.
He didn’t answer, but images flashed through her mind, just as she knew they were flashing through his. The caressing lap of warm water over flushed, gleaming skin, and sloshing against the tub as she wrapped herself around him, straddling him, kissing him. All the while penetrated and tenderly rocked by the slick, rhythmic thrusts of his cock inside her. This tub wasn’t as big as the one at the lake house, but more than big enough for anything they could dream up.
His mouth tightened. “Not a good idea.”
She could have screamed in frustration. “Please?” she urged. “Isn’t Sisko downstairs, keeping watch?”
“Yes. But I’m too jacked up to relax. I want to patrol the perimeter with an AK-47 right now.”
She sank down into the water very slowly, eyes locked with his. The heat of the water embraced her skin, inch by slow, taunting inch. Her hair touched the water and spread out on the surface like a lily pad before sinking down. She dipped down to her neck, and then rose up again, letting her gleaming breasts bob right at the surface. “I want to be with you,” she said. “I want to feel you. Inside me. Right now.”
He let out a low, rasping groan. “Oh, fuck, Caro. Not fair.”