Page 22 of Dangers of Love

Moss had been understanding and had taken the referral Cain had given him, so I could spend tomorrow and the rest of the weekend recovering. I hated being sidelined, but Cain hadn’t budged on that.

“Has your brother found a place for you?” Aline asked as we rode the elevator to my floor. “I meant to ask you last night.”

“I didn’t tell you when we talked this morning?” I scratched the stubble on my chin., hoping to steer the conversation back to my unanswered question.

She shook her head. “Does that mean you’ve heard back from Rome?”

“I did.” I reached for her hand. “I’ll probably be signing for a condo on Monday.” A thought occurred to me. “I’ll need to call Rome and find out if I’d rescheduled my appointment after Cain scheduled a job. I’m sure Rome will make time to fit me in. I just don’t know when.”

“A condo?” she asked as we walked down the hallway. “Not an apartment?”

I shook my head. “That’s what I’d asked him to look for – an apartment, I mean – but he said when he saw this place, he thought it’d be perfect for me. And it is.”

She smiled. “What’s it like?”

“It’s pretty big, but when I saw it, I realized I liked the idea of having space, especially since it’s the first place I’ve ever been able to choose like this. Before, I had to be ready to leave it all behind, so I’d never seen the point of putting any effort into having anything but just the bare necessities.”

“That makes sense,” she said. “I’ve never had a place of my own either. Though I am younger than you.” She winked at me, a small smirk on her lips.

Damn, that was hot.

“Are you accusing me of robbing the cradle?” I teased her back as I unlocked the door and reached inside to turn on the light.

“Well, you are, what, forty?” She laughed even as she said it.

“Twenty-eight, thank you.” I glared at her, but it was all in jest.

“Practically ancient.”

As the door clicked closed, she turned toward me and reached up to put her hand on my cheek. Her smile softened, and the light mood shifted, not into something heavy or dark, but different.

“I was so scared when that phone went de…” Her voice shook. “Quiet. I thought…”

I put my hand over hers. “I’m okay.” I leaned down and brushed my lips across hers. “I’m pretty hard to kill.”

If she hadn’t known me as well as she did, she might’ve thought it was me simply trying to reassure her, but she understood both the truth of the words as well as why they had a bitter edge to them.

“Will you hate me if I say I’m glad of it?”

The vulnerability in her eyes both surprised me and reached something deep inside me, prompting me to say the truth in response. “Nothing could make me hate you, sweetheart.”

Her entire face shone, and a bolt of desire hit me square in the stomach and immediately traveled south. I was banged up and bruised with a massive headache in my near future when the ER drugs wore off, but my cock didn’t care.

“I need to clean up,” I said. “Join me?”

Heat flared in her eyes, and she nodded.

Neither of us spoke as we undressed, as the bathroom filled with steam. The only sound was the shower, and it created white noise, making it feel as if nothing else existed. The world could’ve disappeared, and we never would have known.

I stepped under the spray first, hissing in pain as the hot water hit the bruised and scraped skin on my back. Then Aline joined me, and all my attention focused on her. Slender, delicate body with small, perfect breasts tipped with pale peach-colored nipples. Fair skin that probably burned with the slightest hint of sunlight.

Her blonde hair was so light that even water couldn’t darken it to brown. But her beauty wasn’t just physical, no matter how quickly or how intensely my body responded to hers. She was smart and tough and put others before herself.

How the hell did I get this lucky?

Without a word, she picked up my shampoo, squirted some of it in her palm, and then gestured for me to bend over so she could reach my hair. I closed my eyes and just let myself enjoy the feel of her fingers massaging my scalp, picking out what I assumed was glass and bits of debris. Once she finished with that, she began to wash the blood and the dirt off, moving carefully but not like she didn’t want to touch me.

She waited until she was done with everything else before finally,finallytouching my cock. A shudder ran through my entire body as she moved the washcloth over the head and down the shaft. Every place on my body that she’d touched was humming, burning in a pleasurable way, overriding the pain from my injuries. After a few strokes, the washcloth was replaced by her hand, and I groaned.

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