Total pages in book: 62
Estimated words: 58747 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 294(@200wpm)___ 235(@250wpm)___ 196(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 58747 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 294(@200wpm)___ 235(@250wpm)___ 196(@300wpm)
“S-so c-cold,” I manage to get out through clattering teeth.
The fire is blazing in the corner. Even without glasses or contacts, I can make out that much. And when he moves from the chair by the fire, I can see his dark, hulking form moving closer to the bed.
But I’m not afraid. Not now and maybe not ever again. Not of him. Not of the man who brought me in from the cold and so tenderly held me and washed the mud out of my hair. Who tucked me in bed and murmured to me in that deep, rumbling voice of his the entire time. I don’t even remember the words he said, just the deep, reassuring bass of it.
A giant, cool hand presses against my forehead and I wince. I’m trying to get warm here, and he touches me with his freezing hand. I pull away.
“You’re burning up,” he rumbles. Of course I am. My immune system was depressed from stress and no sleep and the stint in the tower, and then a run in the freezing rain…
I frown groggily and peek one eye open at him. Then I squint. I don’t even remember closing my eyes. Huh. Funny.
He starts to pull away and walk out of the room.
“No!” I sit up in bed and hold out a hand to stop him, then the room whirls dizzily. I grab my head and wince. Ugh, my head feels full of cotton and I’ve got a deep, thudding headache.
“Don’t go,” I still manage to grind out. And then, more plaintively than I’d probably prefer if I were feeling one hundred percent, “Don’t leave me alone.”
But I feel like crap, so even as I collapse back onto my pillow, I still hold out a wan hand. The scratches on my arm are looking better, the healing salve he rubbed on earlier doing its work. “Please. Stay.”
And then I lose the fight to hold up my arm and it drops to the bed, too.
He hesitates a moment in the doorway like he’s second-guessing himself but then he comes back to the bed and sits beside me. I nestle against his hip. He radiates warmth.
“You’re so warm. Lay down beside me?” I murmur. “I just need to get warm.” A shiver wracks its way down my spine.
“What we need is to get your fever down.”
Then he does the last thing my feverish brain expects. He leans down and presses a kiss to my forehead. Every muscle in my body relaxes at the contact of his lips against my overheated skin. It feels so right.
He moves to rise again and my hand shoots out, shackling his wrist. And then he kisses my hand. “I’ll be right back, beautiful rose. And if you’re a good girl and take your medicine, then I’ll stay with you through the night.”
“In bed with me?” I’m using the last of my energy to hold onto his wrist, but it feels like the most important thing in the world to wrest this promise from him before he goes.
“Maybe so.” Another whisper of a kiss to my forehead and then he’s gone, and the whole world seems like it's gone cold.
It feels like an hour before he finally returns, but he does come back. With a tall glass of water and a couple of pills.
I try to take the cup, but my strength almost immediately fails me and water sloshes out of the cup and onto my blanket. But he’s right there to grab the cup before I drop it completely.
“Here,” I’ve got it, he says calmly. Then he helps me sit up, cradling my back to tilt me up, and he lifts the rim of the glass to my lips.
“Take a sip first,” he murmurs, and I do. The water is cool, but it feels good slipping down my throat. When he holds out one pill, I obediently stick out my tongue without waiting for instruction. His lips curve up and I watch the edge of his mask thoughtfully as he places the pills on my tongue and then lifts the glass to my lips again.
This might be the closest I’ve ever been to him, just able to observe. Everything’s still slightly fuzzy through the haze of my fever and with the room lit only by the flickering fire in the fireplace. But still, I can see the fine hairs of his short beard on the half of his face that’s exposed, and his lips are full and yet somehow still manly. The skin around his eyes is smooth, young-looking, even though there are shadows there that make me think he’s rarely at ease.
I swallow but he doesn’t pull back and that’s when I realize he’s watching me just as carefully as I’m observing him. He lifts a hand and caresses it gently down the side of my face. “What am I going to do with you?” he whispers, but I have the feeling it’s more to himself than to me.