Cold as Ice - Anne Stuart [90]
“Then can I touch you?”
He laughed. Her request seemed to surprise him, it certainly shocked her. “Don’t try it unless you have something extremely kinky in mind,” he said.
That shut her up. She went back to her bed, plumping the limp pillows behind her, and sat down, shoving her hand into the plastic ice bucket. There were few things she hated more than putting ice on an injury, but she had more sense than to argue.
“Serves you right,” he said, carefully applying a disinfectant to the furrow on his shoulder. He was having a hard time bandaging it, and her own fingers were icy, but she sat back and said nothing. When he was finished he stood up, and examined his handiwork in the mirror. She could see the trace of faint scratch marks along his beautiful back.
“What happened to your back?” she asked. “An old wound? Scars from being tortured?”
“You did,” he said.
And she remembered. Holding on to him, digging her fingers into his skin as she arched into a frenzied, uncontrollable response, and she felt the color flood her face.
“Oh, God,” she muttered weakly.
“Don’t worry about it,” he said in his cool voice. “My fault. I was the one who made you come.”
He wasn’t making the situation any better. She was nothing special, she reminded herself. Maybe he was used to having women claw his back, the marks still showing countless days later. The very idea made her sick with a kind of primitive rage that couldn’t have anything to do with jealousy.
“How long do we have to stay here?” She could be proud of how unaffected her voice sounded, even though she could feel the heat on her cheeks.
It wasn’t getting any easier. He stood up, unfastened his jeans and stepped out of them, totally oblivious to her reaction. At least he was wearing some kind of underwear—pale blue, a cross between boxers and briefs. His cock was also pushing against the fabric. He glanced down at his obvious erection, then back at her.
“Does getting shot turn you on?” she said, struggling for a way to defuse the situation.
“Not particularly,” he said, flipping the covers back on his bed and stretching out. He was just as pretty lying down as he was standing up, and Genevieve was not happy.
“Can we turn out the light?” Her voice was caustic. “Now that you’ve finished parading your assets around I’d like to get some sleep.”
Again that smile. “You really are the most annoying female I’ve ever met,” he murmured, switching off the light.
“Same goes double for you,” she muttered.
“In case you hadn’t been looking that closely, I’m not a female.”
“It was hard to avoid,” she said, her voice muffled.
The room was dark, only a faint light from outside coming through a crack in the heavy curtains. She didn’t like lying here in the dark with him; it felt too intimate. Then again, she had no place else to go.
“I’m going to sleep,” she announced.
“So you said.” He stretched out, putting his hands behind his head, perfectly at peace.
She turned her back on him, flouncing over in the bed, and closed her eyes. Five minutes later she flipped back, only to find he was still awake, staring at the ceiling. Still aroused.
“I know what it is,” she said in the quiet, shadowed room. “It’s the danger that excites you. You’re an adrenaline junkie, and running for your life gives you a hard-on.”
“Such talk, Ms. Spenser,” he mockingly chided her. “Why are you so obsessed with my erection?”
She considered dumping the melting bucket of ice on him, then wisely reconsidered the notion. “Just curious. Since I was ‘nothing special’ it seems odd that you’d be…er…”
“Hard? You said it before—you’re brave enough about other things.”
“I don’t feel particularly brave. Too many people trying to kill me, I guess. I just want to go home.”
“So you said. And I’m here to see to just that. Get you tucked safely back in that elegant apartment on Seventy-second Street where you can curl up on your white leather furniture and forget all about this.”
She wasn’t likely to forget about anything, but she had the sense not to say so. They had ways of