Part Two
She showed him the way to the kitchen, gathering the first aid kit out of the cabinet, then perched herself on the counter. She was mom, she was used to doing the fixing, but simply being the patient didn't explain the nervous butterflies dancing around in her stomach. No, they were entirely caused by the gorgeous man with the amazing eyes who'd focused those amazing eyes on her shoulder.
He leaned in close, his hand pushing lightly on her arm to get her lean back until the light mounted under the cabinet shone on her shoulder. "It's probably uncomfortable, but the light helps."
She laughed, hoping it sounded amused rather than anxious. "You can't see in the dark either? Damn, you're starting to seem almost human." Just as before, his touch heightened her awareness, causing her entirely body to buzz like she was touching a live wire.
His eyes moved from her shoulder, catching hers, a reassuring smile curving his lips.
She was startled by his proximity, feeling like she could drown in those blue eyes.
"I'll try not to hurt you too much." He watched. He waited.
She couldn't do anything but stare back at him and pray she wouldn't embarrass herself by grabbing onto him and refusing to let go.
"Carter?"
She continued to stare, trying to smile, knowing she wasn't doing a very good job of it.
"You're shaking." His head cocked to the side. "Relax, it's not going to hurt that much, Jos." His hand was resting on her waist, perhaps intending to soothe her. All it was doing was driving her insane, the heat of his palm pressing against her skin.
God, the man was beautiful, his face, his voice, even his hands. She wasn't sure how long her self-control would last. And though he was distracted by her injury, the man was sharp and would undoubtedly ferret out the source of her distress if she gave him much more time. Besides, she'd seen in the car that the attraction wasn't simply one sided.
Might as well grab the bull by the horns. So she stared back at him and shrugged as nonchalantly as she could. "That's not really the problem I'm having at the moment."
She was close enough to see the way his pupils dilated the slightest bit, to feel the change in his breathing when his breath brushed across her skin. He swallowed hard, a long, strange moment passing before he looked down.
And promptly realized that down wasn't a better direction considering her state of undress. His head turned to the side as he squeezed his eyes closed, a chuckle finally escaping from his lips. At least he was as uncomfortable as she was.
He shook it off, then picked up the tweezers and motioned toward her shoulder, meeting her eyes with a fleeting, yet determined look. "Let's solve one problem at a time, ok?" His eyebrow quirked up, leaving her quite curious to know if he was actually tempted to address her violent attraction to him.
She nodded stupidly; she'd agree to anything he asked when he fixed that stare on her. She suspected he knew it.
He worked quietly and carefully to pick out the remaining bits of glass from her skin without causing her more pain than absolutely necessary. It hurt, quite a lot actually, to have someone digging around in an open wound with tweezers, but it didn't matter. She'd happily sit there and suffer for the rest of time as long as he stayed with her, as long as he kept touching her.
He finished with the tweezers, setting them down and picking up cotton balls and peroxide. "This is going to hurt, but you're not getting out of it, so don't even try."
Because he'd brought it up, and because she never had the sense to not argue with him, she made a show of shifting away. "I just needed help with the glass. I can take care of washing it out myself." It was true, after all; he couldn't dispute that, she reasoned as she touched his hand, almost trying to grab the bottle of peroxide.
He shook his head. "It's my fault you're bleeding, the least I can do is make sure it doesn't get infected." All business, he set about dousing the cotton with peroxide.
Something about his concentration reminded her of reality. There she was, sitting half dressed in her kitchen with a man who was decidedly dangerous, in so very many ways, and she was flirting with him. She'd lost her damn mind.
Reaching out again, this time actually meaning it, she told herself to get her head back in the game. "I've got it. Thanks for your help."
John didn't notice the change in her demeanor or he just didn't care, because he lifted his arms over his head, well out of her reach. "Oh, no you don't." He ginned at her playfully as he shifted his body in front of her. "You going to sit still and be a good patient?"
She couldn't stop the laugh that bubbled out of her at his words, his teasing instantly putting her at ease. "So we're playing doctor now?"
His laughter joined hers as he lowered his arms and rested them on either side of her legs. "Got over your handcuff fixation, I see."
"You're the one who keeps mentioning them. I think you're the one with the handcuff fetish." Not that she would mind playing any game he wanted. Her resolve to be serious had disappeared as quickly as it had come and she found herself struggling to get it back. "I'd like to put my shirt back on at some point, you know."
And then he wasn't grinning, just entrenched in her personal space and staring her down. "Don't hurry on my account." His hands moved to her legs, just above the knee, resting lightly there. An alpha male all the way, marking his territory, flaunting the fact that he could.
Any other man tried such a thing and she would have been pissed off at his presumption, but it wasn't any other man. It was John. And she'd just told him that she was turned on by him. She tried to work through it logically, reviewing what had recently changed. She'd admitted that she was attracted to him. He'd admitted that he was attracted to her. Simply having voiced the words shouldn't have changed anything; not with the way they had flirted shamelessly the entire time they'd known each other.
Still, something was different. Something had changed.
And when she averted her eyes and saw her lacy blue bra, she could have kicked herself. Yes, something was different, she wasn't wearing a shirt. That would definitely explain why it wasn't business as usual. They weren't meeting in a public place with a million witnesses. They were in her apartment, alone, and she was half dressed.
As soon as she broke eye contact, John went back to the task at hand. He picked up the cotton balls and tossed them in the trash, reaching for clean ones from the bag and pouring the peroxide on them. Then he started dabbing at her wound. He was excessively gentle, taking his time to keep from hurting her.
She hissed in pain anyway, the liquid burning harshly.
He leaned in, blowing softly to soothe it, the way she had done a million times for her son.
Except it wasn't a mother soothing a child. It was an entirely different concept to have John Reese's lips barely an inch from her skin, to feel his breath caressing her, to feel the heat from his body. She held her breath, fighting for the last vestiges of dignity, determined not to embarrass herself.
He noticed, of course; he was too close to miss it. He looked up at her, his face still so close. "Almost done, Jos." His thick, raspy voice saying her name was the last straw.
Her head fell back, a groan ripping from her throat. She didn't even care that she'd just mortified herself. Hell, it was all she could do not to grab the man and demand that he untie the knot he'd made of her insides. She imagined he'd be quite good at fixing the mess he'd made of her, at knowing what to do with her body, at making her scream in a way she never had before.
In fact, she was so lost in the idea of it that she almost didn't notice when he moved, his face moving from her shoulder, his lips grazing her neck as he nuzzled just below her ear.
She did grab him then, when she realized it was real, her fingers gripping his shirt to pull him close, her knees widening to allow his body to slip between them. His hands moved to her waist, burning hot against her bare skin.
He placed a wet kiss at the corner of her jaw before he turned further toward her, pressing his forehead against her cheek. "Damn it, Carter, you're going to make me break all my rules."
It made her snicker. "I wasn't aware there were rules left you hadn't broken."
"You don't know, Jos," he whispered as he pulled back to look at her. "You're far more dangerous than me."
Perhaps because her thought process had been put on pause while all of her body's energy was coiling between her legs, she couldn't understand him. It sounded wistful, like a compliment, but he was calling her dangerous. "How am I dangerous?" She knew he wasn't referring to her being a cop, but that was about all she knew.
"I'm still here, aren't I?" His eyes moved slowly over his face, his normally sharp gaze soft, his face affectionate. "I'm not planning on leaving either."
"I'm not planning on letting you."
She leaned forward, intending to kiss him, but he shifted to the side, running his mouth across her jaw and down the column of her throat. He kissed the pulse point at the base of her neck, letting his tongue dart out to graze her collarbone as he moved to the side. He lowered his forehead, his hands moving to her back to pull her into a hug.
He stayed like that for several minutes, his face pressed lightly against her neck, his arms around her, just holding her. Maybe he was changing his mind. Maybe he didn't know what to do. Maybe he was attempting to reign in control.
Whatever it was, she wanted him to keep doing it forever. To encourage him, she stayed completely still, her hands still fisted in his shirt.
Finally he moved, lifting his head to face her, his hands curling around the back of her knees to pull her body into him. But rather than leaning in for the kiss she expected, he just looked at her, his eyes seeming to size her up, like he was interrogating her. It reminded her of the way he'd looked at her the first time they'd met, while he was clearly trying to decide if she was worth trusting.
All she could do was desperately hope she passed the test because she was convinced she would die right then and there if she didn't have the man in her bed that night.
His expression softened again, his head tilting to the side, a small smile curving his lips. "This is going to complicate things."
She nodded. "I'm ok with complicated."
"Are you sure?"
It struck her that he was hopelessly sweet, and someday she was going to tell him that. He wasn't going to rush her into bed and leave her to regret it later. He wasn't going to lie and promise her that everything was going to be simple and easy for them. He wasn't going to pretend he didn't think it was worth risking everything for.
She didn't waste time explaining herself or even reassuring him. Instead she threaded her fingers into his hair, pulling him into a kiss that would leave him with no doubts whatsoever as to her feelings.
He responded exactly as she expected, tightening his hold around her, slanting his head to the side to deepen the kiss, slipping his tongue into her mouth and making her moan. She released his head, sliding her hands onto his chest, then back up, one slipping around his shoulders to hold him while the other froze in pain. It hurt like hell, but she wasn't about to say anything. She didn't want to interrupt the man, not when he was kissing her more thoroughly than she'd been kissed in a long, long time.
As always, John was able to read her mind, breaking the kiss and pulling away slightly. His eyes stayed closed for a beat, his lips wet, a mask of sheer desire covering his face. Finally, he seemed to pull himself together, carefully extracting himself from the embrace. "I should probably finish this first, huh?"
She glanced at her shoulder, the wound still bleeding a little bit. "I shouldn't complain-"
"I'm sure it hurts, Carter." He picked through the first aid kit, pulling out some gauze and taping it over her shoulder.
Before he had the chance to rethink what had happened, she reached out with her good arm, grabbing a fistful of his shirt and drawing him back to her. "Where were we?"
A grin spread across his face as he pulled her off the counter into his arms, her legs wrapping around his waist. "I think we were heading this way." He moved through the kitchen and down the hallway toward her bedroom.
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In the wee hours of the morning, she lay on her side, snuggled against him, her hand tracing invisible patterns on his chest. John hadn't said anything intelligible for some time, neither had she, but the silence was comfortable. Still, when she tilted her head up to look at the man who was wide awake as well, she felt something needed to be said.
"You know, John, earlier I told you I was ok with things being complicated," she paused when she saw the storm gathering in his eyes, the barely restrained pain quickly hidden behind a carefully neutral face. She felt his muscles tensing, but she stopped him with her palm flat against his chest. "You'll get up when I tell you to get up, mister."
His eyes darted back and forth between hers, trying, and obviously failing, to read her, trying to understand why she was flirting when she was ending what had only just begun.
She smiled at him. "I'm not just ok with things being complicated." She leaned down and pressed a kiss onto his chest. "No, I think I really, really like complicated things."
The corners of his mouth curved up and the panic faded away. "I thought you-"
Shifting over to straddle him, she held his eyes. "I know exactly what you were thinking, John." She leaned down, her lips grazing his as she spoke. "And I'm hereby outlawing any more thinking."
He grinned then, lifting his hands up, offering his wrists to her. "Then you'd better arrest me, detective, because I was just thinking about how much I like complicated too."
She grabbed his wrists and pushed his arms above his head. "Might have to break out those handcuffs after all since you're not going to be cooperative."
His eyes twinkled. "Promises, promises."
But as soon as she shifted her hips a bit lower, she found that John Reese could be the most cooperative man in the world.