“I suppose the end of all that started when I got pneumonia,” she said, hooking her arm around a nearby cushion, pressing it to her chest. “Apparently, I nearly died. All I remember is how it felt.” He wondered if she noticed she was squeezing that cushion, the sort of vulnerable move she usually avoided like the plague. Probably not. In the space of a few seconds, she’d somehow become so distant.
“My bones were like eggshells. There was this cold, wet toad squatting on my chest, too heavy and chilling for me to breathe right.” She said it so steadily, but he saw a hint of remembered panic in her eyes. “I remember being so angry with myself, because it was so silly, the way I got sick. I used to play netball, and I’d been nervous about a particular game. I stayed out in the rain with some of my friends, running drills. We won the match, but I was in the hospital a few days later. Obviously, I survived,” she quipped, as if he needed a reminder of her continued existence.
He didn’t laugh. “But . . . ?”
“But,” she went on grimly, “my body was different. The weight on my chest, and the cold—they faded, as I got better. But my bones still felt fragile. It never went away. Over the months, I noticed more and more problems. I was exhausted all the time. I got these awful headaches for no reason. And there was the pain—always, so much pain. I’d go for a walk and feel like I’d worked every muscle to the point of tearing. If I spent too long on my laptop, my hands would hurt so badly I cried. I started feeling afraid of my own body, like it was a torture chamber I’d been trapped inside.
“But when I asked for help, no one would listen. I’m lucky my family believed me, because for years, they were the only ones. I remember one doctor asked to speak with my father, even though I was an adult. He told my dad I was physically fine, but they should look into my mental health.” She laughed, but the sound was too loud, too edgy, grating against his skin.
Red curled his hands into useless fists in his lap, fighting the urge to touch her. To stroke her hair or pull her into a hug, the way he might if she were someone—anyone—else. Usually, he offered comfort to help other people. But she looked so determinedly brittle right now, eyes sharp, jaw hard, chin up, he knew comfort wasn’t what she wanted. He’d only be doing it for himself, because he could see how trapped she’d felt, and it made him feel hollow inside.
“I mean, don’t get me wrong,” she said dryly, “my mental health was a mess at that point. And having actual medical professionals dismiss me really didn’t help, so . . .” She squeezed her eyes shut for a moment.
“Of course it didn’t,” he said, his voice rough, almost rusty, with the anger he didn’t want to show. “Whether something bad is coming from your body or your brain, it makes no difference. Still feels like shit, right? Still hurts. Still needs fixing. They shouldn’t have dismissed you, even if it was in your head. When it comes down to it, everything we feel is in our heads.”
She opened her eyes. Wet her lips. Nodded slowly, and looked a little bit less tortured. When she spoke again, her voice was smooth and arch and familiar. “I do hate to admit when you’re right, but you happen to have stumbled upon a sensible opinion, there.”
Somehow, for her, he dredged up a smile. “Must be a blue moon. Keep going.”
She swallowed so hard, he heard it. “Right. Yes. Well. I was diagnosed, in the end. My consultant believes major physical trauma can trigger conditions like mine. She thinks it was the pneumonia. But that doesn’t really matter. What matters is that, for years, I had no idea what was really happening to my body. No painkillers, no physical therapy, no medical support whatsoever. So I did what I had to do. I developed my own coping mechanisms. The problem is, they weren’t particularly healthy.”
He wondered what it was like, to cope constantly. Tiring, probably. Stressful, definitely. Doing it alone didn’t sound healthy at all.
“I avoided anything that might make me feel worse,” she said. “I was afraid.” No inflection. No emotion. As if she was reading someone else’s story from a sheet of paper. “I quit netball. I quit my postgrad degree. I stopped going out with my friends. I didn’t stay up late because sleep was too precious. I refused to make plans because I never knew when my body might force me to change them. My friends disappeared one by one. I suppose my problems made them feel guilty.”
“And your fiancé?” Red asked softly.
“Oh, Henry,” she laughed. “He lost patience almost immediately. He didn’t believe me.”
“What?” Red had been trying to stay calm throughout this story, to avoid showing his own reactions in case they affected what she chose to share. But he couldn’t have hidden his disgust in that moment, not even if he’d pulled out his own fucking tongue.
She shrugged, but a smile teased the edges of her mouth, as if she found his obvious horror amusing. “There was no blood test or scan or injury to prove that I was really in pain. He was very logical, you see. He needed evidence and I had none.”
“Your word isn’t evidence? Your feelings aren’t evidence?” Red demanded, his tone harsher than he’d intended. But he couldn’t help it. He’d seen the change in Chloe when her pain got too serious to handle. Fuck, he saw her now, when she was trying to seem fine but was clearly exhausted. Black circles under her beautiful eyes, weariness clinging to her like a shadow. How the fuck could someone who planned to marry her just ignore all that?
“Henry thought I was malingering,” she told him. “That I was being pathetic, I was too demanding, I needed too much support.” Her lip curled, displaying a flash of anger that had been absent so far, one he was actually relieved to see now. “He disappeared on me without much remorse, but I consider that a lucky escape.”
So did Red. “He doesn’t sound like marriage material.”
Her eyes slid to his, sparkling with humor. “No.”
“He sounds like the type of guy who finds out his wife has cancer and starts screwing his secretary to relieve the stress.”
“Yes,” she said, smiling now.
“Fuck him.”
“I pity whoever is,” she smirked. Then she waved a hand and the moment of camaraderie passed. “I’ve learned how to manage my symptoms, now, of course. I have medication, physiotherapy, cognitive therapy. I’m fine, really. But I feel like a part of me hasn’t caught up with that. Like I’m still afraid of myself. That’s what the list is for. To help me get my bravery back.”
She began that speech sounding like her usual self, but toward the end she started to mumble, her voice growing smaller, her eyes skating away from his. Like she was embarrassed to say the most badass thing he’d ever heard.
He couldn’t let that stand. “Hey.”
She pursed her lips and glared at him without much heat. “What?”
“If this list is supposed to make you braver, you’re gonna be fucking Wonder Woman by the time we’re done.”
She snorted, rolling her eyes, but he could tell she was pleased. It oozed out of her like jam from a layer cake, and he was lapping the sweetness up, desperate for more.
“Also,” he added, “just to make it really clear: your fiancé was a fucking donkey cock for leaving you.”
He liked the way she laughed at that, not her usual, low chuckle, but a gasping, breathless giggle that she clearly hadn’t meant to show him. She pressed her hands to her plumped-up cheeks as if she could push the laughter back inside, but it didn’t work. She just kept going, and his grin grew wider and wider.
“Your friends were fucking useless and all,” he told her. “Load of twats, the lot of them.”
She pressed a hand to her chest, over the ridiculous, furry all-in-one thing she was wearing. “True,” she managed between giggles. “Very true. Although, I don’t know why I told you about that. It’s not the point. It’s incidental.”
Did she really believe that, when he could see her pain a mile off? When her eyes shuttered with sadness as she talked about the people who hadn’t stuck by her? His voice softened. “You should make new friends now. Y
ou shouldn’t be lonely.”
That wiped the smile off her face, though not from her eyes. She scowled at him, trying to look outraged. For some twisted reason, he liked it. “I don’t need new friends,” she said, “and I am not lonely.”
“You are,” he insisted, partly because it was true, mostly because he enjoyed pissing her off almost as much as he enjoyed making her laugh.
Stubborn as fuck, she shot back, “I am not.”
“You are.”
“Redford Morgan, I will throw you out of my flat.”
He grinned. “But I have a key.”
“Which you would never use without due cause,” she countered, “because you are a very good superintendent.”
There was that flash of dizzying sweetness, the one she kept teasing him with. The one that made his grin turn wicked and his voice dip low, even as his logical brain screamed that flirting was a shitty idea. “Oh yeah? How good?”
She blinked rapidly, and he could’ve sworn she was blushing. “Well, I . . . I don’t know,” she muttered awkwardly. “I don’t actually have much experience with superintendents.”
“So I’m your first. Good to know.”
She was definitely blushing now. “Red.”
“I’m just teasing you, Button.” He was, wasn’t he? Teasing her, and enjoying it way too much. “Don’t faint on me now.”
“Right,” she said dryly. “Excuse me while I swoon.”
She looked hot enough to, in that outfit. The fluffy, gray pajamas swallowed her whole, and even though she’d opened a window earlier, he could see a bead of sweat creeping down the line of her throat. His eyes followed that tiny drop’s path like he was a wolf and it was lunch. Now he’d noticed it, he couldn’t look away. Couldn’t drag his thoughts away. Couldn’t remember what, exactly, they’d been talking about—only that he’d made her blush and he’d enjoyed it.
The drop had reached the hollow between her collarbones now, exposed by her slightly lowered zipper. He wanted to lick it away.
Wait—no he didn’t. No. He. Didn’t.
Oh, for fuck’s sake. Yes he did.
“Red?” she said, her voice a little bit shaky. But not the way it had been earlier. This time, it shook the way his muscles did when he was pushing it at the gym. Like she was aching with adrenaline.
“You should really take that off,” he said, his throat dry, his mouth moving like it belonged to someone else.
Her tongue darted out to wet her lips. She patted nervously at her hair. “Take what off?”
“Your clothes,” he said, because he was concerned for her health, obviously. “Whatever that thing is you’re wearing. You should take it off.”
* * *
Chloe replied, rather intelligently, “Eep.”
“You’re sweating,” Red went on, his gaze oddly fixated at the base of her throat. Probably staring in mild disgust at the aforementioned sweat.
For approximately the thousandth time that day, she cursed her numb-footed, sleepless night and all that it had led to. There he sat, devastatingly handsome, and she was sweating in a lemur outfit like a child who didn’t know how to dress herself.
She tangled her fingers in the fabric, scrabbled for the last scraps of her dignity, and said firmly, “I’m fine.”
“You don’t seem fine.” His gaze moved from her throat to her face, studying her with a stomach-clenching intensity that made her blood shudder its way through her veins.
The way he watched her made Chloe feel so . . . present. Noticed. Touched, and not in the emotional way. Her skin tingled in anticipation of a contact that would never be made. She was suddenly, disturbingly conscious of the fact that she wore very little under this onesie. Very little, as in, he could rip down the zip and she’d be standing there in nothing but her knickers.
This odd attraction she felt toward him was getting out of hand. She kept hearing a feral edge to his voice that couldn’t possibly be there, felt a heat in his gaze that must be 100 percent her imagination. She tried to control her breathing and look innocent, as opposed to looking like the depraved mess she was. It didn’t work.
“Chloe?” Red nudged, his little frown returning. She wanted to smooth it out with her fingers.
“What?” she asked faintly.
Gigi appeared helpfully on her shoulder and said, “Don’t mumble, darling. Nice big voice. Repeat after me: ‘I want to ride you like a stallion.’”
Dani appeared on Chloe’s other shoulder and drawled, “Don’t forget to say, ‘Please.’”
A tiny, phantom Eve joined the fray and said, “Don’t listen to those two. Actions speak louder than words. Jump him.”
“You’re too hot,” Red said.
“I’m not.”
He pressed the back of his hand to her cheek. The contact sent a jagged shock of arousal through her. She didn’t mean to react, but her next inhale came rather sharply—so sharply she made a soft, hungry sound. And he noticed. Oops. After a pause, he caught her chin and turned her to face him, which was unfair, because staring straight ahead had been her only coping strategy. His gaze unraveled her expertly in approximately 2.3 seconds. She saw the precise moment that he realized she was a breathless, horny little demon with a ridiculous crush on him. His eyes widened slightly, as if she’d shocked him witless.
Then those spring-green irises heated, were slowly swallowed up by dark pupils. He sighed, almost shakily. He leaned closer and bent his head until his brow rested against her temple, skin on skin, technically chaste. And yet, it felt so reckless, so charged, so shockingly intimate. His hair was a curtain cutting the both of them off from reality, silk swinging softly against her cheek. The scent of him, warm and earthy and comforting, imprinted itself in her mind, forever associated with this moment. This trembling, achingly close moment when they breathed, deep and desperate, in sync.
Once upon a time, Chloe remembered, she had absolutely loved sex.
“So, it’s like that,” he murmured, the words almost tender, sinking into her skin.
“No.” Her voice was a ragged whisper, broken by sharp inhalations. She was drinking down his presence before he could take it away.
He laughed softly, each puff of air a kiss to her sensitive throat. “You are such a shitty liar.”
“True.” She closed her eyes. The way he drew her in, from his smile to his confidence to his honest charm . . . this attraction was forceful and unexpected, a riptide lying in wait beneath the smooth surface of her own mind. Now she’d sunk a bit too deep and been snatched under.
She wasn’t sure which way was up anymore.
He found the fingers she’d tangled up in fleecy fabric and eased them gently apart, which was a relief, because she’d been in danger of clenching her fists hard enough to hurt herself. It took her a second to realize that he was holding her hand. She could feel his cool, dry palm against her clammy one, right up to the point where her wrist supports covered her skin. He was holding her hand. He was lacing their fingers together carefully, as if to connect them. Why?
She didn’t know how to ask, and since she liked it, asking seemed silly anyway. He might come to his senses and let go. She might come to her senses and pull away. Far better to keep quiet.
He kissed her jaw. Softly, so softly, but she still whimpered.
He’d been so slow and languid, but at the sound of that whimper, everything about him tensed. He murmured roughly, “I like that,” and brushed his lips over her skin again, as if to tease out more sound. Her nipples tightened, but she swallowed her breathy sigh. So he tried harder, though it felt lighter. His tongue flicked her earlobe, traced the shell of her ear. She moaned. He made a low, raw noise of satisfaction and held her hand tighter, as if he were sinking, too, and he needed something to cling to.
She was dissolving like sugar in hot tea. Her breaths were shallow, her temperature was rocketing in a way that had nothing to do with her outfit, and her desire was a drumbeat pulse pounding between her legs. Her pussy was so swollen it f
elt like a fist clenched between her thighs. She was coming apart at the seams. Thank her lucky stars that all he’d done so far was tease, because if he really bit into her the way she wanted him to, she might faint dead away.
If he really bit into her the way she wanted him to, she might bite back.
And then what? Would he strip her naked, shag her senseless, and see her on Saturday night to continue the list? She didn’t know. She didn’t know. What did it mean, when a man you made deals with and sent slightly flirtatious emails to licked your ear and held your hand? What did it mean? It certainly wasn’t professional, or transactional, or simple. Not in her case, anyway. She was quite sure of that.
He slid a hand over the back of her neck, warm and solid and deliciously firm. Sensation spiked between her legs. “Chloe,” he said, his voice like gravel. “I want to kiss you. Can I kiss you?”
He turned her on so badly she felt dizzy. She couldn’t look at him, because she knew what she’d see: living, breathing sex, a man who could so easily make a mess of her. She was melting for him and they barely knew each other. She wanted to sob out her pleasure and he’d barely done anything to cause it. She. Was. Losing. Control.
She made herself whisper, “Stop.”
He obeyed her the same way he did everything: calm, easy, as though it had been his idea. His mouth left her skin before she’d even finished speaking the word. The warmth of his proximity faded and she knew he’d pulled back. He squeezed her hand once before he let go.
His expression was unreadable—but his cheeks were flushed. Her mind fixated on that because it seemed so impossibly vulnerable. Impossible full stop. Why would he be flushed? He was cool and confident and probably made women wet with a bit of hyper-sexy hand-holding a few times a week, just to keep himself sharp. Except, according to the kiss of crimson painting his high cheekbones, maybe he didn’t.