Blood Vow (Black Dagger Legacy #2)(37)

No answer. Just more of that tightly locked and ever-rotating lower jaw.

“Okay, Mr. Chatty, let me see what I can cover this with. And then you need to go see Havers. You’re obviously healthy, so you’re going to heal, but this might get infected before it closes itself.”

Elise patted the area dry with the other end of the towel and went to her cabinets, bending over the center drawers as she pulled them open one by one. The first aid kit was in the last one by the floor.

Rifling through the Band-Aids and gauze patches, she took one of the big squares out. “This’ll do.”

She shucked the wrapper into the wastepaper basket and headed over to her silent, morose patient.

“So, yes, thank you for asking,” she murmured as she got in close again. “I love going to school. I’m really good at it, but just as important, it’s where I get to be myself. No assumptions or restrictions because of where I come from. Nothing but my own actions and words defining who I am. It’s freedom to me.”

She peeled the backing off the two adhesive ends, pinched the gaping hole in his flesh, and covered the laceration, making sure that the bandage squeezed the wound tight. Crushing the little tabs in her fist, she stepped back. Axwelle was staring straight ahead, as if he hadn’t been able to stand her getting near him.

Cursing under her breath again, she felt like her chance to keep going to that human university was disappearing in front of her very eyes.

“Look,” she said with exhaustion. “I know you and I are doing the oil-and-water routine here, but I really need this to work. I need to finish my doctorate. It’s years of my life. I mean … if you don’t want the job, just back out now and let me try to find someone else, okay? Hello? Are you listening to me even in the slightest?” She threw up her hands. “This is ridiculous. Why did you come here at all?”

Maybe she had gotten him wrong. She could have sworn he’d been staring at her because he found her attractive. Maybe it was the other way around—

Abruptly, his hands gripped his knees and squeezed.

“Are you stroking out or something?” she demanded. “Because my medical expertise stops at Band-Aids.”

When he just stayed where he was, she put her hands on her hips for the third time in his presence. “Will you just tell me what the hell is going on here? Do you need an ambulance? Did they hit you so hard you have a concussion? Whatever it is, you better tell me right now or I’m going to drag you out of this house and leave you to die on my front lawn.”

His upper lip curled up off his fangs and he shook his head.

“You really are a coward,” she muttered. “Big tough guy like you, but you can’t talk about anything—”

“Coward?” he bit out. “You think I’m a coward.”

“Yeah, I do. What’s the other explanation?”

“Coward, huh. Fine. How’s this for a problem.”

With that, he rose to his full height, mirrored her pose with his hands on his hips—and just stood there, like that said it all.

Elise shrugged with a frown. “Yes? And? You want to remind me that you’re six-six? Six-seven? Dressed in black? What—”

Annnnnnnd that was when she saw it.

It was a very big it. A very … erect it, straining the front of his pants.





TWELVE


How’s that for communication, Axe wanted to say.

Instead, he simply let the female get a good hard gander at his little coward, which was neither little at all nor cowardly in the slightest. In fact, his cock was really damn bold, completely unapologetic, and seemed to be twice the size it usually was.

And Axe hadn’t been a grower to begin with.

But fuck him, this was not the way he’d wanted to start out with her—and yeah, you could rewind that empty wish right back to him showing up at her father’s mansion bleeding down his face. The problem was—well, one of his problems was—that he’d been so fucking riffed at Peyton’s criminal sense of entitlement, he hadn’t even thought about any injury—and then this female had taken him up here, where everything smelled like her, and sat him down, and stepped into his personal space and …

Yeah, he’d gotten hard.

The entire time she’d been doing her first aid thing, he’d been hoping, praying, to will himself back to flaccidity. No luck. It was like yelling at a pig. You looked like an idiot and the pig didn’t give a shit.

So here they were, standing in a bathroom that was like something out of The Devil Wears Prada— if Miranda Priestly had had a Jacuzzi scene—with him ridiculously aroused and Elise standing in front of him as if she couldn’t decide whether to cover her eyes and run …

Or find out what he felt like.

“This is a bad idea,” he muttered as he turned around, rearranged himself, and stalked out into her bedroom.

Great, all he could stare at was her bed … and imagine what she would look like naked on it.

“Wait,” she said. “Don’t go—”

He pivoted on her expensive carpet. “You need someone else.”

She kicked up her chin. “I don’t want someone else. I want you.”

Axe closed his eyes and tried not to read all kinds of bump and grind into that.

“Did you lose your mate?” she asked.