Hell on Wheels (Black Knights Inc. #1)(78)



Cripes.

He swallowed, his Adam’s apple slowly bobbing in the column of his tanned throat where his pulse pounded so hard she fancied she could actually hear it. His nostrils flared wide, and for a brief moment she saw such utter despair…such gut-wrenching pain in his eyes. Then he turned away, hiding his misery from her as if it was something he should be ashamed of. Lifting the stupid fishing-lure-printed sheet up to his cheeks, he brusquely scrubbed away the wet evidence of his tears with enough force to take the first layer of skin off his face.

The scouring was useless; she’d already seen the tears. Those heartbreaking tears…

She feared she might see them for the rest of her life, them along with the horrible, dark emotion she’d glimpsed in those first few moments of consciousness.

“You, uh…you wanna talk about it?” she asked when he reemerged from under the sheet.

“No,” he jerked his head once, refusing to look at her.

“Okay,” she blew out a steadying breath and hesitantly wrapped comforting arms around his shoulders—she couldn’t quite make the whole circumference, but she wrapped as much of herself around him as she could. Tucking her head up under his stubbled chin, with her cheek against his broad, heaving chest, she could hear the maddening cadence of his heart racing nearly out of control.

Crapola, hers was doing the same. She’d never been so scared in her life as when she’d been yanked from a deliriously peaceful sleep by the sound of Nate’s terrible screaming.

Double, triple cripes!

It had to be flashbacks from the torture, right?

Or, on second thought, maybe not. He’d been through so much, seen so many awful things she couldn’t possibly comprehend, there was probably no way on earth for her to begin to fathom what hideous demons stalked him while vulnerable and unconscious.

She remained silent for a long time, listening to the second hand on his big, complicated looking wristwatch tick away the seconds, taking the opportunity to catch her breath and letting him do the same.

Finally, when her heart no longer felt like it was going to pull an Alien impression and burst through her rib cage, she asked, “Does that, uh, happen to you often?”

She couldn’t imagine.

“Often enough,” he told her, his voice hard, cold, so much different than the night before, when he’d hotly whispered her name into her ear while emptying himself into her body.

“Is it…is it about the torture?”

He pushed up from the bed; the quick movement nearly had her bouncing right off—which was saying something considering the dang mattress was about as soft and cushiony as a cement block. Then, without a backward glance, he swung his long legs over the side, grabbing his bloodstained jeans. “I said I don’t wanna talk about it,” he growled, pulling worn denim up and over his bare butt.

Even while being coldly rebuffed, she couldn’t help but notice just what a fine specimen of masculinity he represented, which probably meant she was a little loco where he was concerned.

Yeah, well, what else was new?

“Okay,” she soothed. “I just…” she shook her head as she pushed into a sitting position. She didn’t even begin to know how to handle this situation, where a man sounded like he was dying in his sleep and was obviously embarrassed at having been witnessed at his most vulnerable, but she’d give it her best shot. Or, in this case, fall back on an old cliché. “If you ever do want to talk about it, I just want you to know I’m here.”

He swung around, his handsome face unusually harsh in the unflattering yellow light of the bedside lamps. “I thought you said this was a one-night stand.”

Whoa. What?

“I don’t—” She shook her head. “That’s not what I mean. I just thought—”

“Well don’t,” he hissed. “Don’t think anything.”

“Nate,” she held out a hand to him as she lifted the ridiculous sheet up over her naked breasts. Suddenly she was the one feeling unaccountably vulnerable. “Please stop this. You don’t have to tell me what you were dreaming about, but don’t…don’t use this as an excuse to close yourself off from me. Don’t use it as an excuse to push me away. I just want—”

“I’m not usin’ anything as an excuse,” he cut her off with a scornful snort. “I don’t need to. We agreed to one night,” he motioned jerkily out the window toward the faint pink light lining the eastern horizon. The new day looked like it was putting on its lipstick. “It’s morning, now. So…” he made a rolling motion with his big hand, “the dawnin’ of the new day brings this little experiment in lunacy to an end.”

His words cut her to the very marrow of her bones.

Experiment in lunacy?

“But I thought—”

“What?” he turned his head slightly, cupping his broad palm around his ear. In that moment, she wanted to hit him. Again. Only this time she wanted it to really, really hurt. To hurt him as badly as he was hurting her.

“Look,” he said, bending to grab his boots when she just sat there, staring at him in mute horror. “It was really great sex, sugar. Probably the best of my life. But we knew what it was going in. Don’t ruin it by tryin’ to turn it into somethin’ else.”

Probably the best of his life? Probably?

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