Bear Bride (Bear Cove #1)(13)
She couldn't resist his smile and his words, which immediately erased the misery of this entire past day.
"I'll be right back," she said, the words coming out with difficulty from her dry throat. She finally broke away from his gaze and, stroking his dimpled cheek with the back of her hand, she hurried to the cellar to get the emergency bag her aunt kept there, always stocked with fresh cures.
When Keyla returned, Troy had already dozed off in front of the fireplace, curled up on the blanket, his face aglow with the amber light. For a moment, she just stood there looking at his massive body, the muscles of his toned arms outlined under his ruined shirt, his chiseled face serene and his long eyelashes casting little shadows over his cheekbones. She barely resisted the overwhelming desire to kiss his smooth, perfect lips, but quickly remembered she had a more important task at hand.
She kneeled next to him and started carefully unbuttoning his shirt. As Aunt Cynthia often said, there wasn't a better cure than sound sleep, so she had to fight herself in wanting to wake him up and look into his eyes, hear his voice.
Then she suddenly gasped. It wasn't possible. The skin on his muscular chest was so warm, Keyla thought he might be burning up, but he didn't look feverish. Yet, what shocked her was that beneath the dirty, torn shirt his skin was smooth and... perfect. There weren't any cuts or wounds, no bite marks or bruises. She looked up at his face and saw that the long bloody line on his neck was no more than a trace of faint pink. She rubbed her eyes. What was going on? Nothing was normal today. Perhaps she'd had a bit too much on her plate lately and she was losing her mind. She was more than certain she'd seen at least a couple of spots he was badly injured on his chest and arms. What remained was simply dirt. Even the dried blood was gone.
Keyla took a deep breath. At least he was here. In her home. At least she hadn't imagined that. She was now scared to leave the room again in case he evaporated in the same way his wounds had. She dipped a cotton pad in a jar of cleansing cream her aunt had concocted and swiped it over Troy's forehead. He shifted in his sleep and she immediately withdrew, but he didn't seem to wake, so she went to work again and in a matter of minutes his face was as clean and bright as she remembered it from their school days. She moved over to his chest, carefully slipping the shirt off his arms. There was something extremely sensual in her wiping his sleek muscles as he lay, sleeping and vulnerable, before her. She felt a familiar heat spread from her cheeks down to her breasts and stomach. After all, she didn't get to touch a male body on a daily basis. And definitely not the body of the man who could make her weak with just one smile, just one look.
When she finally reached down to his belt, she stopped and looked around as if she was a criminal caught in the act. She quickly stood up and went over to the door to listen for any sounds of her aunt waking. The house slept as soundly as did Troy and, thankfully, Cynthia. Keyla left the door cracked open, so she could hear if anything stirred upstairs and returned to Troy. At the sight of his belt, she hesitated again. Her heart thumped in her chest and the rising excitement she felt was partially mixed with guilt. She felt as if she was invading his privacy, taking advantage of him in his sleep.
Oh, come on, Keyla, she thought. He is leaving in a few hours. He said Corin is gone. There was no time for squeamishness. She reached over and pulled on the leather strap, but it was lodged too tightly into the buckle and she couldn't free it without risking waking him.
All of a sudden she jumped and almost cried out as a strong hand gripped her wrist. She found herself looking into the deep blue pools of Troy's eyes and she shuddered at his touch. He propped himself up on his elbows and he seemed like a completely different man from the bloodied wreck that had showed up at her front door earlier. His blue eyes twinkled and he exuded the manly vigorousness she had always found so attractive about him. He wove his arm around her waist and scooped her up to his chest, pulling her so close to him, she could feel his heartbeat. The blood rushed to her head and she looked up at him, suddenly oblivious to all that had happened during this long, crazy day. The only thing that seemed to matter right now was that she could feel his warmth, the security of his embrace, his hot breath on the side of her face. Her self-consciousness from the morning was suddenly forgotten.
Keyla moistened her lips, which seemed to go dry so fast in the heat of the fire and the frenetic dance of the butterflies in her stomach. Not losing sight of his eyes for even a second, she saw that he had moved his glance over to her luscious mouth, and though it hurt to break his tantalizing gaze, she closed her eyes in anticipation. Troy had moved her over him and she felt light as a feather over his gigantic, steel body. When the first kiss finally landed on her lips, she shuddered and pressed herself even harder against him, wanting to get lost inside him, become one with him. She felt his tongue slide over her parted mouth and find its way inside. He started kissing her with a hunger and aggression that made her relinquish all of her control and instinctively grab his face in her hands, pushing her lips into his, until they hurt with the sweetest pain she had known.
Her entire body ached with the heightened sensitivity of a million spots that longed to be caressed and licked and kissed. When he finally rolled her over off his chest and onto her back, she was more than pliant in his strong arms. As he towered above her from the side, the flickering light of the fire outlined his perfect pecks and the etched lines of his muscular stomach. Keyla couldn't believe a man could be so handsome, so overwhelmingly disarming. Breaking their kiss, Troy moved over to her neck and traced it lightly with the tip of his tongue, eliciting a potent shiver of pleasure down Keyla's spine. The tiny hairs on the back of her neck stood up as he moved up to her ear and rolled his tongue around her earlobe.