Out of Control (Untamed #2) (4 page)

The walk to his flat was short, and too soon he’d put me down on the couch. He left the room, and I wondered if he’d be coming back. My head was pounding and the world was still spinning a little too fast.

He returned a few minutes later with a washcloth, some gauze, ointment, and tape. I tried to smile at him as he knelt down in front of me, but his face was hard and closed off. I couldn’t bear the disappointment so I shut my eyes and leaned back against his couch, flinching when my skull connected with the cushion.

“Did you hit your head?” he asked. He’d moved up beside me, his voice next to my ear, his breath warming my skin as his hands slid under my neck to lift my head. I winced when his fingers brushed through my hair. “Sorry,” he said, quietly. “There’s no blood, so that’s good. But you could have a concussion. Will you look at me for a moment?”

I turned and opened my eyes.

He was so close, his face mere inches away, worried eyes gazing into mine.

My pulse sped up, my breathing quickened. Everything I’d ever felt for him welled up inside of me as I stared into his dark gaze. It felt like no time had passed, that I hadn’t done anything to send him away, that we were right back where we’d been.

Two parts. One whole.

His eyes dropped to my mouth. He inhaled sharply as my lips parted, aching for his kiss. All of my doubts melted away. I could do anything,
be
anything, if I had Dare in my life.

But when he looked at me again, his gaze hardened. The wall was back in place. He moved away and cleared his throat. “I think your head is fine.”

Nothing about my head was fine right now.

I squeezed my eyes shut again, willing away the hot, stinging sensation of tears. Three years ago, I’d had to fight off butterflies around Dare. Now they were drowning in unshed tears.

I was such a fucking girl.

The washcloth was still warm when he gently pressed it to my knee, wiping the blood and dirt away.

“What happened?” he asked, his voice quiet.

What happened? EVERYTHING. The whole crappy night came rushing back and I had to fight to keep my composure.

Especially with him. He knew me so well—correction,
used to know me well
. I was not the same girl. It would be so easy to fall back into the familiar rhythm and just tell him everything. But he wasn’t mine anymore. I didn’t get to lay my problems on him.

“I…fell,” I said, not even opening my eyes. I didn’t know what he’d discover in them, and I didn’t want to see the detachment on his face.

“You were sprawled on the sidewalk crying because you
fell?
”

I swallowed. “It’s been a monumentally shitty day, okay? Can we just leave it at that?”

He was quiet for a few minutes as he spread ointment over the cuts and covered them with gauze, taping it in place.

When he lifted one of my hands in his, my breathing hitched. He was being so freaking gentle it was breaking my heart.

“So,” he said as he cleaned the scrapes, “seeing me was really that bad, huh?”

My eyes flew open, and I shook my head. Which hurt. Fuck.

“No,” I said, trying to smile through the pain. “That was the least shitty part of it.”

The corners of his lips lifted, a ghost of a smile touching them. Which only made me smile for real. For a moment. Until I thought about the truly shitty part of my day.

“It’s just…my roommate…he’s giving me the creeps. He watches me all the time, tries to put his hands on me—”

Dare’s eyes narrowed. “The guy you were with earlier?”

“Yes.” My voice came out shaking and breathy. “He followed me to the club tonight and was trying to take me home. I just…he reminds me of…”

“Of what?”

I shook my head. I wasn’t going to think about it. Not now.

“I don’t know what would have happened had I gone home.”

Dare’s jaw clenched and he blew out a slow breath as he wrapped my hand in gauze. Then he picked up the other hand and started cleaning it.

That sentence hung in the air between us, causing me to shudder at the memory of Lucien’s hands on me, his eyes gliding over my body all evening long.

“Sabine set me up in the apartment. You remember Sabine?”

He nodded, his lips pressed tight. The hard lines of his face only made him more breathtakingly handsome. How had I forgotten how beautiful he was? How had I fooled myself into not remembering each and every angle to his face? I wanted to reach out and feel them under my fingers.

“So just tell her you can’t stay there anymore.” The way he said it sounded reasonable, but what would I tell her? That I didn’t like the way Lucien looked at me? That he was being too friendly for my comfort? Aside from his overt sleaziness, nothing had technically happened. More importantly, I had nowhere to go.

I shook my head. “There’s nothing to tell. It wasn’t his fault that I hurt myself. I mean, yes, he’d grabbed hold of me, but he let go when I told him to. And I fell.”

“He grabbed you?” Dare’s gaze snapped to my face as his hands stilled around mine. His eyes were different after three years—there was no light. Or maybe that was just because he was with me. Little things stood out to me as I stared at him. His face was thinner, his jaw more tense. Everything about him seemed just a little…harder.

“It was nothing,” I assured him.

“It doesn’t sound like nothing,” he said, focusing on my hand again so he could wrap it as he had the other. I watched him work, exhaustion overflowing and weighing me down.

“It’s late,” he said as soon as he’d finished.

“I know. I’ll g—”

“Stay.” He placed his hand on my arm to stop me from getting up, and my eyes widened in response to both the touch and his words. “It’s late.” He searched my face for a moment, as if waiting for my response, but I’d lost my voice. All I could do was nod.

Dare wanted me here?

“You hit your head,” he said, as if reading my mind. “I just want to be sure you’re okay.”

Right. Well, his concern, at least, was something. At this point, I’d take anything I could.

He motioned for me to follow, leading the way down a short hall. The irony of the situation wasn’t lost on me. Three years ago, the first REAL night we’d spent together had been in part due to his head injury. The one I’d caused.

Except that night had been perfect, sweet…back when I couldn’t fathom sweetness. Tonight was just painfully bittersweet.

We stopped inside his bedroom. I stared at his bed—unmade, the sheets askew as if he’d wrestled with them all night long—while he walked over to his dresser and opened a drawer.

“You take the bed,” he said. “I’ll sleep on the couch.”

“I can—”

“No.” He stopped riffling through the clothes inside and turned to look at me. “You’re hurt. You need the bed.” He handed me a t-shirt and nodded toward the hall. “The bathroom is out there, the only door on the right.”

“Thanks.” I took the shirt, my fingers brushing his in the process.

Dare stiffened at my touch, his jaw tightening, liquid heat shooting into his eyes. He stared at my lips, and for a split second I thought he was going to reach for me. But then his fist clenched and he walked away. If that wasn’t a clue that I wasn’t entirely welcome…

I practically ran into the bathroom, only able to catch my breath once I was leaning against the firmly shut door. I knew I was a wreck even before I looked in the mirror, but the confirmation of the horror of my face was the last blow to my trampled self-esteem. Dark streaks ran down my cheeks from the black circles around my eyes, and my long hair was a tangled mess.

But it wasn’t my outer appearance that bothered me as much as the mess inside my head that was clearly reflected in the watery depths of my gaze. For three years, I’d managed to stay cool, collected, unfeeling. At least on the outside. One day and one look at Dare and the reservoir had overflowed, allowing all those suppressed feelings to come spilling out.

Christ. I had to get a grip. Now.

I itched to take a shower and wash away the disastrous night, but with my knee and hands bandaged, that wasn’t going to happen. I found a washcloth, dampened it, and scrubbed my face until it was clean. Then I used a comb to smooth out the tangles in my hair, wishing I had an elastic band to pull it back into a ponytail. When I looked in the mirror again, my honey-brown locks hung straight and silky down my back and although there was nothing I could do about the sorrow in my eyes, I looked more like the girl Dare used to know.

Reaching behind me, I tried to slip off my dress, but couldn’t get it unzipped with my hands all wrapped up. So I opened up the bathroom door and peered out. I padded over to the bedroom and froze in the doorway as a drawer slammed.

Dare’s back was to me, his arms reaching behind him to pull off his t-shirt. His muscles rippled as the material slid up and over his head, revealing the phoenix tattoo on his shoulder. The warm tan of his skin looked velvety smooth in the low light of the room and it took every ounce of self-control not to reach out and touch him.

No, I couldn’t. He wasn’t mine to touch anymore.

He picked up a clean white shirt, stiffening when he heard me shift in the doorway.

“I’ll get out of your way,” he started to say.

“Actually,” I said, turning my back to him and pulling my hair over my shoulder, “I need your help, please. I can’t undo it.”

He paused and I stood completely still, waiting for him to make a move. Just when I thought he wouldn’t, I heard him toss his shirt aside and cross over to me. His fingers grasped the zipper at the middle of my back, brushing my skin and sending a shiver through me. As he slid the zipper down, the dress slipped off my shoulders and fell to the floor, leaving me standing in front of Dare in nothing but my yellow lace panties.

He didn’t speak, but I could feel his quickened breath as it grazed the bare skin on my neck. I imagined his gaze heating as he reached out for me, wanting to touch me as much as I needed to touch him. I wished I could just lean back into him and meld my body with his, back to hard front, skin to warm skin. A charged shock ran down my spine as I felt him close the distance between us, his hands hovering dangerously close to my waist. But then he cursed and moved away, jolting me back to the cold, harsh reality.

He wasn’t mine to touch.

And I wasn’t his to have.

So we were stuck in limbo—so close, yet much too far away.

I shook out the t-shirt he’d given me and quickly pulled it over my head. Then I lifted my hair out and let it fall down my back. When I turned to face Dare, he was staring at me, his expression one of pure torture.

Taking a deep, slow breath, he said, “Alright. I’ll see you in the morning.” He started to move forward, to go past me and out to the couch, when I panicked and reached out my hand to stop him.

“Would you…” I didn’t want to be alone. I couldn’t be alone. Not after Lucien and the memories. I didn’t want to touch my pills tonight—not around Dare. But I would never get to sleep on my own otherwise.

His brow furrowed. “What?”

“Would you stay with me?” When his eyes narrowed and he started to shake his head, I barreled on. “Not because I want to…you know…I just…” My breaths were coming in quick little pants as I tried to keep my panic at a manageable level. “I can’t be alone tonight. Not after…everything.”

Not after YOU.

He searched my face as if the answer was written in my eyes.

“Please, Dare? I promise—”

He nodded once, but didn’t say anything, so I shuffled over to the bed, so freaking grateful I couldn’t even speak. I climbed under the covers, sliding all the way over so there’d be plenty of room for him to lie down without having to touch me. I turned my back to him and tucked the pillow under my head. I’d taken a couple of aspirin from his medicine cabinet, and the pounding in my head was already starting to wane.

Dare pulled the covers up on his side of the bed, then lay on top of them. The feel of him next to me—not even touching me, just his mere presence—put my whole body at ease. I felt myself relax like I hadn’t been able to in ages. My exhausted mind and body felt weighed down after the events of the day, and I drifted off to sleep with the sounds and smell of Dare all around me.

five

I
woke in the middle of the night snuggled up next to Dare, his arm wrapped tightly around my waist. For a brief, insane moment, I thought I’d imagined the whole thing—that the past three years had simply been a bad dream and we were back in his apartment in Brooklyn. And this whole fucking nightmare was just a warning from my subconscious to save me from my own self-destructive stupidity.

But instead of the sounds of New York City, I could hear the streets of Paris below. Soft melodious French drifted in through the open window and I remembered, with no small amount of embarrassment and horror, the details of the previous evening.

Dare’s hand was warm on my stomach, keeping me securely fastened to him as his long legs entwined with mine. The whole length of him along my back set my senses on high alert. With each lungful of air he took, I could feel every hard, tight muscle in his chest expand and contract. His soft, warm breath caressed the back of my neck, bringing with it the sweet, minty smell of toothpaste and something more familiar.