Page 78 of Reaper's Desire

"I'm fine."

"You're bleeding."

"I've had worse." He doesn't look up from my wound. "This needs stitches, but I can butterfly it for now. We need to move soon."

"Why did you follow me?" The question comes out before I can stop it. "I told you to leave me alone."

His hands go still on my skin. For a long moment, he doesn't answer. "Because I couldn't let you die."

"Youwere hired to kill me."

"I refused the contract." His voice is rough. "I told you that."

"But you took it in the first place." My eyes burn. "You accepted money to murder me."

"I know." He finally looks up at me, and the pain in his eyes is so raw it takes my breath away. "I know. And I will never forgive myself for that."

I stare at him, my heart pounding.

"You fought well," he says quietly. "Back there. You didn't freeze."

"Don't." I try to pull away, but his hand stays on my hip, holding me in place to work on the wound. "Don't try to distract me with compliments."

"It's not a distraction. It's the truth." His eyes search mine. "You're stronger than you know, Isabelle. Braver than you give yourself credit for."

"Fuck off." But there's less bite to it now.

He almost smiles. Then his expression turns serious again. "I regretted taking the contract," he says quietly. "From the moment I knew who you were, I regretted it. I didn't want to finish it. But there was no out, Isabelle. Not without accepting that it meant my death. I've lived my whole adult life grappling with my own mortality, and I thought I had come to terms with it a long time ago. But I guess facing it isn't as easy as I thought."

I don't know what to say to that. His hands move over my side, closing the wound with butterfly bandages, and I feel my skin shiver under his touch. My back arches, ever so slightly, as his fingers tighten on my hip again, and I feel my breath catch.

I don't want to want him. I want all these feelings to go away. But looking at him on his knees next to me, his hair messy and his arm soaked in blood, stubble on his jaw, and his expression wrecked and his face still so fucking beautiful, I can't help it.

He's sin and danger and death, and I want him more than I want to breathe.

He looks up, and his gaze catches mine. I see his jaw tense, his chest heave as he breathes in sharply.

"You still want me, don't you?" he murmurs. "Even knowing what I am. Knowing I'm a murderer who was hired to kill you. You still fucking want me, pretty girl."

I can't speak. His hand drops from where he applied the last butterfly bandage, down to my inner thigh. I tense under his touch, my lips parting, and I see his eyes go dark.

"Dirty girl," he murmurs. "Dangerous, dirty, filthy girl." He rises up, his throat moving, and his hand captures my jaw. "I thought you'd never touch me again, once you knew. That you'd be disgusted by me."

"I am," I whisper, and his jaw clenches again.

"Are you? I think if I slid my hand between your thighs right now, you'd be wet."

My breath catches. "That doesn't mean I don't hate you."

"But I don't disgust you. Even if you want me to." His arm slides around my back, lifting me up and setting me further back on the bed. I fall back onto the mattress, gasping at the pull in my side, but when he leans over me, all I can think about is being consumed by him.

"I wasn't going to touch you in the hotel," he rasps. "But you shot my self-control all to hell, Isabelle, and now…" His hand slides up my uninjured side. "Now you know. All the reasons I had for not touching you are gone."

"Unless I tell you to stop."

He looks down at me, his gaze hot and dark. "Are you going to?"

I can't speak. His hips roll down to meet mine, and I feel how hard he is, pressed against me through his jeans. He fists his hand in my shirt, dragging it up the rest of the way and pulling it over my head, leaving me in only the lacy bra underneath.