Page 86 of Claimed on the Ridge

"Kitchen," she says. "I'll clean these."

"You don't have to."

"I know I don't." She pins me with a stare. "But if you wrap them yourself, you'll make a mess of it and I'll have to redo the job anyway."

At the kitchen sink, she runs warm water over my hands. The blood thins and swirls down the drain. Her fingers work between mine, cleaning the cuts with a cloth from the drawer. She's efficient, methodical. She's handled injuries before. The work is competence, not caretaking.

Her hands shake. A small, controlled tremor that she tries to hide by pressing harder against the washcloth. I close my hand around both of hers and hold until the tremor stops. She doesn't acknowledge it. Neither do I.

She dries my hands with a clean towel. Looks at them.

"Same hands," she says. An observation, not poetry. The kind she makes when she's mapping who someone is. "Same hands that put keys on the table. Same hands that just rearranged my husband's face."

The same hands that traced every place Gary bruised and put my mouth there until the memory of his touch was gone andmine was all that was left. She doesn't say that part. She doesn't need to.

"Same hands," I confirm.

"Good." She folds the towel with the blood on the inside and sets it on the counter. "Those are the hands I want."

She turns for the stairs. She doesn't look back to see if I'm following. She already knows.

In the bedroom, the light through the window is gold and heavy, cutting across the bed. She turns to face me. Her hands go to the buttons of the flannel, and her fingers are still not quite steady.

"Let me," I say.

She drops her hands. "Your knuckles are split to the bone and you want to do the fine motor work."

"My hands. My job."

"Control freak," she says, but she holds still.

I take her hands. I close mine around them, the same hold from the sink, and wait until the tremor settles. Then I move them to her sides and work the buttons myself. The swelling in my knuckles makes it slow, each button requiring focus, and the pace is a function of damage, not sentiment. I take my time because precision is what I do, ruined hands or not. Fumbling is not what this woman gets from me.

The flannel opens. I push it off her shoulders and undo her bra and they drop to the floor. Her skin is warm in the late light. The place where her rib bruise used to be is smooth and unmarked. The body heals. My hands remember every place Gary hurt her. I press my palm flat against the spot, and the gesture is possessive, not tender. That space is mine now. I put my mouth there weeks ago and claimed the territory Gary damaged, and the skin under my touch is whole and warm. It belongs to me.

She watches my hand on her ribs. "You always go there first."

"I always will."

I pull my shirt over my head. Her hands find my chest, palms flat, fingers spreading across my ribs. She presses into me, testing warmth and weight, and the study is thorough. Her palms slide up to my shoulders and grip. The pressure of her hands on skin still hot from the porch puts the sting of split knuckles and the heat of her palms in the same nerve endings at the same time.

"You smell like blood," she says against my collarbone.

"Bother you?"

"Not even a little." Her teeth graze my shoulder. "Should that concern me?"

"No."

I walk her backward to the bed. When her legs hit the edge I put my hands on her hips and sit her down, then press her shoulders back until she's lying flat with her legs hanging off the side. She looks up at me with want and the clear-eyed recognition of exactly who I am and what I just did on the porch.

I push her thighs apart and step between them.

"You just beat a man bloody and now you want to take your time," she says. "You're a strange man, Alex Sawyer."

"You're still talking."

"You haven't given me a reason to stop."