Page 20 of Scars of Silk

“Like something broke them on top of them being broken already.”

She nods. “Yep, that about sums it up. Sorry to tell you this, Mr Dan Smith, but you aren’t going to be going anywhere for a long while.” Bending over and filling my head with her scent again, she pushes her hands under my armpits. “If I lift, can you try to move a little and then I’ll plump the cushions, so you’re supported.”

She doesn’t give me much choice in the matter, as her hands jam in my sweaty pits. She counts to three and then I try to move.

Then I want to die. Holy fuck, do I want to die. There isn’t a part of my body that doesn’t hurt.

Once I’m up, she holds a cup in front of me. “It’s just tomato soup. I’ll need to visit the shop to get anything better.”

“How do you know so much about looking after invalids like me?” I manage to take the mug, although I don’t know how long I’ll be hold it for. Almost as though she knows what I’m thinking, she perches one slender hip on the edge of the mattress and places her palm under the base of the mug. It’s a fucking cup and I can’t quite hold it.

Good one Dan.

Her eyes flash a little, but she meets my gaze. What must she see when she looks at me? A loser with bruises and no will to live? I couldn’t try to look like anyone else even if I tried. “I’ve had some experience.”

“Boyfriend?”

“Friend of the rugby team.” Her lips curve into a smile but it doesn’t reach her eyes.

“All of them? I didn’t have you pegged as that kind of party girl.”

“I didn’t have you pegged as a suicidal lunatic, so I guess we were both wide off the mark.”

I scowl and lift the cup a fraction higher still unable to get my lips to the rim. “Here.” She thrusts a straw in.

“How did you know?” I manage to raise a painful eyebrow.

“As I said, I’ve got experience.”

We stare at one another for a moment. “What are you doing here?” I shake my head although my brain throws a hissy fit and rattles around in my skull. “Like the other night was fun and all that, but come on, why are you here?”

She pauses, her teeth catching her lower lip, pulling it in and nibbling on it. Her pale green eyes watch me studiously through long, dark lashes.

I can confirm there is one part of my body that isn’t broken. Coughing, I shift uneasily.

“I had to come to Brighton for work. I’d thought about you a couple of times, so I figured I’d start here.” Her cheeks tinge with a faint blush of pink. She’s being honest here; she’d been thinking about me.

I’m not going to lie, the memory of banging her has looped around my head a few times as well. I blush too, which is embarrassing considering my boner is growing at a great rate of knots and I only seem to be covered by a sheet.

“What sort of work?” I sip the tomato soup up the straw and my stomach does that thing where it’s so hungry that at the first taste of food it floods my mouth with saliva and a wave of sickness batters me from all sides.

“Do you want to know? Like really want to know, or is it going to make you go jump in front of a train or something?”

“I was at a fight. I didn’t jump on the tracks.”

“Tell your body that.” Her gaze is still on me. Her eyes are extraordinary. I’ve never seen anything quite like them. They aren’t just one colour; they’re made of tiny flecks of green, all different colours. “Why are you staring at me like that?”

“Uh. Oh. Um I wasn’t.” Just shoot me. Someone put me out of my misery.

“Okay.” She relaxes a little. “I was just checking you weren’t having a stroke. You got me worried there for a moment.”

“More worried?”

“Well, it’s not often I spend the night playing nursemaid to a near stranger.”

“Near stranger?” My lips curve a little. “I’m mortally wounded. Is that all our night of relentless passion meant to you… I’m a stranger?”

She giggles, her eyes widening with surprise, and it makes me smile like an absolute dickhead.