Once her mouth was red and swollen, her lips trying to follow his as he lifted them away, he’d allow himself to touch her body. A hand over her breast or his fingers sliding along the damp small of her back. More kissing. When he’d finally move to bare her, she would squeeze shut her eyes, tight enough to make sunburst lines at their far corners.
He’d unbutton her shirt. Unhook her bra. Catch the elastic edges of her panties and draw them down her legs. And because Bailey was still flying blind, he found he could deliberately run his palms up her legs and spread them without her protest or any sort of modest resistance. Maybe she pretended it was happening to someone else. Maybe she avoided embarrassment that way.
Whatever the reason, his heart would be slamming against his chest and his blood would be rushing in his ears as he pushed against the silky skin of her inner thighs…and then looked his fill. He supposed she didn’t know how his heart would stop, his air back up in his lungs as he traced with his eyes the blond curls and the petaled wetness of her sex.
Then he’d reach out a finger-one of his rough fingers with its even rougher-looking black tattoos-and bathe the tip in her arousal so he could paint her folds with it. One finger became two and he didn’t think she ever knew that he would always suck her taste from them before donning a condom and beginning the slow slide inside her heated body.
Then her eyes would fly open, but only for a moment. As if reassured that it was her bad boy covering her, she’d release a little sigh and he’d complete the journey. The In! In! In! screamers inside him would sigh too, and settle.
Inside Bailey, they’d say, as if all was right with the world. Inside Bailey.
“You were so…cute with the little kids the other day at The Perfect Christmas,” this open-eyed Bailey now said. “I should have thanked you more. Several people have stopped in to comment on what an excellent job you did.”
The kids had been cute, not Finn, and she knew it. He sighed, even more wary. “Back to the original question. What do you want, Bailey?”
She made another swipe of her mouth with her tongue. Witch. “Would you consider a reprise of your role as Santa?”
“No.”
Tanner had quit arguing with his brother and turned his attention to them. He was smirking. “Finn? Santa?”
“Ho ho ho,” he answered. “But I’m not doing it again.”
“Please, Finn.” She put her hand on his forearm. “I didn’t want to have to ask, but Byron’s surfing at Swami’s Beach tomorrow, so I’m desperate. It’s either you or me, or…” Her head turned so that her gaze included Tanner.
Finn stood. It wasn’t that it bothered him she was looking farther afield. It was that it released him from looking at her anymore: her mouth, that skirt, those legs. So “See you later,” he said, and made for the exit.
Damn if Gram’s T-Bird wouldn’t start. He’d taken it instead of his SUV because its battery needed the workout, but now it heh-heh-hehed like a barking seal instead of catching with its usual powerful vroom. Rather than sticking around to coax it to life, he decided to leave it in case Bailey struck out with Tanner and went for Finn again.
And if she didn’t, if she found her knight in Santa’s clothing within Hart’s bar, then Finn wouldn’t have to know anything about it.
There wasn’t a reason in the world he couldn’t make the less-than-a-mile home on foot. Lucky him, he was wearing his running shoes.
He took off at an easy jog. A turn or two and there weren’t a lot of streetlights to go by, but he continued at a decent pace. At the hospital, he’d been taught to move his head slightly from side to side to compensate for the loss of peripheral vision on his left. The first attempts at walking briskly or running outdoors had freaked him-in the same way as weird vibes could creep up on him while snorkeling. In the ocean, there was that foreboding awareness of great depth and darkness lurking somewhere ahead. Without one eye he would perceive a similar shadowy looming well to his left.
Picking up speed, he shoved the uneasiness away by congratulating himself on his escape from Bailey. Then a slow-cruising car approached him from the rear. It wouldn’t be…it couldn’t be…
He glanced over his right shoulder, groaned.
She must have spotted him. He increased his pace, but she accelerated to get even with him. Then her window rolled down. He kept his gaze focused ahead.
“Hey, Finn,” she called out.
He pretended deafness.
She tooted her horn.
And scared something out of the darkness on his left. He heard its rustle, but he didn’t see it-cat-until its path bisected the visual field of his remaining eye. Too late to avoid the tangle.
Too late to avoid the tumble.
He went down on his knees, hands, and elbows, hard. He kept the position for a few minutes, to catch his breath and to curse black cats, black shadows, blindness, Bailey.
“Finn!” Her high heels clattered on the sidewalk. “Are you okay?”
Yeah, but of course he had to accept her apologetic offer of a ride back to Gram’s-unless he wanted to look even more like a graceless idiot. Then he let her talk him into allowing her to play nurse.
Trailing him through Gram’s house toward the kitchen, she spared a single glance for the set of medieval armor with the wide gold bow tied around its chest that he’d propped up against a wall in the living room. There really was no sane way to explain it, so he didn’t bother.
First aid supplies had always resided in the narrow cupboard to the right of the sink. He settled into a kitchen chair, holding a paper towel against the worst wound on his left elbow to staunch the bleeding. When Bailey approached, a box of bandages in one hand and a bottle of hydrogen peroxide in the other, he drew back in his chair.
“I just remembered,” he said, eyeing the brown bottle with distaste. “You used to enjoy this kind of thing.”
She laughed. “I’m not the one into self-tattooing.”
“They’re all gone now.” The ring on his left hand squeezed his finger. “And that was a long time ago.”
Her citrusy-flowery smell filled his head as she neared. He watched her saturate a cotton ball with the peroxide, and then she pushed his palm toward his shoulder and pulled the paper towel away from his elbow.
Finn focused on the kitchen faucet and waited for the first sting.
It didn’t come.
He glanced up at pseudo-Nurse Sullivan. She was staring at the wound on his arm, sticky with blood. A single tear ran down her cheek.
“Bailey?”
She blinked, then rubbed her face with the heel of her hand. “I’m okay.” Another tear spilled over.
“GND? What’s the matter?”
Shaking her head, she swiped at her cheek again, then under her nose. “Lost…” With a little cough, she cleared her throat. “Lost my clinical detachment for a moment, I guess.”
Finn frowned. “It’s not that bad. Really.”
Nodding, she sank to her dominatrix heels and made quick work of cleaning, then bandaging his elbow. Without looking at his face, she moved on to his hand, then his other elbow. His right palm, the least injured, she saved for last, dabbing it with peroxide on a clean cotton ball.
He stared at her bent head, bemused by her odd mood and uncharacteristic silence. She threw the used cotton onto the table but kept hold of his hand, studying it as if she was reading his fortune.
Weird, he thought, frowning again. “Bailey?”
She made a choked sound and pressed her face to his fingers. More tears.