Free Ashes to Ashes-Blood Ties 3 by Jennifer Armintrout Page A

hurt so much," she sobbed, her words almost incomprehensible, given her tears and her accent. "It hurts to cry and I cannot stop."
    "Just…you know, get it out." He rubbed her back gently. Physical contact had always distracted him from his troubles. She couldn't be much different.
    "That feels good," she sniffed. "My back is like a fishing net, it has so many knots." He let the opportunity to ridicule her primitive, old-world folkism pass, and slid behind her on the bed.
    "What are you—"
    "Nothing sleazy. A back rub will help." Before she could argue, he pulled her between his legs and went to work on her shoulders.
    She groaned and her muscles seemed to melt under his hands. "Wait." Here we go. This is where she goes off on her "You're getting it all wrong, I don't feel that way about you" kick .
    To his surprise, she leaned forward and putted off her shirt. "The fabric was chaffing." Faced with the smooth expanse of her warm back, he suddenly couldn't trust himself. He fixed his gaze on the dark lines of the curse tattooed on her arms, silently vowing not to notice the black straps of her lacy bra or the two tiny moles just above the small of her back, the ones he'd bent to kiss as he'd taken her from behind…
    Just a friendly back rub for an injured person. Keep your dick out of her. It! Keep your dick out of it!
    She moaned a little as his hands worked the base of her neck, and he shifted to keep her as far from his growing erection as possible.
    "How long was I unconscious?" she asked, pulling her braid forward over her shoulder. The silky rope of hair brushed his knuckles, sending shivers up his arm. "Well, we weren't

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    with you when it started, and you were… gone when we got there. But after Carrie got you back, I brought you up here and that was about… six hours ago?" Bella turned her head slightly. They couldn't make eye contact, but in profile he saw her mouth curve into a smile. "You carried me here?"
    He shrugged. "You couldn't exactly walk."
    "And you stayed with me?"
    "Every second." He cleared his throat. "Except for when I went to get the water and the extra towels and the first aid kit. Those seemed kind of important to have, just in case."
    "Ah!" She faced forward again and wiggled her shoulder, signaling he should continue what he hadn't even realized he'd stopped.
    Trying hard to infuse every brush of his fingers against her skin with platonic feeling, he kneaded her back, then her shoulders and finally her upper arms, trying the entire time to block out her satisfied groans and whimpers.
    When his hands started to ache, he tentatively pulled away. "That better?"
    "Yes. Thank you" She didn't withdraw.
    In fact, to his great and keen dismay, she leaned against him and reached back to loop an arm around his neck. "I missed you."
    "Did you?" He'd missed her. At least, part of him had. She gave a little sigh. "Do you know you are still the only man I have ever slept with?"
    "Congratulations. You went a whole month without boning someone else." He felt her laugh, and smiled, though it hadn't been meant as a joke. Somehow, the thought of her with another man horrified him more than the dangers posed by the Oracle and the Soul Eater combined. "Listen, I should go."
    "No." Her arm tightened around his neck. "Stay with me." What would it hurt ? He didn't particularly want to travel down the road his thoughts were leading him on, but he couldn't help it. Every moment of every day, he thought of her. Not because he wanted to, but because there was some broken pipe in his brain that kept sputtering out toxic drops of her until his head was completely polluted. Now the leak had become a flood, and his fear—a very real, paralyzing fear—was that his brain would never dry out. He'd just stagger through the rest of his life drowning in her . But it infuriated him that he couldn't just turn off the way he had with