And it did.
Two seconds after unhitching her hand from his, she flung it hard across his face.
Her palm stung worse than the backs of her eyes. But her tear ducts caught up as soon as Brickham rendered his reaction. Well, lack of one. Her tears, full of guilt and embarrassment, spilled forth. Dire conflict had her choking on them.
The man had saved her life. Taken three bullets for her. But did that give him the right to give up now? To be so morose and mad and flippant, discounting his very existence?
“I stood my ground for you.” Every word of it came out as a low, thick accusation. “I ordered Samsyn to accept your presence here, damn it. I told him you were worth the chance. Worth his trust.”
“I know.” It was a rasp on his lips, defying the new determination in his hold. “And I’m grateful for that, Jayd, but—”
“I stood up to my own brother for you,” she bit out. “For you, Brickham. Not Jag and Oz’s soldier friend who got Emme and me away from those bonsuns in that alley. Not the man who became my friend too, who came with me to meet my father, only to be set up by a lunatic and misaligned by the media. I was standing up for both those men, but most of all for the man I truly believed in. The man who, in the space of a few hours, had made me believe in myself, in so many new ways. Who made me see myself from different eyes.”
“Different eyes.”
Brickham’s repetition was stripped of her earnest inflection. But his gruffness did not alter his hold in hers. Maybe he had heard her now. Maybe he really understood!
“What if those eyes were looking through mottled glass, Princess?”
Her hope dissolved. Fizzled away in a fresh vat of fury.
Princess. The nickname he had used on her right after they met, painting her in the same derisive colors the rest of the world did. But he had soon re-ordained her as Pixie. Yes, because circumstances had given him no choice—but by the time they ran across the tarmac at Bourget, it was all different. The designation had become his own choice.
Or so she had thought.
So damn stupidly.
“So that is how you want me to see things, then?” she rasped. “Is that how you want me to remember everything we said in Paris? Everything we did? Like a distortion? A mistake?”
His lips thinned. “It wasn’t a mistake, damn it. Nothing about you is a mistake, Jayd.”
She stabbed out a bitter laugh. “’Twould seem everything about my life is a mistake, Sir—starting with my birth.”
And leading directly to this moment, in which she assumed fate had given them an unexpected gift. The time they had gotten so little of in Paris. Granted, it had come in bizarre wrapping, but she would take it swaddled in barbed wire.
Until Brickham declared it had never been a prize in the first place.
Until his razor line of a jaw and his stiff pylons for shoulders gave glaring proof of that.
Enough proof to push her heart back into aching agony and then her whole body off the bed.
Or so that was the idea.
She had made a huge error, thinking painkillers and stitches would hamper her force of nature. His reflexes were as sharp as the moments he had wrested her from both Gervais and Trystan. But unbelievably, there was twice as much rage across his face. She knew that clearly, considering the man hauled her back all the way against him. Yes, to the point their noses were a centimeter apart. Yes, with her chest slamming down so solidly, he grunted in pain from the pressure on his shoulder wound.
But also to the point that she caught every bright fleck of light in the depths of his gaze. Flecks that could only be reflections from one source.
Pure steel.
“You are no goddamned mistake.” His lips were just as taut, with his snarl erupting from the depths of his chest. Jayd flinched without thinking, only to find out her range of motion was not a range at all. Not with Brick’s other hand now sprawled at the middle of her back.
“Okay,” she uttered, twice as shaky and freshly impatient. What if she was doing him more harm? What if his stubborn dominant side was helping that cause? “Okay, Brickham. I heard you. Unnnhhh!”
Her gasp became a moan as soon as he snatched at the ends of her hair and twisted it in his fingertips. More anxiety reached in. He was doing that with the hand that corresponded to his wounded shoulder, but nothing changed except the rapid beeps of his fluctuating vitals. Thank the Creator she had told Twylah to turn off the alarms.
“Why don’t you try telling me that again, sweet girl?”
The intention behind his challenge was clear. She could not have been more elated.
“I said…I heard you fully, Sir.”
More low thunder from the center of his chest. More gorgeous gleams in his powerful, persistent stare.
“Hmmm. Better…but not quite good enough.”
That should have hiked her hackles at once. But his statement, so insolent and even a little judgmental, aroused more than her hackles. So many parts that trembled for him again. That ached for even more of his brutal touch.
That longed, more than anything, to be good for him. So good…
“How can I be better, Sir?”
She finished with a shallow sigh, which Brickham pulled into himself with slightly parted lips. The sight held her in thrall. Was this really happening? Was he really savoring the very air she breathed?
“Don’t just tell me that you heard me, Pixie,” he finally said. “Repeat it all back to me. Word for word. ‘I am not a mistake.’ Say it, girl—and mean it.”
Jayd flinched, yearning to rear back. But Brickham barely moved—save for the area directly between his thighs. Though his legs barely shifted, that magnificent part of him certainly did. She would probably not have even noticed the change, if not for how her thigh had fallen against his crotch when he pulled her over. But her awareness was unmistakable now. And unignorable.
And so unquenchable…
Which slammed her with more confusion.
He was not flexing down there for her sake, was he? Nor even his. Males, especially those on a cocktail of pain medications, were not able to just turn that kind of thing on and off at will, right? But the fact that he even had it on was cause for shock. Granted, the pleasant version of the stuff.
Oh, saints and stars.
Perhaps a little more than pleasant.
For three days, she had committed to disremembering this man’s aroused glory. In less than five minutes, her efforts were unraveled. He was not even at full mast yet, but with nothing but his infirmary smock and a couple of sheets between them, her imagination swiftly filled in the rest.
Her imagination…and her hope.
“Brickham.” She scooted her leg over, fitting it better against his groin. Despite their fabric separators, his surging cock felt like a baked gavel against her leg. The comparison fit, since his whole face was now filled with judicial pique. She cared not. “Brickham. Sir. How I have missed you.”
His sharp intake was nearly synchronized to hers. Nevertheless, he rebutted, “And how you’ve forgotten what I’ll do to you as well? For being this disobedient to a direct order from your Sir?”
“Oh, I have not forgotten.” She could not help her impish croon, which originated in the joyous well through her spirit. All of this was like a dream come true, only better. Back in Paris, even her wildest imaginings had not included a plot with Brickham returning to Arcadia with her. Now, her force of nature was not just in her homeland but in her home. Better yet, he had brought all the best of their memories from Paris with him. Best of all, he seemed ready to relive them. At least certain parts of his body did.