Knight In Black Leather by Gail Dayton (ebook reader ink .txt) 📕

"So what if you leave half your skin on the bed frame? No big deal."

"It's not." Eli agreed with her. Except he got the feeling that Marilyn meant the exact opposite.

He blinked, stunned into silence. Could that be it? Was her anger because he'd been hurt? Because he could have been hurt a lot worse? This was the first time he'd really seen her angry since the hospital. Nothing much seemed to make her mad. He never got a rise out of her, even when his teasing edged into the blatantly sexual. But before, she'd lost her temper because of the money, because he could have been hurt by someone trying to steal it. This time...was the same?

Marilyn vanished into the bathroom and reappeared carrying a tackle box which she set on the bed. "This is going to hurt," she said. "But you're so macho, I'm sure a little pain won't even make you blink."

Probably not. He was still having trouble getting his mind around the idea that his pain could affect her. "I'm sorry if I upset you."

She shrugged the apology off. "I'm not upset. Would it be better to get you up off the floor and then doctor your scrape, or doctor it first and then get you up?"

"I figured you were getting tired of waiting on me hand and foot. That you'd be pleased there was one less thing you needed to help me with." He watched her, willing her to look at him.

She didn't. "Up first, I think. Then the doctoring won't have to be done twice."

"Marilyn." Eli wanted her attention, insisted on it.

Finally she looked down at him, where he still sat on the floor. "If you're in such a hurry to get out of here," she said, "you might want to remember that you'll get there faster if you follow the doctor's orders. You could be starting over again from square one right now, after that stunt you just pulled."

"Don't you want me gone? Your mother's been calling every day to complain."

"Let her. If she didn't have you to complain about, she'd just find something else. It's my apartment and I'm happy to have you stay as long as you want."

He lifted an eyebrow, telling the growing warmth inside him that she didn't really mean it, she was just being polite. "You want to be careful, making open invitations like that. You might get more than you bargain for. You might never get rid of me."

"That wouldn't be all bad." She crouched beside him, offering her shoulder. "You're an easy houseguest, Eli."

"'Cause I stay where you put me?"

Her burst of laughter almost overbalanced them as they started up. He slid his butt onto the bed and leaned back to see her face.

"You do anything but stay," she said. "Lift your arm. Let me see what you did to yourself."

Eli obeyed, relieved by her laughter. "What can I say? I've always been easy."

Marilyn shot a glance at his face, shaking her head at him. "I'm sure you are. But I meant that you're easy to live with. You eat whatever I feed you. When I have things to do, you entertain yourself, but if I'm bored, you're willing to entertain me. Heck, you even share the TV remote."

She got up and went into the kitchen area where she wet a clean washcloth. "In fact, the thing that probably irritates me the most is the way you won't ask for anything. If you can't do it yourself, you do without."

That wasn't true. Exactly. He could tend to his own scrape, but here he was with his arm up in the air, letting Marilyn scrub off what little skin was left. Anything that meant her touching him he wouldn't argue with. He couldn't stop the sharp intake of breath as the threadbare cloth rubbed across a particularly raw spot.

"Sorry," she murmured. "I'm trying to be gentle, but it needs washing before I put anything on it."

"I know." He could scarcely believe it. "Not many would bother. Being gentle, I mean. Especially for somebody like me."

Her sharp look slashed at him. "What do you mean--'somebody like you'?"

"You know what I mean."

"No. I don't. Explain it to me, please."

He sighed. If she didn't understand, he couldn't explain it. Thing was, he thought she did know what he meant. She just didn't agree. Which both blew him away and worried him. Without better defenses, Marilyn was going to get herself hurt, if not by him, then with someone else further down the line.

"Trouble," he said. "I'm nothing but trouble."

"You're a pain in the ass. But you're not trouble. Not to me. You rescued me from the bad guys, remember? That makes you one of the good guys." She opened the tackle box, a homemade first-aid kit, and rummaged through it until she came up with a tube of antibiotic ointment.

Eli sighed. Things were getting uncomfortably serious, had been for a while. But he had one or two more things to say before he tried to lighten them up again. "It's been a long time since anybody cared if I got hurt. I'm not used to that. So I'm sorry if I upset you."

Marilyn stroked the ointment carefully over his scrape, her gentle touch stirring things down inside him that had nothing to do with sex. Or not much anyway. "You've been taking care of yourself a long time, haven't you?"

He nodded, wondering where she was going with this. He didn't really want to think right now, just feel.

She went back for more ointment. "I can see how it would gall you to be dependent on someone else. And I really don't want to do for you what you can do for yourself. But can you understand that right now there are things you just can't do?"

"Sure." He'd agree to almost anything right now if she'd just keep doing what she was doing. She could move right across his chest all the way to the other side. So what if the