Saints and Assassins (The Sentinels) (10 page)

While
still looking directly at it
he spoke.
“
I ordered
some
des
s
ert
s
and it
should be here in a few minutes.” 

Eve
carefully kept the t-shirt pulled down and slid into the bed. With the blankets now over her she relaxed. She even stacked the pillows up behind herself so that she
leaned
against them. 

Adam flipped
impatiently
through the channels. Eve didn’t watch a lot of TV anymore. She hated the news and wasn’t into any certain series so his channel su
rfing didn’t bother her one bit.
S
he actually enjoyed the fact that someone else was flipping it.
Relinquishing control of the remote humored her and she couldn’t help but smile inside.
Then there
came
a knock at the door,
room service
.

Adam
stood up, glanced down at her
and dropped the remote next to her as he walked to the door.
Those dark eyes of his seemed to hide something and she was very interested to know what it was even though she knew she probably
would never find out
.
She picked up the remote and continued surfing since he hadn’t made it through all of the channels yet.  She fin
ally stopped on an action movie even though she was not
sure
which one it was but it was noisy and distracting.

Adam came back around the corne
r with a tray of food
. She sat up higher in the bed to peer at the trays when he sat them down on her bed.

“Here you go,” he said. Eve looked up at him and he flashed a smile at her.
“There’s apple pie, cherry pie, a chocolate mou
s
se, chocolate chip
macadamia nut
cookies and two glasses of milk. “Take your pick, oh and here. I had them bring this too,” he said as he handed her a hairbrush.

“Thank you.” The hairbrush surprised her.

He sat on the edge of the bed keeping one leg hanging off the
side, handed her silverware first,
and then grabbed some for himself. She was amazed at what he had ordered. There was definitely too much there.

“I hope most of this was for you. I’m not
that
hungry,” she said. He grinned and looked back down at
the tray
.
She liked his smile. It let her know that he wasn’t mad anymore and more than that she felt that he liked being near her.

“Let’s see,” she said aloud. “I think I’ll have the apple pie.”

“Good choice.
I think I’ll start with the cherry pie then,” he said as he picked up the plate.

They sat quietly for a long moment as they
both
ate and watched the movie.
N
either of
them spoke, but Eve glanced at him e
ach time that
he would look down at his plate. She couldn’t help but
shift her eyes to his
face. How she wanted to touch his skin. He had enough stubb
le on his chin that she could
imagine it tickling her palm if she caressed it. Her over active brain also
wonder
ed
what he thought of her. Did he think she was crazy or that she did things like this often?

After she finished her pie she put the plate back onto the tray and leaned back. She wasn’t tired, but definitely full. Adam had finished his pie and had moved on to the cookies and milk. She picked up her glass of milk and took a drink. It was very cold and it felt almost froze
n as it moved down her esophagus
. She s
hivered from the temperature change,
and then sat the milk down on the end table by the bed. Adam looked over at her and the corners of his mouth slowly curled upward
. He burst into laughter.

“What?” she asked as he continued to laugh. He sat there for a moment longer, as if he were
burning an image into his brain, but didn’t respond.

“What?” She demanded a second time.

“You
. Y
ou’ve got milk—
”
He pointed
to his own upper lip. She asked for a napkin,
but
he picked one up and walked toward her
continuing to laugh
the entire time. 
The pleasant sound
echoed
through the room like a bell from a church steeple. She
definitely enjoyed the sound of his laughter
. Adam sat down next to her and began to dab the milk away from her lip as if she were a small child incapable of such a task.

“I think I can do it myself,” she told him as she reached for the hand that was holding the napkin. Eve placed her hand on the outside of hi
s as he moved
it back to her face.
With her other hand, she took the napkin from him
and turned
it
so that his palm cupped her cheek.
The hair on his face did tickle her palm.

A tingling sensation ran through her body that she hadn’t felt in a long time.
A deep need wen
t through her hands a
nd arms all the way to her core
.
She closed her eyes for just a moment as she continued to press her cheek against his hand. She opened her eyes to see him staring at her diligently. He didn’t seem angry or even uncomfortable instead he looked like he was studying her reaction to his touch. 

S
he let his hand drop from hers.
What am I doing
? He didn’t want me earlier.

His lips parted and before she could stop herself, Eve kissed him.

The taste of him filled her senses and she wanted more. Eve thrust her hand into his hair and held on.
Adam placed one hand arou
nd her neck and brought her
closer to him.

Adam’s lips moved against
hers and the fire inside her
ignited beyond control. Adam growled as he continued to kiss her and it sent her over the edge. It had been too long since she had been with a man and she needed to be sated.

Eve tugged at his hair and moved to sit with her legs bent beneath her. Adam
sat with one hand around her neck and the other on her knee, but it wasn’t enough for her. She needed him to touch her. Touch her
as if
she mattered.

Eve grasped the hand he had on her knee and pushed it further up her thigh. If he would only touch her
there,
she would feel like a woman again.

Adam pulled back and she felt the moment fizzle out.

“Eve, you don’t really want to do
this.
”

Eve released her grip from his hair and scooted back on the bed. He’s the one that obviously didn’t want to.

“I’m so sorry,” she said. Even she knew her voice was barely audible, but it didn’t matter. He had stopped.

“Don’t be sorr
y, Eve. That’s not what I meant.” Adam tried to reach for her, but Eve scooted back further.

Eve tried to think of something to say, but she couldn’t think of anything else so she now faced the most awkward moment of silence she could have ever imagined.

Adam remained seated on the edge of the bed and held his hand out for her. “Eve. Please.” His tone sounded more like a demand than a request and she didn’t like it.

“I’m sorry.
I’ll leave.” She looked around the room frantically. She wanted her clothes, dirty or not. So what
if she had to sleep in the hall?

“Please s
top telling me that you’re sorry. You don’t need to be, but you don’t know me and I don’t want you to do something that you might regret.”

What the hell is that supposed to mean? Eve sat silent staring him down.
Adam broke the gaze by getting up and
moving
the trays away from the bed to the round
table near the window. She didn’
t know what she was thinking, she felt so st
upid again, prac
tically throwing
herself at him. Eve had closed out everyone in her life for so long now that she had forgotten what it was like to be touched and enjoy someone else’s company.  She d
idn’t think that she was that undesirable, but she must be
if she wanted to be touched
by a complete stranger.
And for him to reject her. Well, it felt like she’d been stabbed in the chest a hundred times over.

His phone rang. Adam grabbed it and looked back at Eve. “I need to take this. I’ll be right back.”

Adam answered the phone and walked out onto the lanai, closing the door behind him.

Eve took the opportunity to hide in the bed. She scooted herself under the covers and even pulled them up so that only the top of her head
was exposed.
She felt her eyes close quickly. Suddenly it was bright all around her. She let her eyes focus and she realized that she was in an emergency room. There was Mi
chael, burned
. His skin gone and muscle and other tiss
ues melted. The smell was awful.
The beeping from the heart monitor stopped pulsing and became one solid tone. She screamed as she dropped to her knees.

“Eve, wake up, it’s okay, wake up.”  Someone was shaking her
. I
t took her a moment and then she remembered where she was.

It had been a dream.

Adam sat next to her on the bed trying to wake her. She lunged at him throwing her arms around his neck. She sobbed uncontrollably as he slowly wrapped his arms around her. 

“It’s okay, I’ve got you,” he whispered and pulled her closer
. He held her against him and she could
n’t have asked for anything better
to soothe her.

The next morning she woke up
still next to him. Adam slept
next to her, both arms still wrapped around her as if he were protecting her from something.  She laid there staring at his body for quite a while. Her head rested on one of his biceps leaving her eyes in view of his chest. She remember
ed how he woke her and held her and yet she
was not
embarrassed
. She liked being in his arms and wanted to touch more of him
.

Slowly moving her arm toward his
chest,
she gently r
ested her hand his bare skin
. His skin was
smooth
and
his muscles hard
,
just as she had imagined.  She slowly mo
ved her hand over to his bicep and ran
her fingers lightly over the curves of the muscles. Her touch must have woken him because he yawned and stretched.

Eve didn’t move at that point. She
did not
want to give away her idolizing actions. She could feel Adam move his head dow
nward and she met his gaze.

“Hi,” she said quietly.

He smiled. It wasn’t a fo
rced smile, but the genuine one that she’d caught a glimpse of the day before. H
e might actually be glad that she was there.

“I’m very sorry about last night,” she said as she looked down again. Adam gently placed one hand on the side of her face and pulled it up toward his.

“I am too. I
could not
bear to hear you in pain. Even if it was a dream,” he told her. “I hope that I helped more than I inflicted,” he added.

“
I
t was . . .” She
wanted to say that
it had
felt
nice to be held and to wake up in his arms but that we would be
much
too forward. She
certainly felt c
onfused as to why he thought that he inflicted anything on her.

“It was what?” he asked quietly.

“
I just meant to say
, thank you,” she replied.

“Okay, well can I have my arm back for a minute?” he asked.

“Of course, I’m so sorry.
”
She sat
up in the bed as quickly as possible.

“Don’t be sorry, you apologize too much. You can apologize if you hit me in the nose, or stomp my foot, but no one should apologize f
or having needs,” he stated.

Feeling a little light-
headed from moving
so fast had caused
the blood to rush to her head.
Her brain felt as if it wer
e sloshing around in her skull. As if it would help, she placed a balled fist against her temple.

“
All right
then?” he asked as he touched her hand.