Chapter Eight
“A toy soldier? That’s impossible,” Paxton snapped.
“No. That’s Gussie trying to prove she’s here.” Harmony walked around him, assessing the damage. “You know, judging by its placement, if you hadn’t turned to me when you did, she might have shot you in your man brain.”
Paxton paled, and Harmony put her arm around him. “Is there a nurse on the construction site?”
“There’s a first aid kit. Curt usually takes care of scrapes and bruises, but I’ll be damned if I want him knowing about this.”
“Too embarrassing?”
“Too close to feeding your ghost stories. I don’t want a mutiny, however close I got to abandoning ship for a weird spell there.”
“You gonna yank that bayonet out of your butt yourself, or are you gonna walk around like that and refuse treatment like a real man?”
“You’re enjoying this!”
“Hey, it’s not every day a military man lets a toy soldier shoot him where the sun don’t—”
“Never mind. I need treatment. What did you say earlier? Rather the deep blue sea than the devil?”
“Hah. I suppose I’m the deep blue sea?”
“You got it in one, babe.”
“Call me babe again, and I’ll stick something sharp in the other cheek.”
“Point—ouch—taken. I apologize. Harmony . . . Crap, I can’t believe I’m asking you this, but would you please remove this bayonet from my backside?”
“Okay, here goes.” She rubbed her hands together and circled him.
“Wait!” he shouted, pulling his ass from her reach with a groan. “Not like that!”
“Like what then? Does it hurt bad?”
“It’s just a splinter.”
“Yeah?” She went to the life-sized wooden soldier with the missing bayonet. “He did it,” she said, pointing. Then she measured the length of the bayonet on another rifle, and turned to Paxton, her hands at the same spread. “Your splinter is . . . this . . . big.”
“This is not a fish story to tell your friends,” he snapped.
“Spoilsport. Your splinter’s a foot long, McBullseye. Hurts more just knowing it, doesn’t it?”
“Could you stop enjoying this and get the first aid kit? Don’t tell Curt why you need it. I’d never live it down.”
“Okay, but you’re a little pale. Why don’t I help you lie on your stomach on one of the sofas in the formal parlor while you wait?”
He walked slowly and painfully to the sofa, and she helped him lie down, while he cursed the castle and his family tree in general.
Harmony towered over him. “Wanna pull down your slacks to let the air get at it until I come back?”
“Cartwright . . .”
“I’m going, I’m going.” Spooked over the toy room horror show, but more so by their magnetic-libido kissing fest, Harmony ran through the tunnel and down the stairs, slowing as she turned to the construction site so no one would be suspicious. She managed a nebulous request, as if she needed the first aid kit for herself.
Curt, being a man, probably thought, Woman trouble—yikes! and handed it over without question.
By the time she got back to Paxton, he had recovered his manly pride, if not his manly stance. “Okay, tough guy,” she said, sitting beside him, thigh to thigh. “Have no fear, your nurse is here. Oooh, nice ass.”
“Harmony, I’m warning you—”
“Sheesh. You’re no fun when you’re a pain in the ass. Oh, sorry. No pun intended. Shall I pull down your slacks, or do you want to do the honors?”
He looked back at her. “Shouldn’t you take out the splinter first?”
“If you want me to.” She cleared her throat and looked around the formal parlor. “Wanna bite down on the family saber while I do? If not, I have a topical anesthetic in here that’ll make removing it much less painful.”
“Cut the sarcasm. Are there scissors in the first aid kit?”
“Yep.”
Paxton rested his cheek on the sofa arm. “Cut my slacks out of the way. I have spares upstairs. I’ll change after.”
“Going commando are we?”
He looked back at her. “Are we?”
She raised a brow. “One of us could be.”
“Which one of us?” he wanted to know.
“I’m just screwing with your man brain. Boxers or tighty whities?”
“Cut the slacks, and you’ll find out what to cut next . . . if anything. I can’t believe I’m putting my ass in your hands.”
“Such fine words; such unromantic circumstances.”
“You want romance? Get that stick out of my butt.”
“That’s romantic, all right. But which stick? The wooden one or the steel rod? Because I gotta tell you that I think you’ll need a major attitude adjustment, and even then, surgery might be required to remove—”
“Shut . . . up!”
“Okay, playtime’s over. Geez, are you touchy. Wow, your slacks cut like butter. That’s quality. Ooh, yum, black silk.” She knuckled the fabric of his underwear. “But I can’t tell if they’re boxers or briefs. What a waste.”
“My briefs are a waste?”
She looked up. “Yeah . . . those too.” She continued cutting. “Having your ass in a sling is the real waste,” she mumbled.
He craned his neck to see her face. “What?”
“This whole scenario is a sad waste—the sofa, the ambience, your bare ass. I could fantasize all three into a much better situation.”
“C’mere.” He crooked a finger, and she leaned down so far, she practically lay beside him. Not even the sofa’s aged musk nor the brackish scent of low tide at this end of the building calmed her raging hormones.
Paxton caught the under-wave of her natural pageboy and tucked a thick curl behind her ear. The slide of his fingers along her earlobe radiated to her breasts, budded her nipples, and brought her to flower.
She could go to bed with this man, which was saying something. She was particular. Not liking to be touched did that to a woman.
“Go ahead, distract me from the pain,” he whispered, his lips so close she could meet them. “Tell me your fantasy.”
Fantasy? Oh yeah. Well, at least he had a playful side, even if it was only sex play. She wanted the real thing, not the fantasy, but her seducer was too skewered to play the kind of game her body craved after his sensual onslaught. She wanted to be impaled . . . by him. “Much good you do me like that,” she said.
“You’re all heart, Cartwright.”
“I try.” She turned her mournful sigh into a sexy one. “Okay, here’s the fantasy . . . I’m thinking your chest is as exposed as your ass—”
“Your word choice sorely lacks fantasy quality. As a matter of fact, it’s flip and annoying.”
“Sorry,” she whispered and blew in his ear. “I’ll try to be dulcet and seductive in tone.” She sat up and turned her attention to his tush.
“Without sarcasm,” he suggested, resting his forehead on the sofa arm.
“Fine. In my mind, I’m stripping you naked, slow and easy, one piece of clothing at a time, and I’m kissing every bit of skin I expose, licking you inch by salty inch.” She picked up the spray can of topical anesthetic. “Then, because I want that hot rod where it belongs, I stand and take off my panties, one side, then the other . . . and you reach up and—” She sprayed his butt.
Paxton yelped.
“I didn’t touch you.”
“That was as cold as your heart.”
“You must’ve made one tough soldier, buster.”
“I never joined the military.”
“Don’t military school grads usually go on to join one branch of the service or another?”
“I didn’t graduate.”
“You didn’t quit. You’d rather be shot than quit. What happened?”
Paxton heaved a sigh. “I was expelled, if you must know. Ouch! Cripes!”
“Splinter’s out!”
“You could’ve warned me.”
“I wanted to surprise you so you wouldn’t . . . ah . . . clench. Maybe I should bruise some southernwood from Gussie’s witch garden and spread it on your ass. Her grimoire says that southernwood ‘draws forth splinters and thorns from the flesh.’ It makes a good worm medicine, too.”
“I wonder how many people she shot with those bayonets, if she had to grow her own remedy.” Paxton touched his temple. “Look at me, talking like there is a—”
“Don’t say it. You can’t afford another hole in your—”
He looked back at her. “Being tended by you is like playing ice hockey bare-assed.”
“Or like being seduced with no payoff?”
Paxton slammed his forehead against the sofa arm several frustrated times.