Chapter Five

“You aren’t breathing properly.” He was already winded after just ten minutes at the rowing machine. With his physique and general level of fitness, that shouldn’t have been the case, but he had been more sedentary since his injury, and today was the first day he actually seemed to make a full effort.

He glared over his shoulder up at her. “I know how to breathe. That part’s not broken.”

She put a hand on his when he would’ve begun using the machine again, stilling the motion. “Let’s go over some respiratory exercises before you try again.”

His rolled eyes and huffy sigh left no doubt about his opinion, but he wheeled away from the machine to face her. Harper knelt down beside him, until they were roughly equal in height. She put her hand on his chest, ignoring the rapid fluttering in her own as she touched him. His skin was warm through his tank top, and she forced herself to focus on the rhythm of his chest instead of the feel of the muscles under her palm. “Breathe in slowly and deeply through your nose and exhale slowly through your mouth.” She demonstrated the technique.

When he inhaled, there was a hitch in his breathing that she wasn’t sure the source of—whether it was his exercise routine, or something more personal that she shouldn’t contemplate. “Now, hold it for a moment and exhale through your mouth.”

He did as she asked, and the first breath was just what she had described. Unfortunately, either he wasn’t paying attention, or he was just trying to push her buttons, because his breath soon changed to pants. “I’m not sure if you’re trying to breathe, give birth, or you’re having a panic attack. Whatever you’re doing, it’s not what I told you.”

He stopped breathing erratically and arched a brow. “Haven’t you figured out yet that I don’t do what anyone tells me, Harper?”

She rolled her eyes. “Then consider me a special case. I’m here to help you, and that means you need to do what I say.”

He looked poised to argue for a moment, but then exhaled in a long, slow sigh instead. The next few breaths he took were just as she had instructed before he stopped again. “How long do I have to do this? I’m starting to feel dizzy.”

Harper laughed. “I doubt that if you’re doing it right. You don’t have to do it all the time, but breathe like that when you’re exercising, and it will help with your endurance and your lung capacity. You should know that. You’re an athlete, aren’t you?”

His expression turned dark. “I was an athlete. Now I’m nothing.”

It certainly wasn’t the first time she’d heard someone in his position make such an utterance, and the personality usually dictated how she responded. Sometimes, it called for tough love; other times, a lighter, soothing touch was more likely to get through to someone. A combination of the two might reach Bennet. She took his hand in hers, her other one still on his chest. She should pull it away, but didn’t. “You aren’t broken, and you’re a lot luckier than many people in the world. I think, with hard work, you can walk again. And if not, there are all kinds of sports for people in wheelchairs too.”

“Not car racing, mountain climbing, or triathlons.”

“Were you a triathlete?”

He shrugged a shoulder, looking a little sullen. “I might’ve wanted to be one day.”

She took a deep breath to maintain her patience. “Focus on what you can be instead of what you might’ve wanted to be someday. A defeatist attitude will get you nowhere.”

He let out a bitter laugh. “Did they teach you these platitudes during training, or did you just pick them up from a Hallmark card?”

“I picked them up along the way, watching people struggle and win, and sometimes struggle but still lose. The important thing is to keep fighting.”

He moved quickly, far faster than she expected. One moment, she was kneeling down beside him, and the next found her half-sitting on his lap, with his arms around her, and one of his hands tangled in her hair. She opened her mouth to demand an explanation, but didn’t get a chance.

His lips covered hers in a brief kiss before he pulled away just long enough to say, “Sometimes surrendering is better.” Then his mouth curved over hers again, and her lips molded to his despite the voice shouting in the back of her mind that it was wrong. She was violating her code of ethics, and she needed to immediately pull away.

Despite knowing what she should do, she couldn’t seem to do anything else but put an arm around him, her elbow resting on his shoulder as she gripped his hair in her hand, holding him in a facsimile of the way he held her.

Their lips fused, and when his tongue swept into her mouth, that voice, which had faded to a whimper, tried to rise again, but she quickly squashed it. It was easy enough to do by losing herself in the sensations sweeping through her as the prince kissed her with determination and a hint of roughness that intensified her flaring desire rather than quelling it.

Finally, that voice managed to filter through her conscience again, and she found the strength to pull away. She slid off his lap into a heap on the floor before rolling and getting to her feet in an agile motion. She avoided looking at him as she took a deep breath, struggling to smother the desire consuming her.

She didn’t look at him again until she had herself under control, and even then, her gaze only flirted with his peripherally before she focused on the machine. “Ten more minutes on the rower, breathing as I instructed.”

He seemed surprised by her words, and she reluctantly met his gaze as she tried to force her expression to remain neutral. Her nerve endings were still fizzing with excitement from his touch, but he didn’t need to know that. She had crossed a line she never should have wandered even close to, and she had to quickly get things under control and back on track. “After you finish that, I thought we’d try the treadmill and the weight-bearing equipment.”

He frowned. “You want me to walk?”

She shook her head. “It’s more like a simulation of walking and will help strengthen your muscles. It might also help give me an idea of when you might be able to walk again, if you’re able to.”

He returned to the machine, this time using the breathing exercises she had shown him while he rowed. Harper was on edge for the next few minutes as she waited to see if he would let it go. She was almost surprised that he was going to take pity on her and not bring up the kiss. Relieved, but startled, that he would let it go so easily.

When his ten minutes were up, the machine beeped, and he wheeled backward. He was breathing a little heavier, but not as erratically as before. She gave him a smile, forcing it to be the impersonal one she shared with all of her clients as a sign of encouragement. Without asking, she took the handles of his chair and pushed him toward the more sophisticated machinery across the room. He should conserve his strength and allow his arms to rest for a few minutes after the physical therapy he had just done.

She should have known it was too easy, and that he wasn’t inclined to pity, or to letting things slide. She finally had him in the weight-bearing machine, which held him in roughly an upright position on the treadmill, when he mentioned the kiss. When she was about to explain to him how it functioned, he opened his mouth.

“How about a kiss for luck?” He winked at her.

She clamped her lips together and ignored his words. “I have sensors on the machinery, so I can keep track of your muscles and the nerve response. The program will automatically customize to your ability, though I might occasionally modify it to incorporate different suggestions.”

He waggled his brows at her. “You could suggest that it put me on my back, and you can straddle me.”

She let out a harsh breath and tried to maintain her calm. “It doesn’t work that way. It’s not a mechanical suit. It’s simply a device that helps keep you upright.”

“That’s fine. You like it standing up instead, pinned against the wall?”

She glared at him even as his words evoked a mental image of him holding her against the wall as he thrust into her. She’d be clinging to him, her legs wrapped around his waist, perhaps burying her teeth in his shoulder to keep from crying out and alerting others nearby to what they were doing. “Stop right now.”

He grinned at her, but there was a hint of cruelty to it. “Why should I stop? All the important parts work. I’m not broken, right?” There was a hint of mockery in his tone when he said that. “I just need you to remind me that everything’s functioning as it should.”

“I need you to stop, because I’m here to help you. I can’t do that if you don’t drop what happened. It was really unprofessional on my part—”

“But satisfying. Admit you want it, Harper.”

Anger overwhelmed her, and she spun away from him. She started walking without looking back, even as he called to her. She was angry, ashamed, and frustrated all at once. How could he get to her so badly? She’d had countless attractive patients while working with the VA. Young men with hard, toned bodies, and sometimes the sweetest personalities to go with them, but she’d never been tempted by any of them. She’d cared about them, but there had still been a level of aloofness between them. That was completely missing with Bennet, and if she didn’t get it back, she wasn’t certain how she could help him.

She’d have to lay it all out for him and insist he behave himself while she tried to do the same, or she’d have no choice but to resign. A sharp pang shot through her chest at the thought, letting her know she didn’t want to leave him. She’d already known that though.

She wasn’t the only physical therapist who could get him to his full capacity, but she might be the only one he’d listen to, so the idea of leaving him as he was didn’t sit well with her. Giving up the challenge of working through his resistance didn’t appeal either. Mostly, she just didn’t want to leave Bennet until he recovered as much as possible.

She was starting to cool down, and she realized she had left him hanging in the equipment, with no way to free himself. Cursing under her breath, she paused at the doorway she had almost walked out of, took a few deep breaths, and then turned back to face him. She strode forward until she reached his side, struggling to keep her tone brusque. “You can’t keep doing this, and neither can I. I’m here to help you, and I want to see you succeed. I can’t be your physical therapist and your lover. Whether it’s harmless flirtation, or you’re bored, or whatever—you need to stop. Please.”

His expression turned solemn, and he seemed to be thinking it over for a moment. Finally, he nodded. “Okay, fair enough.”

She breathed out a small sigh of relief, but was paradoxically disappointed that he hadn’t insisted on trying to keep pushing her boundaries. What did that say about her?

She pushed aside the question and focused on him again. “I apologize for walking away and leaving you like this. This hasn’t been my best day for professionalism.”

“Let’s just pretend it didn’t happen.”

It was a mature and levelheaded suggestion, and she nodded quickly to indicate her agreement. Her brain was fully behind the idea, though her body couldn’t seem to endorse his suggestion. Though it wasn’t in either of their best interests, she couldn’t deny her attraction to the prince.

Maybe that was for the best anyway. It was better to acknowledge it was there and try to work past it than to pretend she wasn’t drawn to him and end up in another clench like they had shared a few moments before. She’d have to be on her guard to keep from lapsing around him. She’d have to be strong for both of them, though she was somewhat optimistic that Bennet would help her in the endeavor. At least he completed the rest of the session with full concentration and an amount of dedication that left her convinced he was giving it his all.

***

She was only a few feet away from him, but he was doing his best to ignore her. Bennet couldn’t help but wish that the pool were a few degrees cooler to help control his instinctive physical response to her proximity. He was genuinely trying to make it easier on her.

She hadn’t exactly gotten down on her knees and begged for him to stop torturing her with the reminder of their mutual attraction, but there had been a gleam of tears in her eyes, and she had looked so desperate that he’d found himself agreeing. It went against everything he wanted. He wasn’t the selfless type, and he usually pursued something relentlessly if it mattered to him, and he’d come to the uneasy conclusion that Harper mattered.

She might matter more than any woman with whom he’d been involved in the past, and that was worrisome too. Perhaps it wasn’t all altruism on his part that was leading him to adhere to her plea. He didn’t want to get involved with anyone at the moment, and certainly nothing intense. She was already under his skin in an unsettling way, and he didn’t want to develop some kind of fucked up dependency on her.

She deserved better than a half-assed relationship too, and Bennet didn’t do relationships anyway. He wasn’t going to let his injury change that any more than her pixie face would get through his defenses. Besides, she might represent his best chance of making his body as functional as possible before his appointment with Dr. Rhodes. Unlike the two that had come before her, she wasn’t overwhelmingly overbearing, and she wasn’t subservient like a mouse. She was just…perfect.

He shook his head, sloshing water around as he did so. The thought was unsettling, and he tried to rid his mind of it. She wasn’t perfect. She was stubborn and irritating, and she insisted on dressing in a spectacularly unappealing fashion. He had yet to see a touch of makeup on her face, and he refused to consider the possibility that it didn’t matter. Could it be that he actually preferred her that way? No, of course not. He was used to glamorous women, and that adjective certainly didn’t describe his physical therapist. She probably had a great many admirable qualities, but she wasn’t his type at all. That should make it easy enough to keep things impersonal between them.

He wasn’t even certain what had compelled him to initiate the kiss anyway. It must’ve been her closeness and focus on breathing. He had tuned in when she’d breathed, and soon they were breathing in concert. Something about the moment had undermined his defenses, obliterating his common sense, and he had reached for her in a moment of weakness.

That didn’t explain why he still kept urging her to continue though. Part of his crassness on the treadmill had been just to tease her, wanting to elicit a response, but he had been serious too. If she had reacted in a different way, he would have happily pulled her down on top of him, uncertainty and misgivings be damned. The only thing that would have stopped him would’ve been an inability to physically perform, but he was relatively certain that wasn’t a concern, especially when he was this close to her.

She chose that moment to smile at him, but it was that damned impersonal smile that he practically loathed after their shared moment of intimacy. “Are you about ready to get out of the pool?”

He grunted at her as he flipped onto his back, allowing his body to float. “Not just yet.” With those words, he drifted away from her, wishing he could put as much emotional distance between them as easily as it was to create physical distance simply by going with the flow of the water.