I leaned low and put my lips next to her ear and murmured, “Can you tell me your name, angel?”
Her eyes darted up to me, and her lips parted, then closed before opening once more as she whispered, “Delaney.”
“Delaney,” I repeated in a matching tone.
She nodded, then rested her head against me once more.
I carried Delaney inside before Cage could tell me to hurry my ass up. Bright fluorescent lights buzzed overhead while my boots echoed heavily against the polished floors as I headed straight toward one of the exam rooms.
Delaney shifted weakly against me during the short walk down the hallway, her head resting near my shoulder, and her soft breaths feathering across my throat every few seconds. The contact was intimate enough to keep my body in a constant state of awareness, especially with the way her delicate frame fit against mine so naturally it felt dangerous.
Even bruised, filthy, exhausted, and terrified, she still smelled fucking incredible beneath the dirt and sweat. Silky skin, fear, and heat wrapped together in a combination that was already embedding itself somewhere permanent in my head.
I lowered her carefully onto the hospital bed when we reached it, keeping one hand braced behind her back until I was sure she was steady. Her dress had ridden higher during the trip over, exposing more of her scraped legs. The sight of all those cuts lining her pale skin reignited every violent instinct simmering in my veins.
The second I started stepping back from the bed, Delaney’s fingers wrapped tightly around my wrist, her grip instinctive and desperate enough to stop me cold. The reaction wasn’t startled confusion or simple nerves. No, this was something deeper, like her body had already decided letting me get too far away was dangerous. The sheer intensity of that need pounded hard in mychest, hitting some savage, possessive place inside me that was already hanging by a thread where she was concerned.
“I’m right here, angel,” I reassured her, moving back into her space without hesitation.
Only then did her grip ease a little around my wrist.
Across the exam room, Cage noticed the entire exchange while pulling gloves onto his hands, and a knowing look crossed his face—one only another brother could recognize immediately. The kind that said he already knew exactly what had happened to me the second this woman stumbled into my arms out on that dark road.
“Brother,” he muttered dryly while reaching for supplies, “you hovering this close is gonna make doing my job a little difficult.”
“I don’t remember asking.”
Hadley snorted softly behind Cage as she grabbed gauze and antiseptic from a nearby cabinet. Then she muttered, “You’d be acting the same way if I was the one sitting injured on that bed.”
Cage shot his old lady an irritated glance, but there wasn’t any real bite behind it, probably because she wasn’t wrong. She only smiled sweetly at him before moving toward Delaney with careful movements.
I stayed close enough that my thigh brushed the side of the exam bed. I’d known this woman for less than an hour, yet every instinct in my body had already aligned itself around protecting her.
Cage took the antiseptic and gauze from Hadley and turned toward Delaney. “I’m gonna clean these cuts up. You tell me if anything hurts worse than the rest.”
Delaney nodded faintly, though her eyes quickly found mine again, tracking my movements carefully like she needed constant reassurance that I wasn’t about to disappear on her.
The injuries looked even worse beneath the harsh fluorescent lights. Thin cuts and scrapes lined her calves and the tops of her feet, dirt still clinging stubbornly to some of them from running barefoot through woods and brush. The angry abrasions on her wrists were inflamed from rope bindings that had clearly been tight enough to leave bruising beneath the broken skin. My jaw tightened painfully every time I looked at them too long.
Rage simmered beneath my skin. Whoever had done this to her…
I was going to fucking destroy them.
Cage carefully cleaned the cuts with antiseptic, and every single time Delaney flinched from the sting, my body reacted right along with her. I noticed everything—the hitch in her breathing, the tension gathering through her shoulders, and the instinctive spikes of fear whenever something hurt unexpectedly. Every time it happened, she reached for me without even seeming aware she was doing it.
My hand settled against her ankle while Cage wrapped one foot, my thumb brushing lightly across warm skin as though I could soothe the pain out of her by touch alone. Later, when Cage cleaned the deeper scrapes along her arm, my palm slid over her shoulder automatically, grounding her beneath my hand the second panic started tightening her breathing again.
I could physically feel the difference each time I touched her, the fear easing almost instantly while her body settled beneath my hands in a way that nearly knocked the breath from my lungs.
“Any dizziness?” Cage asked while securing fresh gauze around one of her feet. “Blurred vision? Nausea?”
“A little dizzy earlier,” Delaney admitted quietly, her voice rough with exhaustion. “But better now.”
“You lose consciousness?”
Her gaze flicked toward me briefly, and I nodded. “I guess so.”
Cage hummed thoughtfully while examining the scrape along her temple. “Pupils look good. Probably shock and exhaustion more than anything serious.”
