"Good."
"Dash, I havelegs."
"Noted."
His hand tightens on the back of my thigh. Not to restrain. To secure. Like I'm something precious he's extracted from a combat zone and he will not set down until he reaches a defensible position. My vintage dress is bunched somewhere around my hips. The blood from his thorn wounds is soaking through my cardigan. He smells like crushed hedge and hot iron.
We pass the lobby. The snooty receptionist opens her mouth. Dash doesn't even glance at her. Just walks. The purposeful, ground-eating stride of someone who has carried heavier things through worse places.
My mother stands near the elevators with Aunt Geneva. They both have matching expressions of frozen, porcelain shock. Aunt Geneva's hand drifts to her pearl necklace.
"Magnolia Renee Jenkins, what onearth..."
"Good night, Mama."
That's all I get out before Dash rounds the corner and takes the stairs. Two at a time. I grip the back of his shirt and my teeth rattle.
Third floor. He kicks the door to our hallway open with his heel. Not hard enough to break it. Just hard enough that it slams into the wall and bounces.
Room 314. He stops. One large hand digs into his pocket for the key while the other arm pins me in place across his shoulder like I weigh absolutely nothing, like I'm a sack of bread flour, like gravity is a suggestion he's chosen to ignore.
The door opens. He ducks through the frame. Kicks it shut behind us.
Sets me down.
My feet hit the floor and I stumble backward, catching myself on the tiny bed. The room is ridiculous. The dismantled wardrobe pieces lean against the wall. His makeshift floor pallet takes up every inch of remaining space. The single bedside lamp throws warm gold across his face and all that green skin.
He's wrecked.
The armor-silk shirt hangs in ribbons. Thorns bristle from his forearms like a porcupine's back. A thin line of green blood runs from his temple to his jaw. Sap glows faintly on his knuckles.
And he's breathing hard. Not from exertion. From something else. Something coiled and deliberate behind his ribs that makes the tendons in his neck stand out like bridge cables.
"What did you say to Mark?"
"Contract details. Classified."
"Dash."
"I discussed kneecap anatomy."
"Oh myGod."
I press both hands to my face. My palms are shaking. Not from fear. From adrenaline that has nowhere to go, a live wire sparking in my heart, and the room is so small. The room is catastrophically small. He fills every corner of it.
"You're bleeding."
"Superficial."
"Sit down and let me look."
He doesn't sit. He stands there, a mountain in a destroyed tuxedo, and something in his expression cracks. Just a fraction. A hairline fracture in all that professional stoicism.
"He cornered you." Low. Rough. "In the dark. Alone."
"I handled it."
"You shouldn't have tohandleanything. That's what the contract..."
