Page 9 of Pain

But leaving Saraya behind to suffer at Devil’s hands went against everything I believed in.

There was, after all, a reason the club called me ‘Knight.’ And it wasn’t because I rode a horse or jousted in my free time.

CHAPTER 5

SARAYA

I watched Knight as he walked back out of the room, my bottom lip caught between my teeth and my heart banging away against my rib cage.

I would never in a million years have guessed that I’d be so nervous to watch him walking away from me. Never, ever would have thought he’d become what felt like a lifeline to me. I would have laughed if you’d ever told me I’d feel like he was the only one I could depend on.

But here we were. He’d just saved me from the prospect who might well have had orders to kill me. Kept me out of a situation where my boyfriend—in name, if not in deed—was actively trying to beat the shit out of me. Brought me to a place where I might actually get some help for the damage Devil and his guys had done to my body.

And when you’ve just been saved, it turns out you get sort of attached to the guy who saved you.

The long, fit frame and the muscles packed on to it didn’t hurt. Neither did the melted chocolate eyes or equally chocolate-flavored curls.

Curls that my fingers itched to run through. Eyes that I could have gotten lost in, if I’d had the time or guts.

I shook my head, throwing the ideas to the side, and turned my eyes instead to the girl currently rooting through what looked to be an extensive first aid kit on the counter. Mandy Hemme. Yeah, I knew her, too, and it took me only seconds to rifle through my mental files to retrieve the information I held on her. Early thirties. She’d been in the Banshees since her late twenties, so basically from the start. Old lady to Gemini, Knight’s VP, Mandy considered herself the leading lady of this particular crew. She looked after everyone, patched them up when they were broken, commanded the women attached to the MC.

A nurse, I remembered. She’d been a nurse before she got into drugs and lost her license. Started dating Gemini.

No wonder Knight had called her to help me. She was the closest thing I’d seen to a doctor in years. And Knight had demanded that she look after me.

The warmth that was quietly building inside me at the thought of my savior grew a bit hotter at the thought.

Mandy looked the opposite of warm as she turned around and scowled at me, though, her hands full of supplies. She stomped over and jerked the leg of my jeans up, being none too gentle about it. I gasped in pain, the ankle—which I was sure was broken—catching on fire at her rough treatment.

She looked up at the sound, her eyes narrowed. “What the fuck happened to your ankle? I’ll have a better chance of treating it if I know.”

Right. Everything about her screamed that we weren’t friends, and that I’d better not expect that we were ever going to be.

Got it. That was just fine by me.

“Hit it when I jumped out of the truck,” I told her, sticking to the facts. “Landed on it. It won’t take any weight, so I think it might be broken.”

She pushed her lips out in thought. “You know what a broken ankle feels like?”

A number of thoughts rushed through my brain at her question—and the way her eyes flicked from mine down to the bruises on my arms, and then the swelling of my cheekbone.

I put my fingers up to my cheek, immediately defensive.

“I just jumped out of a fucking truck,” I said coldly. “It left some bruises.”

Her eyes turned back to mine, telling me quite clearly that she didn’t believe me, but she just shrugged. “Sounds legit. That must be why that bruise on your face is already yellowed out around the edges. Definitely fresh. Definitely just happened. The question about your ankle stands, girl.”

I bit my lip against the retort that wanted to jump out and told her that no, I hadn’t had a broken ankle before. Didn’t actually know how it felt. That seemed to satisfy her, and after some poking and prodding—and several hisses of pain on my part—she declared my ankle sprained, not broken, and had it wrapped so tightly that I could barely move it.

“I’ll have Gem find you a crutch to keep your weight off it as much as possible,” she said. “Where else are you hurt?”

“My shoulder.”

Her gaze met mine. “You land on that, too?”

Her tone was more gentle this time, and I saw a softening around her mouth that told me she wasn’t going to ask... but that she knew exactly what I wasn’t saying. She knew these bruises weren’t fresh or recent, and she knew that I was more beat up than I would have been just from jumping out of a truck.

Sure, it had been a stupid, dangerous thing to do. But it couldn’t have caused all the injuries she was currently looking at.