Page 136 of Lucky 14

“Did you not hear me?” she snaps at me, gaze flashing to mine.

I just look down at her with her crazy hair and the anger in her eyes. I’m sure it’s just adrenaline from what that man tried to do to her. And that thought makes me angry.

“Do you have a first aid kit?”

“It’ll be fine,” I grit out. I should have killed that man more slowly. Should have ripped his insides out and strung them around the house as a warning sign.

“Fine? It’ll get infected.” She’s looking under the sink now, and I realize her head is right by my groin. Which has me hardening.

“It’ll be fine,” I say again.

It’s the wrong thing to say. Holland pops her head out from under the sink, blue eyes lit by anger. “Don’t dismiss me.”

My dick hardens at her tone.

Holland glances at it, then back up at me. The awareness in her gaze just solidifies that she knows exactly what she’s doing. She’s pulling me into her spiral, and it’s a vortex of control that I’m having a hard time pulling myself out of. My knees weaken like they want me to bow before her. To let her take everything else away and replace it with peace.

“I’m going to clean it. Unless you want a scar like this.” Holland pulls her ripped pant leg open to show an angry-looking red welt and grabs the supplies she found under the sink.

What is that? I focus in, but her clothes are already covering it again. Did she get hurt out there?

Holland bats away the hand I reach down. “Hold still.”

“What happened?” That mark looked old.

“Hold fucking still.” Her fingers are on me, and she’s ripping open my boxers. I freeze, all the blood rushing to the places she’s touching me. She’s ripping a hole from the slice, and as she does, her hand brushes my dick.

“Sorry,” she mutters as sensation bolts up my spine. I have to hold my breath to keep back any sound. God, one touch, and I’m already leaking precum.

She keeps working. It’s weird to have someone this focused on something like this. It feels…odd, someone taking care of me.

A memory hits me out of nowhere. It plays in my head like a movie, and I watch it with a sort of detached flatness.

I’m in the bathroom after I buried the fox’s body. My clothes are covered in its blood, and my face is still swollen, dried blood around the corner of my mouth from the fight.

As I stare at the hard, masculine lines of my face, I cock my head, feeling like I’m floating outside my body. The person in the mirror doesn't look like me. I reach my hand up to touch the smattering of whiskers that have started growing.

Ew. I twist my face, and the face in the mirror twists back, which is unsettling.

There are so many cuts and so much blood. I know some of it is mine, but some of it isn’t.

I could get an infection.

Oh god. I sink down to dig around under the sink for first aid supplies, muttering to myself as I clean and bandage the wounds. I touch them gently, even as I Nervous Nellie about all the diseases I could get.

“I think you need stitches, but…”

I’m startled out of the memory to see Holland frowning at my crotch, and for a second, I’m disoriented. It was a memory of mine, I’m sure—I recognized the person in the mirror—but it doesn’t feel like mine. And as I stand here, I remember how much that…mothering instinct or whatever it was came out anytime I was hurt.

I feel that same mothering instinct as I stand here, pulling me away from the anger I usually feel. It wants me to sink into its grip, giving over to it fully.

Holland squirts more disinfectant over my wound, and the burning pain snaps me back into my head.

Fuck. Was that… Who was that? I know for a fact that wasn’t me.

“Stop moving.” Holland plants her hand on my thigh, grounding me again.

“Infect it.” The words come out of my mouth impulsively, and I feel that mothering part in my head cringe away. As it does, I feel a smidge of control slip back.