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After a few minutes, her sobs began to quiet, and he lifted her, placing her carefully on her feet and removing her swimsuit. Then, pouring soap into his palm, he washed
every inch of her and shampooed her hair, removing all traces of blood and dirt from her body. Afterwards, he did the same to himself, until they were both completely clean.
Turning off the water, he stepped out of the shower stall and came back with a big fluffy towel, which he wrapped around her. Too traumatized to do anything else, Mia just stood there, accepting his ministrations.
“Is she dead?” she asked dully, thinking of the girl she’d left bleeding and unconscious by the pool gate.
Korum shook his head, toweling himself off as well. “I don’t think so – I saw her breathing as we passed by. I called the guardians who were in the area watching your family. They’re almost here. They’ll take her into custody and clean up the rest –”
“Who was he? Did you know him?”
For a second, rage flashed in his eyes, and then Korum controlled himself with visible effort. “I did,” he said, and she could hear the barely suppressed anger in his voice. “I had no idea he was involved with the Keiths, none at all. I can’t believe he fooled all of us like that.”
Mia continued to look at him, and he took a deep breath, trying to calm himself.
“His name was Saur,” Korum explained evenly. “He worked in your lab – in Saret’s lab – ever since we first came to Earth. He was the one who left a few weeks ago, creating the opening that you filled. Saret had always spoken very highly of him. Saur was his youngest and most brilliant assistant – at least until Adam had arrived. I don’t know what motivated him to get involved with the Keiths; he had so much to offer our society . . . And why he came out here to kill us, I have no idea . . .”
“To kill you,” Mia corrected him, feeling cold again at the thought. “Leslie told me her orders were to keep me alive and out of the way while he dealt with you . . .”
His eyebrows rose. “I see,” he said thoughtfully, leading her out of the bathroom and into the bedroom.
He had already prepared clothes for her to wear to lunch with her parents – a pretty peach-colored sundress and a silky white thong – and he dressed her carefully, as though she were a small child, his hands particularly gentle around her broken arm.
Which didn’t hurt at all now, Mia realized.
Mildly curious, she glanced down at her left side and blinked, hardly able to believe her eyes. Where there had been a bloody gash with bone sticking out just a few minutes ago, there was now perfectly smooth skin, without even a trace of any injury.
Surprised, Mia moved her arm, and it worked quite well. She lifted it, flexing her bicep, and everything appeared to be functioning normally. How did a little pill do this?
In general, she felt much better now. The shower and the medicine he’d given her had done wonders for her physical state, even if her mind was still trying to come to terms with everything they’d just been through.
“It should be all right now,” Korum said, watching her testing out the arm.
He had already dressed himself as well, putting on a white T-shirt and a pair of jeans. He looked so gorgeous – and so alive – that Mia almost started crying again at the thought of what had almost happened.
“Now,” he said softly, coming up to her and tilting her chin up with his fingers, “tell me . . . What the fuck you were thinking, risking your life like that?”
Mia blinked at him, startled by the quiet fury in his voice. “Leslie said he was going to kill you. Sh-she said you were b-being turned into p-particles . . .” Her voice trembling with remembered horror, she could barely hold back the tears that filled her eyes again.
“So you what? Jumped an experienced fighter who held a gun on you? Tackled a Krinar who could kill you with one blow?” Korum was almost shaking with rage now, his eyes completely taken over by those dangerous yellow flecks. “Don’t you realize how fragile, how delicate you are? How easily something can hurt you, snuff out your life completely?”
Mia swallowed. “I couldn’t bear it if something had happened to you –”
“To me? How do you think I would’ve felt if something had happened to you?” He was almost beside himself, his teeth tightly clenched and a muscle pulsing in his jaw. She had never seen him in this state, and Mia vaguely wondered if she should be afraid. After all, he had just brutally killed an intelligent being. Yet, for some reason, she couldn’t muster up even an ounce of fear. Somehow, in the last couple of weeks, she had gone from thinking he would kill her for spying on him to feeling completely safe with him. Even angry, he wouldn’t hurt her; she now knew it with bone-deep certainty.
“I don’t know,” she told him, and watched his eyes turn even brighter. Faster than she could blink, he picked her up and sat down on the bed, cradling her on his lap. Holding her so tightly that she could barely breathe, he buried his face in her hair, and Mia could feel the fine tremors shaking his big, muscular frame.
“You don’t know?” he whispered harshly. “You truly don’t know that you mean everything to me?”
Hardly daring to believe her ears, Mia pushed at his chest to put a little distance between them so she could look up at his face. “I do?”
“Of course, you do.” His gaze burned into her with an intensity she had never seen before. “How could you doubt it?”
“Are . . . are you saying you love me?” she asked tremulously, afraid to even voice such a possibility. What if he said no? What if she’d misunderstood him, and he would now laugh at her silliness? Her chest tightened in anxious anticipation.
“Mia, I love you more than life itself,” he said, his voice rough with emotion. “If anything happened to you . . . If you were gone, I would not want to go on living. Do you understand me?”
Mia nodded, too overcome by her own feelings to say anything. He loved her? This beautiful, amazing man loved her?
