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She nodded, the bursts of light from the club’s strobes highlighting hypnotic jade in the depths of her eyes. “I didn’t know if your injuries would truly heal. Or if they did, that you would come back here. I came anyway.”
He glided his hand over her velvet flesh, dug his fingers in the depth of her fiery silk tresses. “Why did you come?”
She pressed her head back into his hold, like a cat demanding more petting. “I wanted to thank you.”
“You wanted to thank me?” He shook his head. “Unpredictable is your middle name, isn’t it?”
“It could be my family’s. My foster family, that is.”
So she’d been fostered. That was one tidbit he hadn’t learned at the hospital.
He caressed the resolute line of her jaw with one insistent thumb. “And what, by Loki, did you want to thank me for?”
“For saving my life.”
“The life that was in danger because of me, you mean?”
“You warned me to get out of harm’s way. And you did take the fight away from me and from other…humans.”
“And you still walked out after me, pipe in hand.” He twisted the heavy locks around his hand, bent over her, his leg now rubbing against hers. “I think I would have died if you hadn’t come out.”
She tilted her head, giving him a better grip, her face and lips flushing with pleasure when he took it. “That’s what I don’t get. You let them pulp you. But the operative word here is let. You could have…dispatched them at any time. But now that I know your healing power is miraculous, I might have thought you let them beat you as some kind of game.”
“I assure you, I’m not into pain. Mine or others’. Not the damaging variety.”
Her lids grew heavier, her scent stronger. His indirect declaration that he was into the kind of pain that sharpened pleasure heightened her arousal. Her voice deepened, roughened, though her words remained coolly logical. “I said I might have thought that, but I don’t, since you seem to believe the injuries could have killed you. So…why?”
“Why do you think?”
“You wanted them to get confident before you retaliated? That doesn’t make sense, either. So, why?”
He suddenly wanted to tell her. Everything.
He released her hair, straightened. “Because until you walked out and I saw you in danger, I wanted to die.”
She gripped his arm in both of her hands. “But you…radiate power and life. Why would you want to end that?”
His chuckle was gruff. “Now you think I’m suicidal.”
“Last time I looked, that defined ‘want to die.’”
“In my case, it’s a bit more complicated than that.”
“That’s what they all say.”
“You get lots of suicide cases in the E.R., eh?”
Her eyes widened, realization dawning. “You followed me!”
“I did. All day.”
“You changed into something I wouldn’t notice.”
She was sharp, learned the rules on the fly, didn’t waste time clinging to beliefs once new evidence shattered them, reached the most accurate deduction based on new findings. And he wanted to fuck the hell out of her for it.
“Someone,” he corrected. “It would have been difficult to follow you as a cabinet or a gurney.”
Her jaw dropped. “You can change into stuff like that?”
