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TEN
Talon
I should have known betterthan to rebandage my wounds with the bathroom door even slightly open. I didn’t think the minor scrapes and cuts were anything to fuss about, but after I’d peeled off my shirt and paused to study the marks in the mirror over my shoulder, Dess peeked in.
“Do you need some help with those?” she asked, nodding to the ones on my back. “You’ll have trouble reaching them on your own.”
Blaze tsked his tongue from the room behind her. “Don’t be shy,” he teased. “You’re just looking for excuses to grope all those muscles.”
“Oh, hush,” Dess said, rolling her eyes. I had a feeling she’d have had a harsher retort if it’d been Garrison who’d made the comment. Our hacker tended to bring out the softer side in all of us… just like our chameleon tended to do the opposite.
I looked down at myself and decided that patching myself up would go a lot faster with help, even if I didn’t like to ask for it. She’d volunteered, after all. And I didn’t particularly mind the idea of her hands on my muscles, whether Blaze had only been teasing or not.
“Come on in,” I said. “I’ve already disinfected the ones I can reach.”
She slipped into the bathroom with me and positioned herself next to the stone basin that served as a sink, where I’d set out my supplies. I applied fresh bandages to the minor cuts on my shoulder and my chest while she dabbed antiseptic cream on the marks down my back. They stung more now than they had when I’d gotten them yesterday—I’d barely noticed the swipes of the enemy knife in the midst of the surge of adrenaline that’d gotten me through the fight—but Dess kept her fingers light.
“You have almost as many scars as I do,” she murmured.
I gave a faint hum. “And you’ve had about half as much time to build your collection.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that. When did you start this kind of training?”
The words came out before I’d thought them through. “The earliest ones aren’t from any kind of training.”
I hadn’t meant to bring up my past. It wasn’t something I liked to discuss with anyone, and I sure as hell didn’t need to drum up sympathy from Dess of all people. But she’d clearly caught my insinuation even from that brief statement.
Her hands paused over my broken flesh. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
“Of course you didn’t,” I said. “How could you have? It isn’t important now anyway. And even with that, you’ve still got me beat.”
I wasn’t any kind of jokester, but I must have managed to work enough dryness into my voice that Dess’s mouth twitched with a hint of a smile. To my relief, she laid the subject to rest. Instead, she patted the polished stone of the sink as she reached for the bandages. “This house is… interesting, isn’t it?”
“You mean the way it’s practically a cave?”
She snorted. “Yeah, that part. It’s a little closer to nature than I’d generally prefer to live. I swear I saw a centipede as long as my hand run across my bedroom floor last night.”
“Don’t tell me you’re afraid of bugs?” The thought of Dess, the famous Ghost assassin, being scared of anything that small and weak amused me.
“I wouldn’t say afraid,” Dess said. “More like disgusted. No living creature has any business growing that many legs.”
Her fingers brushed against my skin as she fixed the bandages into place, so careful to avoid putting any pressure on the wounds themselves. Even Julius with his medical training didn’t offer this light a touch. Maybe the real contradiction was how such a skilled and ruthless killer could be so gentle when the situation called for it.
“I guess I can agree with you on that,” I said. If I saw a centipede in my room, it’d be mashed into the floor in two seconds flat.
“There. I knew there was a reason I liked you. We can hate on bugs together.”
Dess’s tone was playful, but her touch stayed soft and careful. Something about the tenderness of her attentions brought an unfamiliar warmth into my chest. It unfurled further with each graze of her hands. I found myself closing my eyes, wanting to focus on nothing but her soothing presence behind me.
I’d never had a woman look after me like this. Never had a woman who cared enough and understood my kind of life enough to want to. In that moment, I’d have killed anyone who so much as looked at her wrong.
She was my woman.The rest of the guys’ too, but still mine. I wasn’t used to this possessive sensation either, but it felt right somehow.
Some part of me wanted to bundle her up with all the same tenderness she’d shown me and hide her away until all the danger that lurked in this city had passed. Be a shield between her and the rest of the big bad world.
But Dess didn’t need that, didn’t want it—and I wasn’t sure I could be tender anyway.
“There. All patched up.” Dess stepped back, and I turned to face her. Her brightly affectionate smile provoked a flutter amid the warmth that had filled my chest. A fucking flutter.
