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“It’s all right,” she whispered. “Whatever happens…”
“No, no,” Stellan said.
I wasn’t sure I’d ever believe Stellan deserved her. But looking at his face, there was no doubt he loved her.
And yet he’d kidnapped her. What a fucking psycho.
Devastation darkened his gaze as she lapsed into unconsciousness. He lowered his head, trying to hide the tears that had come to his eyes.
“I swear she was just hanging on to tell us,” Pax said quietly, as if he were driving the knife home through Stellan’s soul. Or maybe he was just that amazed by Aurora. She was incredible. Strong and sweet; I hadn’t thought anyone could be both at once like she was.
“No, she’s hanging on because she’s fucking mine and she’s not allowed to run away,” I growled. She might be unconscious, but I bet she could hear me. Hopefully she’d fucking listen for once.
Aurora was the most amazing woman I’d ever met, but she certainly didn’t have great listening skills.
Remington pulled the car into the driveway of my parent’s rambling Tudor mansion. Pax bounded out of the car and opened my door, and I climbed out, carrying Aurora. The physician was just arriving, his familiar dark SUV pulling in behind us.
I nestled her head against my shoulder to make sure she wouldn’t get hurt, and I ran for the basement of our house and the operating room inside it.
In case of emergency—or mob war—my father had a small clinic installed in our basement. I carried her through the house toward the basement stairs. My mother cried out in alarm when she saw me, then realized it wasn’t one of my friends that I was carrying. She frowned. “A woman, Cain?”
“I do like them, Mom,” I pointed out before I jogged down the stairs.
“You’ve just never brought a woman home before, and the first time you do, she’s bleeding.” Her voice faded behind me.
I lay Aurora on the table. Her clothes were completely saturated with blood, and the sight made my heart twist. I loved seeing my Aurora dressed in blood—the blood of her enemies. I loved the way she’d introduced me to how much the curve of a knife’s blade against my skin turned me on. She was all danger.
But this was the wrong kind of blood. Her eyelashes fluttered, and I demanded, “Aurora.” I wanted to see her eyes open, see her grounded in the here and now.
But her eyes didn’t open. The fluttering stopped.
The surgeon rushed in, and I quickly explained the situation. The other guys piled in, obviously all worried as hell about her.
They could be in their feelings. I’d rather help save her life. I let the care I felt for her pop like a bubble, seeing her as nothing but a body. If we lost her, there’d be time for feelings later.
For now, I demanded, “What do you need?”
The physician said, “She’s going into hypovolemic shock. Get her IV started with universal blood. Then give her a shot of norepinephrine. I’m going to remove the knife.”
We’d left it in, knowing it was dangerous to remove a knife without knowing what it was embedded in. I’d hated looking at the fucking thing.
He reached for the scissors to cut off her blood-soaked shirt, but it already had a hole and I ripped it open, baring her chest. I’d apologize later. Then I moved to start the IV.
“We’ve got an entry wound along the mid-left sternal border,” the doc went on. He was pressing around the knife, fresh blood bubbling up around it. Pax looked away, his face pale as if he couldn’t stand to see Aurora like this, naked and wounded and vulnerable.
“You can leave,” I told them. They weren’t being useful anyway.
Remington scoffed. “There’s no way I’m leaving her side.”
Pax agreed with him, and Stellan shook his head, rejecting my suggestion they get out of the operating room.
“You sure you don’t want to go dig up Sophia right now?” I asked harshly, knowing I was being a dick, but I was just so pissed. If he hadn’t run off with Aurora, we wouldn’t be so close to losing her now.
“No,” Stellan met my gaze evenly. “I’m going to do that with Aurora.”
After that, I ignored them and focused on doing whatever I could to help the doc with Aurora. It wasn’t until later that I felt the adrenaline let-down coursing through my legs, when the last of Aurora’s stitches were being carefully looped through her skin by the physician. I watched him closely, making sure he left my girl as unscarred as possible.
Then I said to the guys, “We can all stay here until she’s ready to go back to the Sphinx.” I knew she was safe here, and I had a lot of shit I wanted to sort out.
