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“I can do it,” I said. “I just need a drink. Can you bring me a beer?”
“I’m bringing you water. You need hydration. Donotget up.” He jabbed his finger at me, stopping halfway to the kitchen. “I swear to fucking Lucifer, don’t try to stand up off that couch.”
I leaned back against the cushions. Christ, just sitting up made me lose my breath. And I wasn’t about to listen to a demon tell me I couldn’t drink. “I’ll get it myself!” I said, but raising my voice made my head swim, and I groaned, clutching it in my filthy hands.
“You fucking will not.” He was already back, offering me a glass of water and two tiny bottles of pills. “You can’t drink alcohol with this prescription.”
I hated that my hands shook as I reached up to take the pills and water. The pills were each prescribed to someone different — one was penicillin, the other was oxycodone. My eyes almost bulged out of my head.
“Did you steal these?” He shrugged, standing over me like he expected me to run for the door. As if I could manage a single step without falling on my face. I usually avoided shit like oxy; getting used to comfort just made it worse when it wasn’t available anymore, and I never had money for doctors. But God, everything hurt. I put one of each pill on my palm and drank them down with half the glass of water. I really had needed the hydration, far more than I’d realized. I drank the rest almost immediately.
“Alright. Let’s get you cleaned up.”
He didn’t even give me the option to walk. He scooped me up from the couch like it was nothing, and I settled my head against his chest again as he carried me up the stairs. His heartbeat was strange, sometimes slow and sometimes wildly fast, like the organ didn’t know how exactly a demon was supposed to operate.
“You’ve got a weird heartbeat,” I muttered, and he chuckled.
“Demons aren’t built for Earth,” he said. “Our shit is a little wonky.”
He set me down again on the bathroom floor, running the shower so it would get hot. I felt like a ragdoll, all my limbs floppy, my strength non-existent. I’d endured serious injuries before, but this...this was the worst.
And it wasn’t even as bad as it could have been.
“Thank you.”
He turned toward me, unzipping his jeans. “What was that?”
“You heard me,” I muttered. His sarcastic grin confirmed I was right. “I don’t know why you came back. I don’t know why you...care.Ifyou care. But I just —”
He squatted down in front of me, arms resting on his knees. “I take care of what’s mine.” He reached out, his claws brushing my face as he tucked a wild strand of my hair behind my ear. “It’s as simple as that. You’re not alone anymore, Juniper. Get that through your thick skull.”
There was a strange feeling in my chest as he stood and finished undressing. It felt...warm. Warm and soft, squishing around inside me like pillows padding my heart.
“What are you doing?” I said, trying to distract myself from the not-unpleasant-but-definitely-terrifying soft feeling. “Why are you naked?”
“The better question is, why aren’tyounaked?” he said. “I’m filthy, you’re filthier. We’re getting cleaned up.”
I nodded, and tried to strip off my shirt. But halfway over my head, my arms felt like Jell-O again, and I couldn’t manage to pull my hair through the neck, so the clothing was stuck like a bag over my face, my arms refusing to tug it any further.
“Fuck. Fucking...stupid…” The shirt was pulled out of my hands, and Zane tossed it away into the corner.
“I’m not washing them this time,” he said. “We’re just throwing them away.”
He eased off my boots, and then my jeans. He was careful, slowing down every time I hissed in pain. He’d undressed me before, but this felt different. It wasn’t sexual, and yet it felt so intimate. When he lifted me again and carried me inside the large walk-in shower, I didn’t want him to put me down.
The feeling of his bare skin on mine — not in the midst of fucking but justtouching— almost brought me to tears.
“Can you stand up?” he said. The water was so warm, washing away streams of blood and dirt down the drain.
I nodded slowly. “If you let me lean on you, I can.”
I hated to receive help nearly as much as I hated to ask for it. I’d gotten myself into this mess with my own reckless actions, and I felt like the help wasn’t deserved. I’d fucked up, I deserved the pain. Maybe it would make me remember to be more cautious next time.
But I was so tired. I was tired and raw, like a crab yanked out of its shell. I leaned heavily against him as he set me slowly on my feet, my legs trembling until I managed to lock my knees. I lay my cheek against his shoulder, my eyes only half-open, the hot water hitting my aching back.
“There’s blood in your hair,” he said. He was gripping my arms to steady me, and even in the steam from the shower, his skin still felt unusually hot.
My eyes were fully closed now. I was too tired to keep them open. “I should just shave it off. It’s filthy.”
