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Chapter Twenty-Eight
Kaja
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IWASN’T SQUEAMISHabout the sight of blood.
After growing up under my father’s roof, where men who’d crossed him before had been killed, I was used to violence. I’d also grown up hunting and skinning and cutting my own meat, so a little scalp wound wasn’t going to faze me.
“Where’s my brother?” Leo asked as we entered the house.
“Upstairs with Hallie. She’s taken the news hard.”
“Shit. Poor Hallie.”
I led Leo into the bathroom and got him to sit on the closed toilet seat while I checked the medicine cabinet for the supplies I needed. I found a small needle and thread kit with the name of a hotel on it, which I assumed had been a freebie from somewhere. It would have to do.
I checked Leo’s head again. The scalp wound continued to bleed. “You need stitches. Think you can handle me doing them?”
He nodded. “I can handle it.”
I found a bottle of hydrogen peroxide for sterilisation and used it to clean the needle and then Leo’s scalp, pushing the strands of bloodied hair away from the wound. He sucked in air over his teeth. I’d hurt him. A part of me was pleased about that. I threaded the needle and tied a knot in the end.
I blew out a steady breath and pushed the needle through the farthest edge of the wound.
“Do you know who set the bomb?” I kept him talking to try to distract him from what I was doing.
He clenched his fists, his whole body rigid. When he spoke, it was from between gritted teeth. “I have a pretty good idea.”
I pierced the next piece of skin with the needle and pulled the thread through. “What are you going to do about it?”
He hissed again. “Before we do anything, we need to regroup. I don’t know how much my father knows yet, and I’m sure Tam will be making plans. The truce between our two families is relatively new, and without Marlon Wynter at the head of the Wynter family, it could all fall apart.”
“What would be the sense in that? The attack was on you both. It should bring you together more than push you apart.”
“You’re right, but Jayden Wynter is young and impulsive, and now his father is dead. He’s without the rudder that was pointing him in the right direction.”
I finished sewing and washed the wound down with some more of the steriliser.
“Thank you,” he said. “You didn’t need to do that after what I—”
I held out my hand to stop him. “I don’t want to talk about that. It’s not the time.”
He took my hand and kissed the middle of my palm.
“Leo...” My protest was half-hearted.
He yanked me towards him and rose to meet me. Without another word, he lifted me by my thighs and spun me around to rest my bottom on the edge of the sink. Our mouths crashed together, and I opened to him, his tongue sliding over mine.
I sensed his anger radiating from him, but this time I knew it had nothing to do with me or my father. There was nothing gentle or subtle about his actions. He wanted me, desperate to lose himself inside me. Was it his way of claiming me back again, or was he trying to separate himself from the horror he’d been through that night?
He squeezed my breast, pinching my nipple hard enough to hurt while also making me moan. He tore my jeans and underwear from my hips, not caring if he damaged them. His need was so great, it was as though it was pouring out of him.
We were both panting between fierce, hungry kisses that bruised my lips. I pulled off his shirt, exposing his muscular chest, the smoothness of his shoulders. I dropped my mouth to press kisses to the red marks on his skin that within a few hours would become angry-looking bruises. I ran my tongue over them. He tasted of dust and blood and danger. He threw his head back and groaned.
A pulse of power went through me. I wanted this. I wantedhim. I wanted to catch him in my grip and know that he was mine and would do anything for me.
If only the opposite wasn’t true.
