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“This is gonna hurt.”
“Just do it.”
I grit my teeth as he cleans me up.
“Looks like just a flesh wound. A millimeter in the other direction, and this could have ended differently. Don’t you ever put yourself between me and a bullet again, you foolish girl.”
“I’m your wife. If I don’t protect you, who will?”
He mutters something under his breath that I don’t catch, but I’m too tired to call him on it. It’s been a long few weeks, and I’m surviving on fumes at this point. If I don’t get some real rest soon, I’m going to crash.
“The bleeding has almost stopped, but it could use a stitch or two.”
“I’ve got some super glue in my bag.”
“Glue? Seriously?”
I nod and point to my bag near the table. “There’s a first aid kit in there. Trust me, the scar will be neater if you glue it.”
He goes to grab my bag as I look around the room to make sure nobody is lurking in the shadows. Occupational habit. He brings the whole bag over and opens it up for me, so I shove my hand inside and rummage around until I find the kit. I hand it over to him and let him find the glue.
He cleans me up with an antibacterial wipe first before twisting the lid off the glue and applying just the right amount to my split skin and pinching the edges together.
“You’ve done this before?”
“A time or two,” he answers vaguely as he looks up at me.
We don’t say anything more as we wait. Once he’s happy that the glue will hold, he lets go and inspects the wound again before nodding. Instead of standing up like I assumed he would, he reaches down and unlaces my boots.
I swallow down the unexpected lump in my throat, reminding me that this man is not his brother. I might be wary of him with good reason, but that doesn’t mean I can keep thinking of him as the enemy.
Thinking of him as my husband, though, makes something inside me tighten and my heartbeat quicken. I keep telling myself it’s a business transaction, nothing more, nothing less. Yet the electricity that crackles around us...
“Step out.”
He grips the back of my heel as I grab hold of his shoulder and lift my leg. We repeat the process until I’m standing in my fuzzy pink socks.
He looks up at me, his lips twitching in response. “I didn’t take you for a pink fuzzy sock kind of woman.”
“There’s a lot you don’t know about me, Calix, but I’m happy to entertain you.”
He stands up without stepping back, his body pressing against mine as he looks down at me. “Is that so? And tell me, Sugar, how exactly do you plan on entertaining your husband?”
“I guess that depends on what he likes,” I purr as his large hands move to my hips, his pinkie fingers skimming over my skin before he sighs and steps back.
“Get cleaned up, then we need to talk.”
“Talk, huh? This marriage sounds like it’s going to be so much fun.”
He moves in an instant. Between one blink and the next, his hand is around my throat, and his other is cupping my breast through the lacy material.
“Don’t push me, angel, because you won’t like the consequences. I’ve been locked up a long time, and then you come along, and all I can dream about is you on your knees taking my cock down your throat. You think I’ll be gentle with you, angel? I’m a hard man. I don’t do gentle. If you push me, I’ll break you in ways you can’t even fathom.”
I wait for him to release me before I step back with a smirk, looking him up and down like he has nothing to offer me. “I hate to break it to you, Calix, but you’re twenty years too late.”
I pat his chest and move past him, looking over my shoulder when I reach the bathroom door. “You were going to rot away in that place. I was the one to get you out of there, and I’m the one who put herself between you and a bullet. You might want to remember that before I decide being your wife is more of a headache than it’s worth.”
“Maybe if you did those things out of the kindness of your heart, I’d be less suspicious. But you need something from me, and I want to know what.”
