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“Get off me.” I push back.
He doesn’t budge, his heated whisper too low for her to hear. “I know what you’re thinking, and it won’t come to that. When she touches you, it’ll hurt like hell. You won’t enjoy it. You won’t want more. Afterward, you can go back to hiding in the cellar. But right now, I need you to drink your vodka, chill the fuck out, and let the woman close the hole in your hand so you can shoot your goddamn crossbow again.”
When he shoves off me, sweat beads on my brow. My stomach cramps, and black dots blur my vision. I’m in no position to fight him, and he knows it.
He nods at Frankie, and she gets to work, disinfecting tools and preparing supplies. When she reaches for my hand again, I struggle to remain conscious. It’s all I can do to keep my eyes open.
It’s no good.
As she unwraps my hand, the wound pulls open. Blood spurts. Pain howls, and darkness descends upon the world.
22
Kodiak
—
God only knows how long I black out. When oblivion retreats, all I see is Frankie. She’s so close. With her head bowed next to mine, I can make out each individual auburn lash that curls away from her focused green eyes.
I feel her warm breath on my face and smell her cherry hair as the strands tease my nose. I don’t pick up a specific scent. No chemicals or artificial perfumes. It’s distinctively, uniquely her saturating my lungs. Erotically her. Seductively her. My favorite fragrance.
My hand sits on her lap while her fingers move with steady grace, unlike my heart. Delicate stitches pull the wound closed. Careful tugs of thread unravel the walls inside me.
“Hey.” She looks up from beneath those lush lashes. “Welcome back.”
I grunt.
A half-smile dimples the corner of her mouth. “You’re doing great.”
“Great? I fainted like a goddamn wo—”
“Don’t you dare finish that sentence.” She angles the needle like a threat, the force of the next jab riding on my response.
“You thought I was going to say woman?”
“Weren’t you?”
Yeah, but that’s beside the point.
Beside me, Leo reclines with a huff.
Why does it feel like he’s already chosen sides? What did I miss when I left her downstairs with him earlier?
“Since you’re lacking in female role models around here,” she says as softly as her next stitch, “I’ll forgive your sheltered misogyny. But that doesn’t mean I’ll tolerate it.”
“Who says you have a choice?”
“Test me and see what happens.”
This slip of a woman thinks she can threaten me? I start to pull away.
“Hold still, or I’ll sew your hand to your asshole.” She tightens her grip on my wrist and glares.
Leo bursts into laughter, and I can’t help it. My lips twitch, sending a strange, tugging sensation across my cheeks.
I quickly harden my expression. This is all so strange. She’s strange. Why is she being so…nice?
The dynamic between us has changed. I feel it. We all feel it. She’s not looking at us like the collective enemy. She’s calmer than usual, friendlier, as if we’re now somehow equals in this. As if we’re victims like her.
You’re wrong, Frankie. You don’t know us at all.
I’m tempted to burst her bubble, but I don’t. I prefer her like this—relaxed, unruffled, almost content. She seems to be at peace in her work, suturing my flesh and humming along as Wolf serenades us in a song of soulful misery.
The pain in my hand is stunning, but there are moments when I barely notice it. Like when I’m looking at her face, the delicate bone structure that continues to her chest and shoulders, and the lithe, confident movements of her hands as she tends to me.
I can’t stop looking, exploring, committing every detail to memory.
Her beauty is an exotic excursion, a pleasure tour that diverts me so effectively that I don’t realize the music stopped until she taps my arm and mumbles, “All done.”
A clean bandage wraps my hand. Beneath it, the muscle throbs. It’s a good throb. A clean throb. I know in my bones she saved me from permanent damage.
Silence suffocates the room while she puts away the supplies. My brothers watch her as closely as I do, stupidly captivated. We’re fully aware of the danger in this fascination. It’ll be our end, but none of us can seem to stop it.
Frankie’s not oblivious to being the center of our attention. She casts us questioning glances, tosses a scowl here and there, and finally, places the supplies by the door with a heavy exhale.
“What?” She crosses and uncrosses her arms.
When no one answers, she sets her sights on Wolf.
Two things surprise me amid the following silence. First, I think she’s going to badger him with questions about tonight. But she doesn’t. She doesn’t say a damn word.
Second, I expect him to curl up, retreat into himself, and shut out the world. But he doesn’t do that, either.
