She blinked. He closed his eyes, clenched his fist; let it drop back to his side.
She remembered to breathe.
He didn’t, thank God, mutter some lame apology that would draw even more attention to the moment. He grabbed the chair and flipped it around, sitting backward on it to rest his arms along the top.
Gwen stuck a hand under the water, found it blistering, and jerked away. How long had that moment lasted, anyway? She added cold, filled the sink, and soaked the washcloth.
And then she knew better than to pretend that it didn’t affect her to touch him—not his beauty, not his pain. She started with the spots that didn’t look too bad and moved carefully to the abrasions, washing off dried blood to reveal the truth of what lay beneath, discovering the strange little twist of a tattoo over his heart and keeping the washcloth as warm and soothing as possible. “Sorry,” she murmured when he twitched, and “This is a bad one,” and “Face, please.”
He lifted it for her, the full light on the cuts and bruises, displaying remarkably little swelling aside from one puffy eye and the corner of his mouth.
Not that he made it easy. Oh, no. He watched her.
Her heart beat just a little faster, and she tipped a finger under his chin to examine her work. Right. Stormy grey-blue eyes, no longer hiding in shadow and no longer hiding weariness of the deepest kind—or even the expression that still smoldered from when he’d almost—almost—touched her. She eyed the cut of his mouth, unexpectedly sweet in repose and just begging for another gentle brush of the washcloth...or her thumb.
What the hell is wrong with me? She closed her eyes and turned away, her hand settling on her necklace and clenching it, if ever so briefly, tight in her fist. “You’re right,” she said. “Except for that, you know, maybe a little stab wound, nothing there is too bad. It’s just that there’s so much of it.”
“It’ll be okay,” he said, but his voice had faded, and when she turned back she found the connection between them had faded, too, and his eyes were half-closed. He shook himself, reached for a hand towel, and pushed away from the chair. “I’ve got to sleep. Make yourself at home. You won’t bother me.”
He only staggered a little on the way to the bed. There he put down the towel to protect the bedspread from his short but gaping cut and its trickling blood, flopped on top of it, flung a forearm over his eyes and, to all appearances, fell instantly asleep.
Gwen stood beside the bed, caught in the surrealism of it all.
A stranger’s hotel room.
A beautiful stranger she could hardly stop herself from touching even as he stretched out asleep, completely unaware of her.
Apparently trusting her.
Or not having any choice in the matter, from the looks of him.
She held her hands out under the light of the sink area...his blood stained them; her own blood stained them. Not the smartest thing she could have done.
She cleaned up, replacing the chair, wringing out the stained washcloth and neatly hanging it, wiping down the sink counter. She pondered her hands; she pondered the shower, sending a glance at her erstwhile host.
He slept on. He hadn’t moved so much as a muscle twitch. She approached him, her hand hovering over his shoulder. Strong, well-formed bones beneath working muscle and gleaming skin.
Heat radiated back at her.
She shook her head—and, glancing at the blanket she’d dumped, decided against spreading it over him just yet.
Instead she headed for the shower. Not without trepidation—she’d wash her underwear and hang it to dry, but it would leave her commando in her slacks. And the hotel shampoo? No way was it going to do well by her hair. No comb, no leave-in conditioner...
She settled on a good sponge bath and felt much the better for it, the commando situation notwithstanding.
When she came out of the bathroom, he hadn’t moved.
Slowly, she sank down by the side of the bed, resting her chin on the mattress, her arms folded in front of her. From here, she could watch him breathe.
She could make sure he was in fact doing it.
Absurd, the comfort that gave her.
Her hand crept to the pendant at her neck. He’d noticed it, she was sure. Inevitably, he’d ask about it. Everyone did. So obviously old, so obviously heavy with metal and meaning.
She knew that story by heart.
I am nine years old, and something is wrong with my father. My daddy. My mommy is dead and has been for years. Daddy changed on the night she died. He always carries a knife; he won’t let me see it. He acts like he knows how to use it, but my daddy is a briefcase man with a briefcase job.
He was. Now he is something else. Someone else.
He presses a pendant into my hand, cold and heavy, incised with symbols so worn I can’t read them.
Not that I could anyway. I don’t know this language. I don’t think anyone does.
The pendant means nothing to me. I only want my daddy to be who he was: with his shaven cheeks, smelling of aftershave and giving warm hugs when he comes home from the office.
This man is scratchy-faced and smells of stale drink and something sharp and unfamiliar; this man has hard new muscles and keeps strange hours.
This man sometimes burns like the hottest fever, and sleeps like the dead.
Gwen’s hand tightened around the pendant. She straightened, and this time, when she reached out to Mac’s shoulder, she let her fingers rest on the heat of that smooth, gleaming skin.
He slept like the dead.
Mac slept deep and hard and hot.
But the blade didn’t sleep at all.
The blade wanted...and the blade feared.
It tugged at him, taking him to its own unfulfilled hunger, the need to taste, the need to drink. Blood and emotions both—and both denied to it this day, lost to the hatred and to the resounding, staggering weakness of its human partner.
So many blows absorbed. So much healing to do.
It healed with a vicious touch.
And beneath its needs ran a sweeter song, moments of connection, moments of near-connection—a soft touch not quite complete, an undercurrent of certainty.
Mac woke gasping in the darkness.
Except it was no longer darkness to him; there was no way to shut out the night, not any longer. And so he saw her, sitting beside the bed, glorious hair spilling around her shoulders, neat teeth biting her lower lip...concern in her eyes. “Hey,” she said, her voice much more matter of fact than those eyes, if softer than usual.
He meant to respond, but a great wrenching shudder took him, ice twisting through his spine, heat washing over his skin. His teeth chattered; words stuck in his throat as a gravelly moan.
“Hey,” she said again, reaching over to the bedside table and the ice bucket to pull out the soiled washcloth, wring it out, and draw it over his bare shoulder, his chest...along his collarbone and up his neck. Goose bumps sprang out over his skin as it tightened in response; fast on the heels of that, another twisting shudder pressed his head back into the pillow and sent his hands reaching for...reaching for...
Something.
One hand found hers, clamped down tight.
“I know,” she said, and, one-handed, she refreshed the washcloth. “I’m sorry. But you’ve got to cool down. You were...” She hesitated. “Thrashing.”
He could believe it. He could feel it. The grip of the blade, deeper than it had ever gone. Filling him with whispers of its want and need, feeding him tidbits that soaked into his consciousness without understanding. The wild road. Take it. Use it. Crave it.