Chapter Seven
Killian
Her brown eyes widen, every bit of her skepticism melting away to make room for concern.
As soon as she told me the cat story, I kind of figured it would go that way.
She’s a nurturer.
“There’s glass in your back?”
I nod. “Someone smashed me into something. Not sure what. I don’t exactly have a great view back there, so… I’m gonna need your help.”
Despite the fact that she has been afraid of me on at least three occasions tonight, she immediately grabs my shoulder to turn me around so she can inspect the damage.
Even through the thick fabric of my black hoodie, her touch makes my skin feel hot. The heat spreads as I turn around, but she maintains her grip on me. “We need to get you to a hospital.”
I shoot the idea right down. “I’m not going to the hospital. I’ve got first aid stuff here, I just can’t take care of it myself because I can’t reach. I need you to look at it and patch me up.”
Her hand drops from my shoulder, and I notice her already pale skin go a shade lighter. “I… I’m not qualified to do that.”
“Don’t worry, I won’t sue you if you get it wrong,” I say lightly. “Do you think you can peel the shirt off without cutting me more, or do you want to cut it off?”
Her voice shakes a little. “There’s glass coming out of your back. I don’t know how you’re not in pain.”
“Who said I’m not?”
“You’ve been walking around like you were fine. Wasting time messing with me. You should have told me you were hurt instead of being such a jerk about everything.”
I crack a smile. “Come on, let’s grab the scissors.”
“I need more than scissors. We shouldn’t do this standing. Is there somewhere you can lie down comfortably?”
“Sure. My bed.”
She hesitates, but I guess she figures I’m not likely to pounce on her with shards of glass sticking out of my flesh. “All right. I’ll put down some towels so we don’t risk any blood or glass getting on the sheets. I’ll need a bowl or something to put the glass in once I extract it.” She turns toward the hall, then points. “Bed and bathroom this way?”
“Yep.”
While she goes to get that set up, I grab a dish out of the cabinet and collect the rest of the supplies she’ll need. When I reach the bedroom, the light is on, and I see she’s stripped the blankets off my bed and left them in a heap at the foot of it. Towels have been spread out across the middle, and she’s bending over the bed to stretch the last one across.
She took off the robe part of her costume, and what she’s left wearing resembles bridal lingerie more than clothing. Interest stirs seeing her bent over my bed like that. I guess my gaze betrays my thoughts, because when she turns to face me, she gets that look again, the one she got right before she took off into the woods like a pretty gazelle that had just been spotted by a hungry lion.
But I’m hurt, so she doesn’t run this time.
She swallows and gestures to the bed. “You can lie on your stomach.”
I look down at her ankles. “Why are you still wearing those?”
Her gaze drops to the ropes. “They’re too tight. I was flustered and couldn’t get the knots out. I’ll cut them off later, it doesn’t matter.”
I shake my head. “Sit down.”
Her eyes widen as I walk closer to her. She looks around as if searching for another spot, but I give her a little shove and she drops back on my mattress. She scowls at me, and I smirk up at her as I kneel on the ground and grab one of her legs. “Remember, I’m wounded, so you can’t fight me about things.”
“Oh, yeah. Mr. ‘I’m not gonna go to the hospital and let a professional treat me’ wants to milk it now.”
“I’m nothing if not opportunistic,” I warn her.
She’s uneasy as my hands deftly trail down her leg, but she tries to echo my words back to me. “Most people wouldn’t admit a thing like that.”
My lips quirk as I prop her foot on my thigh. “I’m not embarrassed about it.”
Her words dry up and her tongue darts out to wet her lips as I work my fingers beneath the rope. It’s so tight, her soft skin is indented.
Anger swells up at the idea of those slimy assholes putting their hands on her and tying her down the way they did.
I want to ask why the hell she followed that dork to his basement, why she was there to see him to begin with.
But I know it’s not really my business.
She isn’t mine.
We aren’t friends.
We aren’t anything.
Just two strangers whose locations intersected at a terribly inconvenient moment in time.
I free the first ankle, then switch legs and free that one, too.
“Thank you,” she says softly, tugging her ankle free from my lingering grasp.
I glance up at her and nod, then I stand. She does, too. Too quickly. We’re so close, if I just grabbed her waist and leaned in a little bit…
She murmurs a hasty apology and darts away before I can even complete the thought.
Probably the right call, but I can’t help the pinch of disappointment it triggers.
Switching into nurse mode more for her own well-being than mine, Brynn tells me, “All right, lie on your stomach, and I’ll cut the hoodie off if that’s okay.”
I nod, glancing at the assortment of first aid supplies she put on my nightstand as I climb on the bed.
“I’ll go wash my hands,” she says, and then she disappears into my bathroom.
She sure is a nervous little thing.
I get comfortable on the bed and wait for her.
When she comes back in, she gets the stuff set up where she plans to work, then she climbs on my bed and crawls closer. I can feel how uneasy she is as she grabs the scissors.
“You ever cut a man’s clothes off before?”
She chokes on a surprise burst of laughter. “No, I can’t say that I have.”
“Doesn’t seem like your style. You’re more the one getting your clothes cut off, huh?”
“I’ve never been in either situation,” she murmurs.
“Makes sense. They needed a virgin for their little ritual tonight, didn’t they?”
She doesn’t answer.
I don’t need her to. “Is there a reason you went to that party dressed as a virgin sacrifice, or was that a happy coincidence?”
“I’m not dressed as a virgin sacrifice. I’m Christine from Phantom of the Opera. Only depraved college guys seem to think I’m a virgin sacrifice.”
I crack a smile at her annoyance. “I’ve seen that show. Maybe I wasn’t sitting close enough, but I didn’t think the stage costume was quite so sexy.”
“There’s a movie,” she says as the scissors slice through the material of my hoodie. “Gerard Butler and Emmy Rossum. That one is much sexier.”
“Gotcha. So, you didn’t have any idea what they had planned.”
“Of course I didn’t. I’m not a lunatic.” She puts down the scissors and tentatively grabs the separated ends of the fabric. “I don’t know how I’m going to do this without hurting you. Some of the glass is going through the fabric and your skin. Are you sure you don’t want a doctor to do this? I’m afraid I won’t do it right.”
“All you have to do is take the glass out, clean the area, and put the skin glue on to close it back up.”
“That’s assuming I’ll get all of it and not leave a shard of glass in your body by accident. This is stupid. You live in an apartment the size of an entire floor of my old dorms; you can afford proper medical care.”
“It’ll be fine.”
Sighing heavily with annoyance, she says, “You know, it’s arrogant stupidity like this that got Khal Drogo killed.”
Her reference is so far out of left field—and so factual, as if that person actually exists—I can’t help cracking a smile. “If it’s good enough for him, it’s good enough for me.”
She mutters under her breath about my recklessness, but she still begins carefully peeling the shirt off my body.
“Are you squeamish?” I ask her.
“No,” she murmurs, leaning down to inspect my injuries, then pulling back. “I need more light. Do you have a reading light or something I can point at it?”
“Yep.” I point toward my headboard. “On the side over there is a compartment. Open it up and look for the flashlight bulb. You can pull it out and position it however you need it.”
“You should have told me you were Tony Stark,” she mutters, her nails finding the edge of the compartment. “I didn’t recognize you without the suit.”
Before she starts to pull and risks fucking up the mechanism, I tell her, “That’s not how you open it. Push the panel in, the mechanism will unlock, then you can open it.”
She blinks, then presses her palm against the smooth wood. Effortlessly, the compartment opens.
Brynn is amazed. “I didn’t know they made beds like this.”
“It’s custom. You can get anything made if you’re willing to pay enough for it.”
“But why?” she asks, leaning over to look at the components inside. Instead of pulling out the reading light, she pulls out steel rings attached to chains that she can only pull out so far. Her big brown eyes widen. “What could you possibly need these for?”
“Not reading,” I say dryly. “The light’s in the compartment at the top.”
Rather than put the anchors back and get back to work, she stares at me. “Are you preparing for a zombie apocalypse, or planning to kidnap some coeds and keep them prisoner in your bedroom?”
I crack a smile. “Trust me, anyone who gets tied to this bed is plenty willing. I’ve never had to resort to kidnapping. Now, normally I’d be happy to give you a demonstration, but right now I’m kind of feeling the sexy nurse over the bound beauty, so… can we get back to removing the glass from my back?”
Her cheeks flush and she feeds the chain back into the headboard, but I can see she’s still thinking about it, wondering what kind of man she’s alone in a bedroom with.
Wordlessly, she finds the arm with the reading light and positions it so it’s pointed where she needs it, then she blows out a breath and tries to refocus on mending my injuries—probably quickly, so she can get the hell out of here.
Her touch is gentle as she works. I try to keep from tensing up so she doesn’t think she’s hurting me. She works section by section, her focus impenetrable. Maybe she doesn’t have any professional training, but I don’t think she gave herself enough credit about her qualifications for doing a little advanced first aid.
I get the impression it might be a bit more than that when she sets aside a bloody towel and it’s bloodier than I expected. What steals my attention more is the way her hand trembles as she grabs the sanitized tweezers and returns to work.
“Are you okay back there?” I ask.
“Yeah. I just… a couple of these shards went pretty deep. I’m worried they need real medical attention.”
“Nah, you’re doing great. I trust you,” I tell her.
“You don’t even know me.”
“Yeah, but you strike me as someone who’s pretty trustworthy.”
She falls silent after that. She also gets back to tending my wounds.
It takes a while since she’s moving so carefully. I’m sore as hell by the time she’s finished, but she finally drops the last shard into a little bowl she set up bedside like a surgeon. “I think that’s all of it. I’m going to gently push on your skin where there was glass to make sure I got it all. Let me know if you feel anything I might have missed.”
When she finishes pushing on me, I flex my shoulders, then my back a bit to see if I feel anything. “Nah, I think we’re good.”
“Okay,” she says softly. “There are two spots that have been sliced open pretty good. I think I should put that skin glue stuff on them, but do you want to look first and see if you agree?”
I shake my head. “Go ahead and seal it up.”
Rather than reach for the tube, she hesitates. “It’s really important to make sure it’s clean before I do that. I’ve cleaned the area to the best of my ability, but there’s dried blood on your back and… I think it really needs to be bathed in soap and water before I glue it together. I would hate for it to get infected.”
I crack a smile at how serious she is. “And what does my nurse recommend?”
Her cheeks flush, but she meets my gaze to prescribe, “A shower.”