Chapter 6 Lina
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Lina
A sound woke me from restless sleep. Not the usual creaks of an old building or the wind rattling windows. This was different. A thump, muffled but distinct, coming from my living room. The kind of sound furniture made when someone bumped into it in the dark.
I padded barefoot toward the living room, knife held in what I hoped was a threatening manner. My heart hammered against my ribs as I reached for the light switch.
I flicked it on and yelped.
Matthias was in my living room. Actually in my living room, bleeding steadily from multiple wounds while leaning against my coffee table. For a split second, pure relief flooded through me. He was alive. He was here. He was...
Breaking and entering?
“How did you - what are you - How?” The words tumbled out in an undignified shriek.
He looked up at me with those gray eyes, pupils blown wide with pain.
Blood soaked through his torn shirt, and even from across the room I could see the damage.
Claw marks across his ribs. What looked suspiciously similar to bite marks on his shoulder.
Wounds that matched exactly what a beast might leave behind.
“Lina.” My name came out rough, desperate. “I’m sorry. I just... needed to know you were safe.”
“By breaking into my apartment?” I gestured wildly with the knife, probably looking more deranged than dangerous. “I have locks! On the first floor! How did you even-”
“Hospital,” I cut myself off, sanity kicking in as I catalogued the steady drip of blood onto my floor. “You need-”
“No hospitals.” He shook his head and immediately winced at the movement. “Can’t.”
“Can’t? You’re bleeding all over my rug!”
“Sorry about the rug.”
Was he trying to joke? While actively bleeding out on my furniture? The audacity of this man.
But I was already moving to get the first aid kit, because apparently I had no self-preservation instincts when it came to him.
My feet carried me to the bathroom on autopilot while my brain screamed about stranger danger and breaking and entering and how normal people called 911 in these situations.
“Don’t move,” I called over my shoulder. “Don’t die. Don’t bleed on anything else.”
I grabbed the first aid kit, several towels, and the bottle of vodka I kept for emergencies. This definitely qualified as an emergency. When I returned to the living room, he was trying to stand.
“Where do you think you’re going?” I dropped everything on the coffee table with a clatter.
“Shouldn’t be here.” He swayed slightly, one hand pressed to his ribs. “You told me to stay away.”
“You told me to stay away,” I corrected, pushing him back down with one hand on his shoulder. He went without resistance, which worried me more than I wanted to admit. “There’s a difference. Now shut up and let me help.”
He was too hurt to fight much, breathing shallow and careful as I knelt in front of him.
The position put me between his spread legs to get the right angle for the wounds on his ribs, and I tried very hard not to think about how compromising this looked.
Or how the scent of pine and rain clung to him under the copper smell of blood.
Or how my torn, bloody clothes from earlier made me feel even more aware of every breath between us.
Professional. I was being professional. Like a very unlicensed, unqualified medical professional who treated mysterious men at three in the morning.
Up close, the wounds were obviously from claws and teeth. Beast marks. Exactly matching what the creature that attacked my shop might leave behind.
“You were out there,” I said quietly, peeling his ruined shirt away. The fabric stuck to the wounds, and he hissed through his teeth. “During the attack. These are from-”
“Don’t.” His hand caught my wrist through the fabric of his shirt I was holding, gentle but firm. “Please.”
I wanted to argue. Wanted to demand answers about why he had wounds from mythical creatures and how he’d gotten into my locked apartment and why he’d come here instead of literally anywhere else. But the look in his eyes stopped me. Pain and desperation and fear. Not for himself, but for me.
I worked in silence after that, cleaning wounds through the torn fabric of his shirt, trying to be gentle as I worked around the edges.
The wounds looked strangely better than they should for how much blood there was.
Some were already starting to close at the edges, which made no medical sense but neither did werewolves, so I decided to stop questioning reality for the night.
He sat perfectly still except for the occasional intake of breath when I hit a tender spot.
I focused on the work, on the mechanical process of clean, disinfect, bandage.
Not on the way his muscles tensed. Not on the way his eyes never left my face.
Not on the way being this close made my skin feel electrified even though I was careful not to touch him directly.
“Why here?” I finally gave in and asked what I’d been wondering since I found him bleeding in my living room. “If no hospitals, why come here? You have friends, presumably. Family. People who aren’t me. People you didn’t specifically tell to stay away from you. How did you even get in?”
He was quiet so long I thought he wouldn’t answer. I finished with the bandages on his ribs and moved to the bite on his shoulder, trying not to think about what kind of mouth had made those marks.
“I couldn’t stop thinking about you,” he said finally, voice low and raw. “After I left. During the attack. I kept wondering if you were safe. If those things had found you. If you were...”
He trailed off but I could fill in the blank. Dead. If I was dead.
My hands stilled on the bandages. “So you broke into my apartment?”
“Would you have let me in if I knocked?”
No. Not after his dramatic exit. Not after telling me to stay away for my own good. We both knew it.
The position suddenly felt even more intimate. Me between his thighs, his chest mostly bare where I’d had to cut away his shirt, both of us breathing too carefully in the dim light of my living room. This was insane. Everything about this was completely insane.
“This is insane,” I muttered, smoothing down the last bandage with more care than necessary. “You’re insane. I’m insane for not calling the cops. Or animal control. Or an exorcist.”
“You’re not going to call the cops.”
“How do you know?”
“Because you already would have.”
He was right, the bastard. Instead of pulling back now that I was done, I found myself frozen there, hands hovering just above the bandages. There was no medical reason to stay this close. But I couldn’t seem to move.
“I should move,” I said, making absolutely no effort to do so.
“Probably,” he agreed, eyes dark and focused on my face with an intensity that made my stomach flip.
My fingers finally made contact with his skin, just barely grazing along his chest, and the same electricity from before raced through us both.
Not the overwhelming flood of foreign emotions, but heat and need and connection that made me gasp.
His hands came up to cover mine, holding them against his chest.
“Lina...” My name on his lips sounded almost pained.
The electricity was different this time, warm and alive between us. My hands were trapped under his on his chest, and I could feel his heartbeat racing to match mine. Every point of contact between us sparked and burned in the best way.
“Lina,” he said again, rougher now. “You should…”
“If you tell me what I should do one more time, I swear-”
He cut me off by tugging my hands higher on his chest, holding them there against skin that felt fever-warm. “I’m trying to protect you.”
“From what? The beasts? Too late. One already tried to eat me today.”
He flinched, jaw tightening. “That was my fault.”
“How could that possibly-”
“It just was.” His thumbs stroked across my knuckles, and the electricity intensified, spreading up my arms in waves of heat. “Everything that’s happened. The danger you’re in. It’s because of me.”
“You’re not making sense.” But my voice came out breathy and wrong because he was leaning forward now, closing the already minimal distance between us.
“Nothing about this makes sense,” he agreed, voice dropping to barely above a whisper. “Not the way I can’t stay away from you. Not the way you make me forget every rule I’ve ever set for myself. Not... this.”
His hand came up to cup my face, thumb brushing across my cheek with devastating gentleness. The touch sent sparks down my spine, made my whole body feel alive and aware in ways that definitely weren’t appropriate for treating wounds at three in the morning.
“I should go,” he said, making absolutely no move to release me. If anything, his grip on my hands tightened.
“Probably,” I agreed, leaning into his touch because apparently I had no self-control whatsoever.
We were so close now I could see flecks of blue in the gray of his eyes. Could smell pine and rain and copper. Could feel the heat radiating off his skin. Every breath he took moved my hands on his chest, and every breath I took seemed to draw me closer.
“But you’re not going to,” I whispered.
“No,” he admitted, voice rough with want. “I’m not.”
The space between us crackled with inevitability. My hands were still pressed to his chest, his skin warm and alive under my palms, and I could feel the exact moment his control started to crack. The moment mine shattered completely.
His thumb traced along my jaw, and I turned into the touch without thinking. His other hand was still covering both of mine on his chest, and I could feel his heartbeat hammering against my palm. Fast. Desperate. Matching mine perfectly.
“This is a terrible idea,” I managed, even as I leaned closer.
“The worst,” he agreed, eyes dropping to my mouth.
We hovered there, suspended in that moment of inevitable surrender. Both breathing too hard. Both fighting a battle we’d already lost. The electricity between us built with each shared breath, each tiny shift that brought us closer, until I could taste the promise of his kiss in the air between us.
“Tell me to leave, Lina.” His voice was barely human now, raw with need and desperation. “Tell me to go and I will.”
The smart thing would be to send him away. To remember his warning, to think about the wounds that suggested impossible things, to protect myself from whatever danger he claimed to bring. The smart thing would be to step back, to demand answers, to call those cops I’d threatened to call.
Instead, I looked into those gray eyes that haunted my dreams and said the only word that mattered.
“Stay.”