CHAPTER 21 #2
A low, bone-deep groan vibrated through the cabin, snapping my head up.
Damon’s head rolled to the side on the tarp.
His eyes snapped open. There was no grogginess.
No slow transition from sleep to waking.
The glassy, hazy look of a fever victim from last night was entirely gone.
His eyes were sharp, pitch-black, and instantly locked directly on me.
The air in the room seemed to just vanish as his focus landed.
His sheer physical presence expanded, sucking up all the oxygen and filling every single inch of the space.
The power dynamic, which I had briefly claimed while he was unconscious and I was scavenging, violently snapped right back into its original shape. He was the center of gravity again.
I flinched without meaning to. My grip tightened on the plastic water bottle so hard that it crinkled loudly in the silence.
"You're awake," I said, my voice sounding way too thin. "Don't move too fast, the stitches are still fresh."
He ignored me, pushing himself up on one massive elbow.
The muscles in his arms and chest corded, straining under the tattooed skin.
A sharp, brutal hiss of indrawn breath escaped through his clenched teeth as the movement actively pulled at the wound in his side.
He didn't even look down at the bandages.
He kept his dark eyes completely locked on my face, watching my reaction to his pain with a terrifyingly neutral, dead-eyed expression.
He was testing his own limits, pushing past the physical agony just to prove to himself that he was still the most dangerous thing in the room.
My medical instincts were screaming at me to walk over and push him back down, but my survival instincts glued my ass to the metal floor.
He flexed his free hand, his thick fingers clawing into the blue tarp as he clearly fought through a wave of dizziness.
"I'm fine," his voice was a deep, gravelly rasp that scraped against the walls. "Where are we?"
"Bottom floor of the freighter. Same place we fell asleep," I said, keeping my tone flat. I held up one of the heavy, dented tin cans, my arm surprisingly steady despite the rapid-fire beating of my heart. "I found food. And water. You need to eat if you want to be able to walk."
It was a peace offering, but in the hostile ecosystem we had created, it felt like a tactical negotiation.
The absurdity of sitting in a freezing rust bucket offering canned beans to a man who basically owned the city's criminal underbelly was not lost on me.
I placed the water bottle on its side and pushed it.
It rolled smoothly across the floor until it bumped right against his knee.
"Eat this," I commanded, gesturing to the cans. "I’m not losing you to malnutrition after I spent all night sewing you up."
He looked from the water bottle to my face, his expression completely unreadable.
I pulled my medical multitool out of my pocket, the silver blade catching the dim gray light.
I jammed the blade into the top of the tin can and pried the lid back.
The metal bent with a sharp, rhythmic pop-pop-pop as I worked my way around the rim.
I did the same to the second can, bending the sharp lids back.
I stood up, walked over, and handed him one of the cans.
My fingers accidentally brushed against his as he took it.
The contact was brief, literally a fraction of a second, but it felt like a heavy electric current snapping between us. He didn't break eye contact.
I wiped a smear of bean juice off the jagged edge of my own can with my thumb before sitting back down a few feet away, a stupid, unconscious gesture of care that felt entirely out of place here.
"Here," I said, breaking the stare. "It’s cold. Don't complain."
We ate in total, suffocating silence. The only noise in the cabin was the sharp scrape of my multitool spoon against the tin.
Damon ate with a mechanical, focused intensity.
He wasn't tasting it. He was fueling a machine, shoveling the food in because he logically knew his body required the calories to kill whoever came through that door next.
The ship rocked gently underneath us, a slow, swaying motion that made the rusted walls groan in sympathy.
I licked a drop of salty bean juice off the back of my hand. I glanced up and caught him watching the movement with dark, hungry eyes. My stomach did a stupid, traitorous flip.
"Better than nothing," I offered, trying to break the heavy tension. "Slow down, you'll make yourself sick."
He finished his can in under a minute and set it down on the floor with a heavy thud.
He didn't look away from me. He was tracking every micro-movement I made.
The way I swallowed, the way I nervously brushed a strand of messy hair out of my eyes, the way my chest moved when I breathed.
His gaze was entirely possessive, a physical weight that pressed me into the floorboards.
His silence was infinitely more demanding than his words.
He was just claiming my space, my time, and my attention by simply existing in the room.
He reached out across the small distance between us and grabbed my left wrist.
He didn't grip it hard enough to bruise, but it was a firm, unyielding pressure that immediately stopped me mid-bite. I froze, the multitool hovering inches from my mouth.
"You saved me," he said, his voice dropping an octave, rich and dark. "Again."
He didn't let go. Instead, he pulled my arm slightly closer to him, his heavy, calloused thumb slowly tracing the pale blue veins running under the thin skin of my inner wrist. The touch was electric, a slow-burn heat that traveled straight up my arm and settled heavy and warm in my gut.
I should have pulled my hand back. I should have maintained the professional distance of a captive doctor.
I didn't. I completely leaned into the contact, my body blatantly betraying my mind's logical demand for distance.
I exhaled a long, shaky breath, letting my rigid shoulders finally drop from their defensive hunch.
"I had to," I murmured, staring at where his dark skin contrasted against my pale wrist.
"I’m not letting you go that easily," he stated, and it wasn't a romantic promise. It was a threat. It was a declaration of total ownership.
I pulled my hand back then, breaking the spell before it dragged me entirely under. I shifted my weight, sitting up straighter and forcing my voice to turn cold and clinical. I pointed directly at the heavy steel door.