Chapter Six - Felix
“Broccoli cheddar soup with wheat crackers,” I announced, carrying a tray with the box of crackers, two bowls of soup, utensils, and paper napkins.
She needed to get on her feet as soon as possible. I didn’t want blood clots to form. As much as our conversation annoyed me, she’d been through a lot.
I set the tray on the dresser, pretending I didn’t see her struggling into a sitting position or the pain etched on her face. I admired her grit.
“How did you cook broccoli cheddar soup?” she panted. “The lit oil lamps suggest we have no electricity.”
We? She wished.
“ I have no electricity,” I said succinctly. “But I have pots and a fireplace.”
She squinted at me. “So, you’re a doctor and a frontiersman? Versatile.”
“Resourceful. And never mistake me for a frontiersman. I like comfort too fucking much.”
Her stomach growled again, and she licked her lips. “I like roughing it, but at the moment I’d love the food.”
I picked up the bowl and brought it to her, wondering if she realized she probably couldn’t feed herself unless she was left-handed. Besides, she’d existed on IV fluids for three days.
When she lifted the bowl, it tilted. If I hadn’t been there to rescue it, it would’ve spilled on her and the bed.
“Thank you. If you can just give me the spoon, I can feed myself.”
“Of course you can. However, I’m hungry too, so let’s wait until tomorrow so I can test your abilities.”
“You want to feed me?”
“I will feed you.”
“I’m allowing your highhandedness today,” she said indignantly. “After all, you could’ve left me to bleed out in the snow, but you didn’t.”
“That would be against the oath I took.”
She snorted. “Yeah, well, I’d just as soon deck a doctor than trust one.”
Not awake a full fucking hour and already her thuggery reared its ugly head.
Still, I didn’t know what to make of the beauty in my bed.
Suspicious? Definitely. Dangerous? Probably.
She was also surprisingly jovial, given the circumstances.
I’d met patients who fell into depression due to the tits they bought being smaller than expected, so I unwillingly admired Athena’s disposition.
It irked me that her presence wasn’t unwelcome.
I fed her in the same silence that she ate. She’d lost weight, and her skin remained pale. I couldn’t help but wonder how she’d looked before she was injured, since she was still so gorgeous now, made even more so by her fragility.
She eagerly accepted another spoonful. A slight wrinkle of her nose hinted that she wasn’t a fan.
“What do you think of the food?” I asked politely, watching her throat work as she swallowed.
“It’s…okay. It’s food, so...”
Well, that didn’t sound entirely positive.
Setting the spoon in the bowl instead of scooping more soup, I cocked my head. “And that means…what exactly?”
“That it has a good texture but leaves me wondering if you’re allergic to spices.”
I bristled at her not-so-hidden insult to my cooking.
After all the fucking work I’d gone through to make something with what I had on hand.
I was happy to find freeze-dried broccoli, bouillon cubes, and a brick of cheddar.
Then I’d had to dig out the Dutch oven and the rack to keep the food away from the open flames.
To top it off, I couldn’t open the flue because I didn’t want snow and ice to get into the cabin, and she repaid me by not liking what I fed her?
“It has spices,” I said flatly. “Salt and pepper, which is all you should have in your condition.”
“I got shot; my taste buds didn’t fucking evaporate,” she said with a sniff.
My amusement at her quip annoyed me to the depths of my soul. Women like her were nothing but trouble. My life was perfect, peaceful. She’d paid for her criminal activity, but in an alternate scenario, a stray bullet could’ve left me injured. Or worse, dead.
“By the way, salt and pepper aren’t spices. They’re requirements.”
Lovely. An uneducated criminal. I snorted. “They’re indeed spices,” I sneered.
She narrowed her eyes. “I’ll fucking ignore that.”
I folded my arms. “Your lack of knowledge isn’t my fault.”
“Look, dude, you know fuck all about me.”
“I’m not your dude,” I snapped. “And I know enough about you not to hear anything you have to say.”
I swept my gaze over her. My silk pajama top hung off her slender frame, revealing the tattoos on her chest. Defacing such beautiful skin was a fucking travesty.
“You’re probably a high school dropout caught up in the criminal underworld since your teenage years. More than likely shot because of a deal gone bad.”
Her hard stare captured my gaze and wouldn’t let go. “You have all the fucking answers, don’t you?”
“As a general rule,” I bit out.
A flush swept over her face, neck, and chest. She tried to shove me, but cried out in pain, losing her color as quickly as it had risen. I quickly set the bowl on the nightstand, got to my feet, and felt her forehead, turning into her caregiver before I thought better of it.
Her warmth concerned me. I’d take her into the living room, where it was cooler. She could sit on the sofa while I ate my soup.
I bent to lift her, but she tried to shove me away.
“Get away from me!” she demanded.
“I don’t take orders,” I said brusquely. Ignoring her outraged protest, I snatched her into my arms and stormed to the living room.
Fuck, it was beyond cold. It was downright freezing because after all the smoke from my cooking, I’d allowed it to die completely.
Sighing and mindful of her injuries, I put her on the sofa and set to work. Aware of her. Too aware.
“For your information,” I began, so frustrated I threw the two logs harder than necessary, “I have garlic powder and Italian seasoning for special occasions.”
Spices were a safe topic, something that shouldn’t inflame her nasty little temper.
“Pepper is a spice,” she conceded. “But salt is a mineral historically used to preserve food, not a spice.”
Pausing, I glanced over my shoulder, ignoring her smirk.
“Don’t pretend you know…”
Hell, why was I about to argue with her?
No, I wouldn’t debate with her. She wasn’t my fucking type. Even if she wasn’t a fucking criminal, I was fairly certain she had a socio-economic background similar to Iris.
I required educated women as my submissives, so being unwillingly impressed by her knowledge just worsened my mood. I didn’t want to be attracted to her, and though her words were a well-known fact, criminals often lacked education, and sometimes, common sense.
“I made my food how my mother taught me and my siblings,” I said in exasperation, anxious to eat my soup.
As soon as I started the fire, I would leave her to continue critiquing the flavor profile of what she’d eaten.
“So, when you assess my cooking, you’re evaluating recipes near and dear to my family’s heart,” I continued, focusing on my task instead of her face.
In truth, it was our family’s cook who taught us the recipe on the urging of our parents, but she didn’t need to know that information.
Nor did she need to know that at one time, flavorful food was a staple on my family’s table, until my father decided to have an affair with the luscious young cook.
After that trollop was fired, an older, less attractive woman was hired and ordered to use limited spices so as not to stir up ugly memories.
It was an adjustment that my siblings and I complained about, but after three decades, I’d lost the high spice tolerance that I’d possessed as a child.
“Then your entire family must be allergic to spice. By the way, do not ask questions you don’t want to know the answer to.”
Retreating from an argument wasn’t something I normally did, but the back and forth was going nowhere. After I got the fire started, I wanted to try to contact the outside world. Ideally, I’d be able to reach an emergency responder who could arrange for Athena to be airlifted to the hospital.
As the flames roared to life, warming the chilled room, I returned to her side and felt her forehead. She’d cooled down and I heaved a relieved breath.
“On a scale of one to ten, what do you rate your pain?”
“Fifty.”
“I don’t have a lot of pain meds left, so I can spare one for you now, or I can give you a sleeping pill.”
“You’re rationing pain pills?”
“For when your pain ratchets up to a hundred,” I said with sarcasm.
She scowled.
“In case you didn’t fucking hear me, I offered you a choice.”
“If you have alcohol, keep your pills.”
“I do, but you aren’t allowed any.”
She threw a sullen look at me.
“One or the other. I’m counting to five, then I’ll decide for you.”
“I’ll count to ten and give you my answer.”
Folding my arms, I lifted a brow.
“Fine,” she huffed. “Give me the sleeping pill.”
I lifted her again and carried her back to the bedroom, throwing a longing look at my abandoned soup.
“I’ve always wanted a fireplace,” she said as I situated her back on the bed. “My trailer gets so fucking cold in the winter,” she revealed in a conversational tone, her argumentative mood gone.
“Some trailers have fireplaces,” I replied, unsure what else to say.
At one time, my parents had a luxury RV that came with a fireplace.
“Yeah, well, mine doesn’t.”
“What do you do during the winter?”
“Turn on the heat and bundle up.”
“Why are you telling me this?” I asked after a heartbeat of silence. For sympathy? Money? She wouldn’t get either from me.
She shrugged. “You said you wanted to know more about me. That’s a fact about me.”
“I meant your profession, where you’re from, and why the hell you were out there with three gunshot wounds.”
Relevant information that would give me clues to her real identity.
“And here I was about to tell you my favorite color and the name of my childhood pet. Purple and Patches, by the way.”
“And what type of animal was Patches?”
“A raccoon,” she revealed, shocking the hell out of me. “She wasn’t really my pet. She just hung around my childhood home, and I’d give her food whenever I saw her. She started to follow me around at one point. I wanted to bring her inside, but my parents got upset that I even asked.”
“As they should. Who would allow vermin into their home?”
“Raccoons aren’t vermin!” she protested. “They’re highly intelligent animals that can adapt to many environments.”
“They also carry diseases,” I reminded her.
She waved me off. “Well, Patches didn’t.” She looked at me. “You have any pets?”
Not in the sense she was thinking.
“No,” I said simply, refusing to detail my NSFW hobby. “Do you have any real pets now?”
“Raccoons can be pets, and yes. I have a pit bull named Bob the Biter.”
“Bob the Biter?” I repeated.
She nodded. “I wanted to train him to be our guard dog, but he’s scared of his own shadow. I blame my younger sisters for spoiling him too much.”
“How many siblings do you have?”
“Two sisters. You have any siblings?”
“Three brothers and one sister.”
She let out a low whistle. “Your parents were busy.”
I frowned. “I’d rather not think about that, thank you.”
Her snicker ended our banter. I didn’t know if she was trying to distract me from her identity or if she was trying to extend an olive branch.
Whatever it was, allowing her trick to work so seamlessly disgusted me.
Her babbling was nice to listen to, yes, because of her sexy voice, but not enough so that I should’ve forgotten the kind of woman I was dealing with.
Fuck, I should just ignore her and review Ally’s sub contract. That woman was obedient, open to sharing relevant information, and had a lawful profession. She wouldn’t add chaos to my life. In fact, she’d fit right in with my structured existence.
“What’s your favorite color?” Athena suddenly asked.
I narrowed my eyes at her. The question was harmless, but the blatant hypocrisy made the woman even more infuriating. “You talk a lot for someone who doesn’t want to answer my questions.”
“If I like the question, I’ll answer it,” she said without a hint of shame. “Besides, I told you my favorite color, so it’s only fair you return the favor.”
“Black,” I replied tightly, drawn to her fucking voice and the way the flames flickered in her golden-brown eyes as she stared at me with expectation. “It’s elegant and goes with everything.”
She nodded and her silky black hair fell over her shoulders. “Respectable choice.”
“So glad it meets your approval,” I drawled. I stood before she spoke again and quickly opened the sleeping pills. Once I handed her a half and got her a bottle of water, I grabbed the tray. “I’m going to try to find a radio signal.”
“Okay,” she said, and yawned. She lay back, worming her way under my covers. “I’ll just sleep a bit more.”
“Knock yourself out,” I grumbled, knowing she likely wouldn’t move even if I did mind.
I closed the door as I left the room, my body hot despite the coolness of the cabin.
Athena was everything I didn’t want in a woman.
Argumentative, secretive, tattooed with a potty mouth, and likely an uneducated, immoral woman on the wrong side of the law.
Yet my cock didn’t get the memo; the sight of her sent unwanted arousal through me.
Worse, as irritating as our lunch was, her company was more enjoyable than expected.
Was I truly so lonely that someone like her excited me? Was I secretly bored with my life? I shuddered at the idea of succumbing to a pretty face and a smart mouth.
Iris had both traits and turned out to be a cheating, gold-digging cunt. If I were smart, I’d avoid Athena, but that was impossible. We were trapped together in my cabin, and I was her primary caregiver.
I scrubbed a hand over my face, my stubble tickling my palm. I needed to focus on finding a signal, not the woman currently stealing my bed. She was a patient, a responsibility. My oath dictated I nurse her back to health, and I’d do so, but keep contact with her at a minimum.
Whether that was possible, well, that had yet to be determined.