Chapter 14
FOURTEEN
“Oh gods,” Francesca exclaimed. She threw herself out the door she’d been partially hiding behind and rushed to his side.
Covering his hand with her own, she babbled, “I’m so sorry!
I heard fighting and I thought maybe it was Maxine because she went to get me some coffee and then I heard your voice and I worried something was wrong and—”
“Shh, shh,” he soothed, trying valiantly to hide a wince. “It’s fine. Barely even got me, I think. It’s pretty embarrassing for him, honestly. If you can’t kill a man in one stab, what are you even doing in this business? Show a little respect for the craft, asshole.”
Francesca shot him a withering, pale-faced glower. “Don’t try to make me laugh!”
“But I like your laugh,” he protested.
Wrapping her arm around his back, his stubborn girl began to corral him toward the suite. “I really don’t understand your priorities,” she muttered.
Careful not to lean too much of his weight on her, he let her guide him onto one of the lounges in the suite’s attached sitting room. Blood dribbled from beneath their hands and onto the cushions when he sank onto them.
There’d be another couch the owners of the property would have to replace. He couldn’t say he was displeased with adding another couple thousand dollars to Easton’s bill.
“I’m gonna kill him,” he grated.
“Who?” Francesca knelt before him and tried to peer past his fingers to assess his wound. “I’m pretty sure you killed the guy already.”
Speaking under her breath, she added, “I really don’t want to think about why that seems so normal now.”
He was sure the wound was more of a slice than a stab, meaning he was pretty certain he’d live, but there wasn’t a single iota of him that felt compelled to stop Francesca from kneeling between his legs again.
It brought back lovely memories of two hours prior, when she’d had his cock down her throat and all was right with the world.
Watching her from under his lashes, he clarified, “Easton. None of this would be happening if it wasn’t for him.”
Francesca gently peeled his hand away from the wound. When blood didn’t immediately begin to spurt out like some shitty sprinkler, she began the awful process of unsticking his ruined dress shirt from where it had adhered to his skin.
Her expression tightened when she argued, “None of this would be happening if I didn’t try to take the easy way out of my problems.”
“You wouldn’t have been offered a bad deal if Easton wasn’t — ow, fuck, kitten, please be gentle with me — such a shitty businessman who doesn’t pay his debts.” He held his breath when she placed a hand on his stomach, steadying herself so she could look more closely at the nasty cut in his side.
In a rough voice, he continued, “And you wouldn’t have even needed the help if I hadn’t pussyfooted around. I liked playing house with you so much that I…”
Didn’t listen to my instincts. Didn’t think you needed protecting. Didn’t think about what you might be going through.
He’d fucked up in a myriad of ways, from not catching Easton before he’d put this bullshit event together to not slinging her over his shoulder when he had the chance. But by far the worst mistake was dancing around what he wanted.
Francesca rose without meeting his gaze. “I think I saw a first aid kit in the bathroom.”
Luis watched her scurry off, his gut tightening. He hated watching her leave him, even for a moment.
Is this how it’s supposed to be?
He leaned his head against the back of the lounge to stare at the ceiling. Luis was far better at handling other people’s feelings. His own were a foreign country full of undiscovered wilderness. He’d spent nearly a lifetime doing everything in his power to never venture there.
It felt a bit like he’d been dropped in the middle with neither compass nor guide.
But that wasn’t true. He hadn’t been deposited there. He’d walked, slowly but surely, of his own free will into that wild place.
Every time he looked at her, he took another step. Every time she fed him some tiny crumb of her trust, he ventured further. And every time she laughed, he fought the urge to run straight to the heart of it.
He’d gone in blind, but he’d done it willingly.
The problem was he had no fucking idea how to get her there with him.
Luis lifted his head up from the lounge when the soft patter of her footsteps approached. She came barreling into the sitting room, a semi-translucent first aid kit clutched in her white-knuckled fists.
“Found it,” she announced, holding the case up triumphantly.
“Great.” He curled his fingers toward her, asking for the case. “That looks like the high end kind. That’s smart to have around, considering what we get up to here. I just need to clean it up and pack on one of those m-bandages. One of the bigger rubber ones.”
“I can do it,” she declared.
Luis arched his eyebrows. “Have you patched up a stab wound before? If your answer is yes, we have some serious shit to talk about, kitten.”
Her cheeks flushed. “Well, no, but I’ve watched a lot of hospital shows. And if it’s as simple as you said, then why can’t I?”
Warmth tickled the nearly unused organ in his chest. Spreading his arms out along the back of the lounge, he drawled, “If you want to nurse me, have at it. I’ll never say no to some tender loving care.”
“I’m sure you wouldn’t,” she muttered, kneeling on the ground again.
It was an immensely distracting position for her to be in.
Luis was used to ignoring pain. He’d had his fair share, which was why he knew at a glance that the stab wound was a bigger threat to his pride than his life.
It didn’t take much to punt the sensation aside so he could focus on just how good his girl looked when she shuffled between his spread legs, a sterile cleaning swab in hand.
He could’ve told her that it’d work just as well if she sat beside him, but where was the fun in that?
Luis dug his claws into the lounge as she began to slowly swipe at the blood around his wound. Without looking up at him, she muttered, “Your own knife, huh?”
He scowled. “Don’t remind me.”
Francesca rolled her eyes. “I didn’t mention it to embarrass you. You don’t think that was a message?”
“It was only a matter of time before someone tried to kill me,” he replied, “and it figures it’d be Malachi. He’s a real eye for an eye type. Though anyone could’ve just ordered the guy to make it hurt. Sabotaging the final fight is pretty common. I’m the favorite to win, so—”
“Someone stands to get a lot of money if they bet against you,” she finished, shaking her head.
Swapping out her swab for a new one, she confessed, “I know it sounds stupid, but when Easton first told me about the Games, I imagined one of those reality shows where people do ridiculous challenges to win. Who can stand on a pole the longest. Trivia. A card game. That sort of thing. I had no idea people would… die. I never would’ve agreed to this if I’d known, Luis. Never.”
“I know,” he gently assured her. “It won’t make you feel better, but you should understand that none of this is really about you — for everyone else. For me that’s all it is.”
Her careful touches paused as she looked up at him. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that no matter how much anyone out there says they want a taste of a golden anchor, what they value the most is prestige. Being viewed as the big man on the block who has all the best stuff, the best anchor, the toughest fighter. It’s a quiet sort of warfare we all participate in, and often there are casualties. ”
“You talk about people dying like it’s no big deal.
You joke around like there isn’t a dead man on the other side of that door right now.
” Golden shards of light reflected in her dark eyes as they searched his expression for something he couldn’t give her.
“Yesterday I thought you were just some normal rich vampire. Now I don’t know what you are. ”
An ugly, aching feeling oozed through him and settled with considerable weight in his gut. In a tight voice he admitted, “I liked that you didn’t know who I was.”
She turned back to the first aid kit. “You need more than just a bandage on this if you’re planning to fight in the last round.” After poking around for a moment, she found a tube of liquid stitches and held it up. “Can you pinch the sides together while I glue?”
He nodded with a grimace. Dropping his hands to his side, he let out a low grunt as he pushed the sides of his wound together.
He’d never taken her for squeamish, exactly, but he was amazed by how remarkably unfazed she was by everything, including having to spread a glob of glorified super glue over a stab wound.
No matter how hard he tried not to, he seemed to always underestimate her.
Pulling out one of the expensive rubbery bandages, she began to carefully unstuck it from its sanitized backing.
Almost like she could read his mind, she said, “I’m not completely naive, you know.
I was born here. Spent the first five years of my life in a children’s home in Alexandria.
I do actually know a little bit about syndicate life. ”
His eyes widened. “What?”
“I was abandoned at the hospital right after I was born. My mother just walked out. Didn’t bother signing any of the paperwork or anything.” She said it so casually that one might’ve mistaken her tone for indifference, but he knew her better than that. There was pain beneath that calm surface.
He laid his hand over hers, stopping her as she compulsively continued to smooth the edges of the bandage down. “What children’s home were you sent to?”
There’d been many of them all over the United Territories, most erected in the decade after the end of the Great War. There were so many orphans, particularly in what would be declared the Neutral Zone but what was at the time the no man’s land between the Shifter Alliance and the Draakonriik.
Dragons had leveled United Washington twice. By the time the war was over, it’d been nothing but scorched rubble in a rapidly rewilding swampland. Hastily built children’s homes were the only solution to a continent-wide problem, imperfect though they were.
Francesca was too young to have been a war orphan, but many children’s homes operated well into the 2000s. That was when the United Congress officially ordered the last of them closed.
Luis was intimately familiar with the horrors that lurked in those places, full of neglect and corruption and violence as they so often were.
“Doesn’t matter now. It’s closed.” Francesca shook her head.
He hated how tired she looked then, how beaten down she seemed compared to the vibrant, funny, intelligent creature he’d come to know.
“I know that I messed up, but I didn’t want you to think I was some idiot who just wanted to get rich fast. I was misguided, yes, and Max warned me not to, but I… ”
“You were desperate,” he finished.
Her shoulders rounded. In a quiet voice, she replied, “Yes.”
Luis ignored the sharp bite of his wound to lean forward, her hand clasped between his in a protective hold.
Speaking lowly, he explained, “I have a half-brother. His name is Milo. You probably saw him tonight. He’s the grumpy-looking bastard with way less style than his older brother.
We share a father, and our parents are a triad. ”
Francesca smiled ruefully. “Wow, you gonna rub your three parents in an orphan’s face?”
“Hush, you,” he growled, fighting a smile. “I’m trying to tell you that I know a little bit about what any time spent in a children’s home can do to you. How it can mess with your head and make you think you have to do things on your own because that’s how you came into the world.”
That defensive, teasing smile fell away from her lips. Swallowing, she asked, “How would you know that?”
“Milo’s mother — who we call Mama — was raised in one.”
To this day, Luis was fairly certain something about that time changed not only Mary, but Milo as well. The boy had come out of the womb as serious as the grave, ready to defend the weak with those adorable dimpled fists.
He was wildly protective of everyone he deemed worthy, which was how he’d ended up as Felix’s right hand man and head of their soldiers. Nothing mattered more to Milo than making sure the rules were followed, people came home to their families, and his mama never had to worry about anything.
But then again, they all treated Mary like the center of their universe. Isabelle, Albert, and the boys worshipped the ground she walked on.
“Oh.” Francesca’s fingers spasmed in his hand, as if the news actually shocked her. Looking everywhere but at him, she whispered, “Is she all right?”
He used one hand to cup the side of her head. Luis pressed a kiss to her temple, hoping it could somehow convey just how much that soft question meant to him.
“She’s the happiest person I know,” he assured her. “Mama is spoiled rotten by all of us. She likes to play tennis, thinks action films have gotten too violent lately, and once tried to get my father onto a paddle board. She’s great.”
A real smile, close-lipped and shy, curled that soft mouth. “That’s wonderful. I’m happy for her.”
Luis tried and mostly failed to catch her eye when he said, “I’m sure she’d love to meet you. It’d mean a lot to her to talk to someone who could relate to her.”
He could almost see her pulling back the moment the words left his lips. She’d retreated into that protective shell he’d been butting up against for so long. Only now he couldn’t bring himself to be frustrated by it.
Why would she trust him when he’d been pretending to be someone else the entire time they’d known each other? And why would she take the risk of caring about him when the world had been so cruel to her?
“Thanks, but we’ll just have to see. Um, you should probably get back,” she muttered. Francesca slipped her hand out of his and stood. “They’ll be looking for you, and Max—”
He stood as well. Refusing to let her scurry away again, he hooked his claws around the back of her elegant neck. Luis swooped down on her with a soft growl.
Francesca’s lips parted on a gasp when they met. The delicate muscles of her nape tensed for only a heartbeat before they relaxed again. She swayed toward him, one hand coming up to rest above his heart like it was drawn there.
She was soft and sweet against him, all sugar and warmth and that indefinable thing that made him want to chain her to him, body and soul.
“I’m going to win,” he promised her between wet, sucking kisses. “A stab wound won’t stop me. You running away won’t stop me. You’re mine, Frankie.”
She sucked in a breath, almost like she needed to brace herself. “For thirty days.”
He smiled. “We’ll see.”