Chapter Six #5
“Liam, this is going to burn. Considering how you feel, it’s likely to hurt like hell.
It’s going to take an hour for me to inject the first dose, and I will try to help in any way I can.
You may even need a second injection if one doesn’t take effect properly.
You’re a big man and I’m …” She hesitated, shaking her dark head.
“Just do what you have to do, Devon,” he said gently. “I can handle it.”
That wasn’t at all what she was worried about. She didn’t even know what she was worried about. She knew he’d been through far worse than this event. That he hadn’t had her expertise that time to help him.
She cleared her throat and lowered her head again as she paid overly close attention to her control of the injection.
“You’re bleeding again.” She reached to touch gentle fingers to his inside arm, just above the IV port.
With extreme care, she began to stroke him rhythmically in a single direction along with the flow of the entering liquids.
Cramping muscles and arteries twitched in irritation, and then seemed to relax into the comforting stroke.
“I’m going to have to stitch that shoulder.
You might consider being extra charming to me. ”
He snorted. “I’m not the charming sort.” He reached across with his good arm, mostly because he couldn’t seem to resist the impulse, and brushed his fingertips against the side of her neck, pushing back her espresso colored hair.
“But I will make an effort since you are the one with all the sharp implements in her lap.”
She gave him a laugh, glancing up from under sly, sexy lashes. “Men are impressed by the strangest things,” she teased.
“This is true,” he admitted. He shifted slightly, grunting in discomfort.
He watched as she instantly hastened to straighten pillows, draw up covers, and drop that disturbing stroke of her fingers over the highly sensitive skin of his face, chest, and belly.
She’d struck him instantly as the passionate sort, but this tantalizing, tender touching didn’t fit his image of her, and it was driving him absolutely mad.
When the team had touched him, it had been pure agony.
Hell at the hands of his friends, literally.
When Devon stroked him with that slow, thorough shaping of each muscle contour, following each dip and crest the smooth plane of his skin led her to, it was the wildest combination of ultimate solace and blatant eroticism he’d ever known.
How he could be feeling any such thing in this situation baffled him.
He remembered his last experience with Morphate venom, still had the occasional nightmare in recollection of it.
The hallucinations, the pain … it was an experience that had taught him to grimly appreciate the vast reaches the human imagination could achieve.
None of it had been pleasant and at no single moment during those dark, horrifying days that followed had he found any measure of peace.
Yet, she was drawing him away from that pit of black experience with just a touch.
The injection she was feeding him was barely begun, so he knew it wasn’t that. It was her.
Liam watched as she continued to fuss over him, alternating between the injection, packing his wounded shoulder, and softly stroking him to relieve the slightest sign of cramps.
She had just settled back beside him when he reached up to suddenly seize her by the back of her neck.
She gasped softly in surprise at the clamp of his fingers, quickly seeking an explanation in his eyes.
He didn’t speak. Instead, he let her see whatever it was she wanted to see in his gaze and in his aggressive hold.
He knew nothing about her, yet he’d sworn to trade his life away for hers.
And he was fine with that. Prepared for that.
But she destroyed his calm, his equilibrium, and his code of ethics, in ways he could never have been prepared for.
The least she could do was provide him with a little insight into that carefully controlled mind of hers.
She began her confession with a telltale trembling he could feel vibrating through the entirety of her long, lithe body.
Her breathing picked up in tempo and she tried twice to look away from the directness of his gaze, and twice came back to it.
As if she couldn’t stop herself, those fingers still found absent contact stroking his skin, along the forearm that held her imprisoned.
Her nails trailed lightly and torturously over him, sending stimulating shocks zipping all over his hyperactive nerves.
Her eyes deepened in shade, becoming that bottle green that was so clear and so strange all at once.
“Liam,” she said softly, his name a kick in his gut as it flowed like a purr over her tense vocal chords.
“What is it about you that…?” She took a deep breath and tried to shake the thought out of her head, but he held firm and forced her to look into him.
He saw her rising panic easily because he could taste it on his own tongue.
Morals and ethics and good intentions be damned, there was something between them and it was screaming mightily for attention.
“Tell me something,” he demanded in a low whisper. “Why are you doing this? Why are you stretching your neck out so far?”
“Somebody has to,” she said on a rushed breath.
“Yes, but why you! Why is that somebody you? And don’t bullshit me about your company and contracts, because your people barely touched this project of yours.”
“I don’t owe you any explanations,” she said touchily as she tried to shake off his locked hand. He forced her to face him. He wouldn’t let her dodge; he wouldn’t accept her vague lies.
“I think that when a man willingly allows himself to get poisoned in order to protect your life, you do owe him an explanation.”
Her eyes widened incredulously. “Are you blackmailing me because you did your job? What I pay you to do?” she bit out.
“Let go of me, Liam. You’re going to hurt yourself!
” She was right. The cramps she had soothed away were already returning in force, and if he pissed her off enough, it wasn’t likely she would repeat the holistic touch.
But as was usual, Liam was willing to take his chances.
“The last time I went through this, I suffered eight days of tremendous agony, horrifying nightmares, and the breakdown of just about everything in my life that held value for me. Now you sit here with a professed cure in your hands and I know with every instinct I own that you’re telling the truth.
That you have the power to cut this hell I’m facing in half, which in and of itself deserves about a thousand questions.
So think about what I’m willing to risk in order to get some kind of truthful answer out of you. ”
The statement made a tremendous impact on her. Liam could see it exploding in her eyes and over her horrified expression. To his surprise, the sudden liquid of withheld tears glittered on the edges of her lids.
“I would never withhold treatment from you just because …” She paused, swallowing hard.
“But of course, we’re strangers, and you wouldn’t know that.
” But Devon could see how he would make that mistake.
He came from that sort of world. For the first time, Devon felt intimidated by a human.
His fearlessness and his determination were a daunting package.
Add to it his skills and training, and she was extremely glad that he was on her side.
She only needed to keep him there.
“My reasons are actually personal,” she said quietly as she pushed down the plunger to the syringe a bit more. “And extremely private,” she added.
Liam relaxed his hand when she acquiesced at last, letting it drop onto his belly, glad she’d given in before the cramping had become any worse.
Frankly, he was about as daunting as a baby harp seal at the moment.
“I’m not known for my willingness to give out information willy-nilly, personal or otherwise. ”
She found a reason to snicker over that.
“I don’t see you as the sort to do anything ‘willy-nilly.’ It has a whole skipping merrily through the meadow feel to it that just doesn’t suit you.
” She smiled when he chuckled, lowering her attention to the injection, once again avoiding looking at him directly.
Some people did that when they were going to lie.
He was learning that she did it when she was going, to be fearfully honest. “Morphates,” she said tensely, “those like Ambrose and most of his clan, often disgust me. They see humans as inferior domesticated animals. But unlike the way you might feel about a cat or a dog, they hold no love or fondness for human intellects and personalities. Morphates and humans look the same, appearing to be alike in most every way, and yet they know the difference instantly and react with prejudice bordering on ferocity. In some instances … even violence. It’s intolerable and they deserve to be brought down from their self-proclaimed superiority. ”
“Why you, Devon?” he persisted gently. “Tell me why it has to be you.”
“Because I’m …” Liam watched her grit her teeth tightly together, her jaw clenching hard as she struggled with whatever it was she didn’t want to admit to.
But neither of them was going anywhere anytime soon, so Liam was more than willing to wait her out. She was so blunt and determined, but here she was bottled up tight and he dreaded what it was that could possibly be so hard to confess.
“How much do you know about the creation and evolution of Morphates?”