“By the gods, female! What are you doing? Trying to kill yourself? I just managed to make you healthy again!”
Rolling my head in the direction the voice came from, I lowered my arms to cover my bare breasts and blinked to clear the fog from my vision. I felt the hot blood rolling down my leg like rain sliding down a windowpane, but I didn’t dare look. I lowered my feet so they were flat on the pad I was lying on and stared.
Holy shit. I had to be dead. No one was that gorgeous. That ripped. And he wasn’t wearing much more than I was, his glorious muscles on display everywhere but the pair of tight shorts that barely reached the top of his thigh. And his---
O.M.G. That couldnotbe real.
As I stared, it grew longer and wider as if reaching for me through the thin material.
Ummm, yeah. That was real. And I wanted it inside me now. Right freaking now.
He groaned. “What am I going to do with you, mate?”
“What?” Beyond bizarre. I did not respond to men like this. Especially not when I was bleeding, naked, in a strange place that looked like a—I took in what I could see of the small room—a tiny hospital room. My hand burned and itched like I’d dipped it in a barrel of hungry red ants. Rubbing my palm on the opposite elbow to preserve what little dignity I had left, I glared at my hallucination. He definitely had to be a figment of my imagination. Right? This all had to be some cruel joke God was playing on me because I’d stopped going to church when I was nineteen. No loving God I knew would leave so many kids in abusive homes or completely homeless, left to fend for themselves.
Basically, the almighty had pissed me off. Now the joke was on me.
Mister sex-on-a-stick moved forward, glanced at my bleeding ankle and shook his head.
“I’m dead, right? So, where am I? What is this place?”And how did I rate such a sexy angel?
Turning to me with a small device in his hand, he walked up to the coffin and reached to place the odd, magic wand looking thing next to my foot before turning it on. A blueish-green light blinked on around one end and he held it above the throbbing slices on my leg. Instantly the pain lessened, then faded completely. I sat up, arms still crossed over my breasts, and watched in fascination as the cuts magically closed. Within a few minutes the skin knit itself back together until it was smooth, as if nothing had been there at all.
Except the blood; it covered me from mid-calf down to my toes.
He turned to look at me and our faces were mere inches apart. “Are you hurt anywhere else?”
His gaze slammed into me and my nipples hardened to painful peaks. I pressed my thighs together as closely as I could to hide the wetness that gathered between my legs.
What waswrongwith me?
He lifted a hand to cup my cheek, moving slowly like I was a skittish colt that might bolt at any moment. His thumb moved back and forth over my cheekbone in a caress that threatened to melt me into a puddle. “Answer me. Are you hurt anywhere else?”
I shook my head slightly, not enough to dislodge his hand, or the thumb now running back and forth over my lower lip.
Was he going to kiss me?
His lips looked soft and full and so close. His bare chest begging me to touch. To taste. I wanted to run my tongue across his chiseled muscles, see if he tasted as good as he smelled. All I had to do was lower my arms andlean.
Stop it!Had he drugged me or something?
“Who are you? And where am I?”
“Don’t be afraid. You are safe now. You have been healing and resting in a ReGen pod. My name is Stark. The evil scum who tried to kill you will never get close to you again. I vow this to you mate, on my honor.”
Mate? Honor? As to the two men who’d shot me, they weren’t men at all. They were—
I leaned back, breaking contact. My lip tingled where he’d touched me. Ignoring the sensation, I looked around again. Odd designs were etched into walls that looked like they could be ceramic, or colored glass. The coffin I was still sitting in had strange figures on its side complete with bright, flashing lights and something that looked almost exactly like the readout on one of those hospital machines that beeped all the time and kept track of a patient’s heartbeat.
I raised one hand to my neck and found my pulse. My frantic, threatening to jump out of my body, pulse. Once I found the bump and rhythm under my skin, I watched the blips on the screen.
Perfect match.
“Is this a hospital?”
“No.”
“Where’s Lilah?”
