“You cover up being in pain better than some of the fighters I know,” he said with a shake of his head. “Now let’s see if that stays when I start.”
Frowning, I stood at the sink and bowed my head so my expression wouldn’t stare back at us in the mirror. His fingertips were rough, but he was careful as he removed the dressings the nurse had applied. Thankfully, there had been no burns, and my jacket was durable enough to take the worst of the blow. Not enough to be entirely in the clear, though, and I had scrapedthe living hell out of myself in my tumble onto the ground. I still didn’t think the nurse had accepted my explanation of a nasty fall, but what was I going to tell her? That a bunch of psychotic gang members had blown me up, I had every intention of feeding them to the sea when I got a chance.
“This is from the explosion?” he asked as he bumped me with his hip.
“Hey,” I protested, startled by how such a small movement felt like a huge blow. Goddamn, he had grown, but his size still didn’t show how strong he was, even when he was being careful.
“I should have washed my hands first,” he said, doing just that.
“Right,” I muttered, the skin around where he had touched me tingling and distracting me. “And yes...well, no. I wasn’t close enough to the blast to take any damage from the explosion itself. I was knocked off my feet.”
“And piledriven onto the concrete from the looks of it,” he said as he dried his hands.
I grabbed the cream they’d given me and handed it to him. “That is more or less how it felt.”
He snorted. “Knock the wind out of you like the time you insisted you could totally take it if I tried some wrestling moves on you?”
“To even call that wrestling is a crime against actual wrestling,” I said with a smile. “But yes, I remember. Even back then, you were freakishly strong, and even though you didn’t go as hard as you could and slammed me on the bed, it still knocked the wind out of me for what felt like forever.”
“It scared the shit out of me,” he said, and I felt a shiver go down my spine when his breath gusted against my shoulder as he gently applied the cream. “I thought I’d killed you or something.”
“Or something,” I said, trying not to wince whenever his cautious touch had enough pressure that I felt a hot zing of pain shoot up my neck. “It took me a moment to remember how to breathe again.”
“I guess you’re lucky this is the worst that happened to you,” he said.
“True, Will took a far worse hit than me. And that’s not counting the men I lost that day.”
“Will?”
I glanced at his odd tone. “Yes. The son of the man who was running operations in this area before? Will is currently...I suppose the best way to put it is assigned to me.”
“Like shadowing you?”
“I’m not sure what Augustine’s intentions were. Will is clearly not made to be a leader, and no matter how much you chisel at wood, you cannot turn it into granite.”
“I can’t tell if you don’t like the guy or what.”
“He is...well, he’s soft, nervous, and nothing like the sort of person I typically work with and prefer to work with. That said, he is attentive, he’s a good organizer, and he’s good at streamlining processes. For now, the best I can do is reduce the son of one of our best leaders to being my personal assistant. To his credit, he seems happier with that than whatever he probably feared I might make him do, or what Augustine might have told me to do with…him.”
“Felt that, did you?” he asked with a chuckle. “I’m actually surprised you aren’t used to this sort of thing.”
“Dangerous fieldwork has never been my role,” I told him, tensing when he held my arm still with one hand. I could feel the calluses of his fingers brushing my skin as he used his other hand to apply the cream. I could say my sensitivity was because it had been weeks since I’d been this close to another person, especially so intimately, but I knew that wasn’t the case. No, itwas because it was Dom and I was remembering things I didn’t know I had any right to think about.
Any right to think about? Not whether or not it’s a good idea to think about them? Wow, that’s telling.
Oh my God, no, I was not going to have my mother’s voice echoing in my head, while I was shirtless in my bathroom, while my former best friend, and the man I lost my virginity to, was running a hand all over me and holding me in a grip that was erotic as hell.
You’re the one constantly reminding yourself I don’t really exist...
Nope, this wasn’t happening, and it was going to stop right now. Even just the memory of my mother had no place in my head while this was going on. I did not need the reminder of her voice in my head while I was getting a hard-on.
At least you admit you’re getting one.
With a huff of annoyance, I pushed the voice away and spared a thought as to why I had to generate such a persistent andcorrectvoice for those internal dialogues. Not that it wasn’t accurate, my mother had always enjoyed being right...something I’d inherited. Not that I hadn’t wondered at the state of my own mind before, but it was somehow a more relevant and pressing concern now I was standing here with Dom. His presence made me hyperaware of...everything.
What I had told him earlier was probably the most truthful thing I had said to another person in years. It had taken until I looked at my security system and saw his truck rolling along the path to my house before I realized the effect he had been having on me from the first moment he’d spotted me on the street. The realization had come on the heels of a sense of alarm about someone coming to my home, and then, when I saw him, a relief so total and so consuming I had lost track of my conversation with Augustine as I fought the overwhelming urge to burst intotears of relief. With it came the understanding of just how much he had come to influence my thoughts and decisions over the past couple of weeks.
As I’d said to him, I had made the move on Los Muertos because Dom had noticed the city was under greater stress and threat because of all the new violence. I had felt compelled to do something, ignoring why I felt that way, even when, deep down, waiting and watching might have been the strategic answer...or perhaps it wouldn’t. The key was that I hadn’t bothered to figure out the best course of action before I’d made my move. All because he’d said something, and it had stuck in my mind.
