“How’s Lor?” I asked, all at once remembering I wasn’t the only person who’d been injured today. I poked at my lip and hissed. Rowen smacked my fingers down.
“Yer assistant? Alive, I believe.”
My gut churned at that vague answer, but alive was the best we could hope for. “Can I go see him?”
“Not right now.” Rowen pressed a kiss to my temple. “Did ye really think we’d leave ye?”
Snuggling in against Rowen, I shrugged. “I was worried I’d gotten too greedy. Would lose you. You want the gentler things I like, too. You like exploring new neighborhoods with me. Going for drinks together. Usual date stuff. You’re the only one who likes that. Fallon will do it, but you and I have a lot of fun together. I’m sorry I haven’t been myself.”
His arms tightened around me. “Don’t apologize now. Not now.” Rowen pressed his forehead against my cheek. “Or for grief. It does funny things. I got meself in a twist over sharing ye with the fellas, but having ye missing... . I thought about what might’ve happened, couldn’t stand the thought of losing ye. I can’t step back from ye, Vail. Ye’re mine. We’ll figure it out.”
My heart still hurt and so did my face, but happiness had me fighting through the pain to smile. I leaned forward, and he kissed me, despite the mess I was in.
Back at the house the friendly faced doctor, who looked like he didn’t get enough sleep, was still there. He acted as if I should already know his name when he sat me down on a chair at the dining room table to patch me up.
“Did ye sustain a head injury?” he asked with a frown, and I had a wicked sense of déjà vu.
“No, I’m just exceptionally terrible with names.”
He frowned at me, and I stared back, feeling more belligerent than usual, until he finally shrugged and dabbed at my upper lip with an alcohol wipe that nearly had me sliding off my chair to the floor with the sting. He cleaned up my lips as best he could.
“What’s my tormentor’s name?” I asked Rowen, and he roared with laughter while the attractive man in front of me frowned.
“I’m gonna be offended soon,” the doctor grumbled.
“Rory, angel. And don’t be. It takes him forever on names. Honestly.”
Rory hummed. “These punctures aren’t bad. Clean, as far as wounds go. A wee bit of care ongoing and not much scarring is likely. Ye’ll want to get tested for any nasties and watch out for infection, but there’s not much of anything else we need to do. I’ll contact Rowen with appointment times to get ye checked.”
Rowen glared at the doc when he said that part about testing, but I thought that was silly. He hadn’t been the one to stab me with fishing gear. The doc didn’t even put bandages on my face, just dabs of ointment, which he told me to keep applying each day until the wounds were gone.
“I keep touching the spots inside my mouth with my tongue.”
“Stop that.” He popped my leg with the back of his hand.
“Easy for you to say.”
“Certainly is,” he said, with a wink that got him a scowl from Rowen, and I had to laugh, which made me groan again.
It wasn’t too late in the afternoon yet, but after my unrestful night and everything that had happened, I was exhausted to the bone. It took Rowen physically hauling me up the stairs with my arm over his shoulder to get me there. He went to take me into his room, but I pulled on his arm.
“Fallon. I want to see him.”
Lips pursed, he nodded, but I wouldn’t be able to sleep at all if I couldn’t see that Fallon was all right, and we walked a bit farther together. When I pushed open the door to Fallon’s room, he was asleep on the bed, chest rising and falling steadily.
My gut unclenched a little. “I think I was worried about him, even when that terrible man had me.”
“Ye want to go over there?”
“You too,” I said, clinging to Rowen. “I need you to come with me. I want you.”
He gave me a soft smile and a kiss on my cheek. “I need to go help Cillian and Aspen.”
“Please, just a few minutes. Please, I want you. I was so scared.”
He nodded, and after we were next to the bed, he helped me undress. His fingers were careful and light on my skin, and he growled each time he uncovered a bruise or small scrape. He stopped to kiss a purple mark on my hip where I’d been thumped against the wall as I was being taken into the apartment of doom earlier. He kissed around a scrape on my knee and tickled along a line on my ankle where I’d bruised myself tugging against the tape.
Fallon woke up enough to make an attempt to lift the blankets for us to join him. Rowen made a clucking noise with his tongue that had Fallon giggling, and Rowen folded back the blanket. I was worried we’d knock one another around, but Rowen didn’t shove me closer to Fallon when I lay next to him on the bed, simply stripped off his clothes and climbed on top of me. I needed Rowen’s warm skin against mine—and Fallon’s. I needed their weight grounding me and reminding me my world was anchored here in this home. Rowen touched his lips lightly to mine, then held me tight. The kiss hurt, but I didn’t want to tell him to stop. I had trouble breathing. We all clung together naked, not hard, simply existing in one another’s space.
