Getting Thayer out of the passenger seat is a catastrophic, agonizing ordeal. He is a massive, heavy wall of dead muscle. He leans heavily against my left side, his right arm draped over my shoulders. I brace my arm around his waist, practically carrying his weight as we stumble through the mud and rain toward Unit 12.
I jam the key into the rusted lock, twist it, and kick the heavy wooden door open.
The room is small, entirely suffocating, and smells intensely of cheap bleach, stale cigarette smoke, and damp carpet. A single, sagging queen-sized bed dominates the space, covered in a faded, heavily patterned bedspread. The heavy blackout curtains are drawn tightly shut.
I drag Thayer into the room, kicking the door shut behind us with my heel. I immediately slide the heavy chain lock into place, plunging the room into absolute darkness, save for the sicklypink light bleeding through the edges of the curtains from the neon sign outside.
I guide Thayer toward the edge of the bed. He collapses onto the mattress with a heavy, pained groan, his head falling forward, his uninjured hand gripping the edge of the cheap mattress so tightly the wood creaks.
"The bathroom," Thayer commands, his voice a breathless, ragged hiss. "Get towels."
I don't argue. I run into the tiny, cramped bathroom. The fluorescent overhead light flickers violently when I flip the switch, illuminating the stained linoleum and the cracked mirror. I grab the stack of rough, cheap white towels from the metal rack and rush back into the main room.
I drop to my knees on the floor between Thayer’s spread legs.
I drop the towels onto the carpet and reach for the buttons of his dark shirt. My fingers are completely numb from the cold rain, fumbling with the fabric.
"I have to check the bandages," I whisper, my voice shaking as the adrenaline completely abandons my system, leaving behind a terrifying, hollow exhaustion.
Thayer doesn't help me. He sits perfectly still, his chin resting near his chest, completely surrendering to my touch. I manage to unbutton the shirt and carefully pull the dark fabric off his broad shoulders.
The white pressure bandages Sybil wrapped around his chest in the cabin are entirely soaked through. The blood is no longer bright crimson; it is a dark, heavy, terrifying sludge.
"It's bleeding through," I choke out, a hot tear finally breaching my defenses, slipping down my cheek. "We need a hospital, Thayer. We need a real surgeon."
"No hospitals," Thayer growls, his right hand shooting out with terrifying speed.
He grabs my wrists, completely stopping my frantic movements. His grip is an iron manacle, completely immovable. He forces me to stop looking at his wound and look directly up into his face.
The sickly pink light from the window illuminates the demonic, obsessive fire burning in his pale gray eyes.
"They are looking for a man with a gunshot wound or a stab wound in every emergency room across the Midwest," Thayer states, his voice dropping into a dark, lethal hum that completely fills the tiny motel room. "If we walk into a hospital, I spend the rest of my life in Florence ADX, and you go to federal prison for aiding and abetting. I would rather bleed out on this cheap mattress with you than spend another second of my life in a cage without you."
"I can't let you die," I sob, the absolute, paralyzing terror of losing the monster completely breaking me.
"I am not dying," he murmurs, his right hand sliding from my wrist, moving up my arm until his large, calloused fingers cup the side of my face. His thumb sweeps away the tear tracking down my cheek. "I am healing. But I need you to do exactly what I say."
"Anything," I whisper, the vow completely absolute, entirely devoid of the submissive hesitation of my past. I am offering him everything.
Thayer’s eyes dilate, the pupils completely swallowing the gray. The sheer, unadulterated devotion in my voice is a psychological trigger that completely snaps the last thread of his restraint.
He doesn't ask me to change the bandages. He doesn't ask for water or pain medication.
His right hand slides to the back of my neck. His fingers tangle brutally into the damp, heavy waves of my dark hair. He pulls me forward, completely off my knees, dragging my body flush against the vee of his spread thighs.
"Take your clothes off," he commands.
The words are a dark, feral vibration that rumbles directly against my lips. It isn't a request. It is the absolute, tyrannical demand of a predator who has completely cornered his prey in a locked room.
"Thayer, you're hurt," I gasp, my hands coming up to rest lightly against his uninjured right pectoral, feeling the frantic, heavy thud of his heart hammering against his ribs.
"I am cold, Sybil," he murmurs, his hot breath washing over my skin. "The fever is breaking. And the only thing in this miserable, frozen world that can warm me up is you. Take them off."
The cognitive dissonance completely fractures. The man bleeding out on a motel bed is demanding absolute physical possession. And the terrifying, undeniable truth is that my body is entirely desperate to give it to him.
I don't hesitate. I reach for the hem of the heavy, dark turtleneck sweater. I pull it over my head, discarding it onto the damp carpet. I am wearing nothing underneath but the sheer white lace bra from my wedding day, the delicate fabric completely inadequate against the freezing chill of the motel room.
I reach for the button of my tactical pants. My fingers shake, but I force the heavy fabric down my hips, stepping out of them, leaving me entirely exposed in the dim, strobing pink light.
