While his strategy had placed him in a position to shield Chloe, it had also placed him in a near indefensible situation, limiting his ability to strike both by the confines of the shower walls and Chloe’s presence. He managed to grasp one of Salina’s arms. She slung the other out in an attempt to reach Chloe, striking the wall just above her head with her fist and leaving a dent in it roughly the size of Chloe’s head.
Chloe sucked in a gasp of fright and cowered lower even as Jared jerked on the arm he held, pulling Salina back. His second attempt to catch her arm failed when she brought back the arm she’d tried to strike Chloe with, clobbering him hard enough on his temple to make his head ring. He’d braced himself and the blow still whipped his body sideways enough to throw his own attempted punch off. He struck her a glancing blow to the chin that still managed to rock her backwards on her heels.
Catching her upper arm, he threw his weight against her and managed to push her back far enough that the parallel walls of the shower offered Chloe some protection. She very nearly outmaneuvered him by dropping to her back and using his weight to throw him over her. She might have except that when she threw herself back to pull him, Kane and Sebastian caught her from both directions. Sebastian slammed his arms down upon hers, breaking her hold even as Kane slugged her in the jaw. It threw her into a tumbling roll, but she caught herself on the third and used her momentum to come up to one knee and plant her other foot solidly enough to launch another attack. Damon caught her by her flying hair. If she had been human, the jolt when her body continued to fly and her head stopped, would very likely have separated her spinal column at the neck.
Salina merely screamed in frustrated rage as gravity slammed her into the deck. Kane and Sebastian pounced on her the moment she landed, pinning her to the floor, but she wasn’t stunned enough by the fall to give up the fight. She screamed again, trying to reach them with her nails to claw them or bite them, drumming her feet and legs against the floor in an effort to kick them.
Two medics surged forward as soon as Kane and Sebastian had managed to pin her and injected her with something potent enough to take the fight out of her.
Vaguely dizzy from the blows to his head, Jared flicked a glance at the crowd Salina had drawn with her screams and turned to check on Chloe. Her eyes were as wide as saucers and her face pale, but she’d already begun trying to get to her feet when he reached for her.
Blood ran through his hair and down his face to drip on her as he bent over and for a split second he thought it was her blood.
“Oh my god, Jared! You’re bleeding.”
“You are not hurt?”
She shook her head, surging forward and wrapping an arm around him. He stared down at the top of her head dubiously for a moment when it dawned on him that she thought she was offering support. He was on the point of informing her that he was not that fucking injured and that she certainly could not keep him on his feet if he was when it dawned on him that he had had a stroke of luck. Instead of pushing her gently away to make certain he did not bleed on her, he lifted an arm to her shoulders.
The rest of their men looked at him askance as he ‘staggered’ out with Chloe’s help, but he waggled his eyebrows at them in a silent message that none of them appeared to catch. They scowled at him.
“I need to have a look at that cut,” Chloe said anxiously. “Do you think you need a medic?”
Since he’d been in the process of trying to get his message across when Chloe looked up, he lifted the hand he’d been waving at the men to his head. “I do not think so. I cannot tell.”
“I’ll look at it when I’ve washed the blood off. Scalp wounds always bleed a lot, so maybe it isn’t as bad as it seems.”
Reuel’s crewmembers, who’d been aroused by the commotion, looked even more disbelieving than his own, but Chloe was preoccupied with helping him and he managed to get her out of the chamber before she noticed.
“You are taking me to your cabin?” Jared asked.
Chloe threw him a suspicious look and frowned. “I guess I should. You had to have hit your head hard to split the scalp. You should probably be watched for any sign of a concussion.”
Jared almost smiled before he thought better of it. It was sheer torture for all of that. They moved so slowly down the corridor that his wound closed and the bleeding stopped long before they reached her cabin door. When he had sat down on the edge of her bunk, she darted off again to get water to wash his wound before he could grab her and he had to wait another five minutes for her to come back again.
Grinding his teeth with impatience, he dug at the wound until he managed to open it and bleed a little more before she returned the second time.
She’d dressed, he discovered with a good deal of disappointment, more regretful that he had not grabbed her before she had had a chance to dress.
She climbed onto the bed on her knees beside him, very carefully parting his hair to search for the wound. He took the opportunity to curl his arms around her to steady her and burrow his face against her breasts, breathing deeply and ecstatically of her scent.
She pulled on a lock of hair matted to his head with blood. He ground his teeth against the sharp pain that shot through and then thought better of it. “Ow!”
“Oh! I’m so sorry, baby!”
He frowned.Baby?He was not at all sure he fucking liked that, but she had not objected to his face in her breasts. He was struggling with the urge to move his face to the right or the left and capture a nipple when she abruptly pulled away.
“It’s closed. Thank god! I think it’ll be alright.” She placed her fingers under his chin and tipped his head up, wiping at the drying blood on his face. “I can’t believe that crazy fucking bitch! What the hell was she thinking?”
The question effectively dampened Jared’s rising ardor. He tightened his arms around her waist reflexively. He knew what the crazy fucking bitch had been thinking—that she could kill Chloe while she was unguarded. He had no idea why she would want to, but he did not doubt for a moment that she had intended to. She would not have flown into such a rage if she had not felt thwarted. He had not attacked her. She had launched the first attack.
He swallowed with an effort. “I do not know. I am only glad that she did not succeed.” Turning, he lay back against her bunk, taking her with him. She braced herself on her elbows, staring down at him questioningly.
He felt his gut clench now that he had finally gotten the opportunity to speak to her that he had been trying for. “How …? What must I do to have your promise that you will not leave?”
Her face crumpled. He thought for several horrifying moments that she would begin to cry and tried to think of some way to head her off. “I promised that I would never leave you—Kane and I—promised. I did not think that you would consider leaving us. Tell me. We will do it.”
She swallowed audibly. “You only have to ask.”
