The doctor worked quickly, drawing the edges of the cut together with steady, practiced movements. The faint metallic scent of blood lingered in the air, mixing with the sharp antiseptic the man had used to clean the wound. Each stitch tugged the skin closed. Each knot pulled the injury tighter.
Magnus remained utterly still, his forearm braced on the table as though the blade that had opened him meant nothing.The doctor finished the last stitch. After binding the wound, he stepped back, beginning to gather his instruments. The scrape of metal on the tray sounded unnaturally loud in the room.Magnus never looked at him.His attention remained fixed onElia.
“Leave,”Magnus said.
The doctor hesitated only long enough to nod before moving quickly toward the door. Amoment later it closed behind him, and the house settled into silence again.
Elia suddenly became aware of how small the room had become. Of Magnus sitting there half-dressed, blood still drying along the edge of the bandage, heat rolling off his skin as if the fight hadn’t truly ended.
His gaze moved over her. Not hurried. Not uncertain.
Claiming.
Chapter 15
FOR A MOMENTneither of them moved.
“You were the target tonight,” Magnus said atlast.
“Because of the contract?”
“Because you’re with me.”
The words settled between them like something irreversible.
Magnus rose from the chair. He stood, broad shoulders and hard chest bared from the waist up, skin marked not only by the fresh wound but by older, paler scars that told stories she had never heard. There was a thin silver line near one rib. Another at his shoulder. Across the sleek power of his body ran the unmistakable evidence that he’d belonged to danger long before tonight.
And now he had bled forher.
The air between them tightened, charged with everything neither of them was saying. Hestood a few feet away now, bare skin lit by warm lamps, bandage bright against the hard line of his arm. He looked just as dangerous in his own house as he had at the gala. Less polished. More real. The adrenaline still ranthrough him like a live current, and now that the doctor was gone, it had nowhere left togo.
Elia should have stepped back.She didn’t.
He noticed that too.“You’re staring,” he said. His voice was stripped of its usual polish. Whatever lived beneath the words wasn’t teasing.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
She could have lied. On another night she might have. But there was blood on the discarded shirt, and somewhere out in the city a dead man lay broken because Magnus Severin had refused to let him touchher.
So she gave him the truth.“Because you were hurt saving me.”
“That bastard didn’t hurt me. He inconvenienced me,” he corrected.The answer would have been absurd from anyone else. From Magnus it sounded like a threat aimed at thedead.
Her eyes dropped helplessly to the bandage. “You nearly lost more than an evening’s convenience.”
His gaze sharpened. “No. Ididn’t.”
He crossed the space between them with predatory certainty, stopping only when the heat of him brushed her skin. The difference in their height forced her to tilt her head back. Candlelight moved over his face, over the hard cut of his mouth and the pale slash of his hair and the terrible focus in hiseyes.
Her pulse kicked harder.“What if youhad?” she asked.
Magnus looked at her as if the question itself offended him. “I didn’t.”His hand came up and closed around the side of her neck. Not tight. Not painful. Possessive.The touch sent a violent shiver throughher.
He felt it. “You’re shaking.”
“Of course I am.” Her voice thinned despite her effort. “A man tried to cut my throat at a crowded gala and you threw him off a balcony.”
