He rolled his eyes up to look at me, and I saw the darkness in them. Fear eclipsed what I was going to say before I saw them soften a little. There was something very dark about this man and I knew I should stay away,but him coming to my rescue like this…it did things I knew it shouldn’t.
“We’re waiting,” Savage said, looking down at Mike again. His head was covered in blood, and I could see he was barely breathing. I should stop this.
But before I could, Mike wheezed out an apology and Savage lifted his hand up, now covered in blood. “Fuck off before I really lose my shit.”
Mike scrambled to get off the stool, falling to his ass and crawling toward the door. I grabbed a towel and the anti bacterial spray and got to work to clean up the mess, but Savage took them off me. His rough fingers brushed against mine, and goosebumps moved up my arms. My breath caught as his gaze met mine, and words failed to form.
“Don’t make a mess of your hands with his blood, Shona,” he said softly. “Let me.”
He took no time to spray down the bar and wipe it clean. The way he’d said my name did things to me, and I knew I should be ashamed of the way I watched the muscles in his arms bunch with the rigorous movement of cleaning.
“You should wash your hands too,” I told him. I pushed the lever on the tap, and he moved around the side of the bar and held his hands under the water. The water turned from red, to pink, to clear, but blood still continued to gather. It was only then that I realised he had hurt himself.
“You’ve cut yourself,” I said, alarm racing through me. “Come with me.”
“It’s oka-”
“Come with me.”
He smirked at my firm tone and threw the towel down on the side of the sink before he followed me from behind the bar, and down the hall to the office. It was empty, and I quickly grabbed the medical kit and opened it to grab the materials out.
When he held his hand out to me, I squirted the alcohol onto it to clean it. He didn’t hiss, or twitch or anything I would expect. I frowned, looking up at him, and the look of amusement on his face.
“You don’t feel pain?” I asked him.
“Not much,” he said. “Any pain I register, I’ve learned how to hide. It’s the only way to confuse your captors.”
I chuckled at his humorous way of speaking about such serious matters. “Are you captured often, Savage?”
“Not lately,” he replied. I wanted to ask him about it, about his past and where he came from, but I knew he was a private guy for a reason.
I inspected the cut, but it wasn’t too deep. “You should be okay without stitches, but I’d still get it checked at the hospital anyway. Your blood may have been cross contaminated with Mike’s.”
Placing a plaster over the cut, I zipped the medical kit back up and put it away, grabbing all the rubbish.
“Thanks,” he said. I looked up into his eyes then, feeling as if I could get lost in those deep chocolate browns for hours. “You didn’t have to leave the bar for me.”
“You helped me with that drunken idiot. Call it even.”
His lips lifted in a smirk, and I felt my body do flip flops at it. He really was a beautiful man. I noticed the faded scarring on his neck, a clean slice across his skin. I wondered what had happened but I wouldn’t want to talk about my scars, and I had to imagine he was the same. His tattoos hid it well, but I could just see the end of it on the side of his neck.
Savage’s gaze turned icy again once he realised what I was looking at.
“I should get back,” I said, trying to break this spell between us. It was intense and all consuming. He moved to the side and I moved out of the room, unable to breathe until I got back behind the bar and took over for the bunnies who had helped me. Savage moved into the clubhouse and took a seat so he could keep an eye on the bar. I could feel his eyes burning as he watched me, but I refused to look at him.
If I did, I’d burn for him and I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t be the widow who jumped into bed with another club member. I just couldn’t…
Sitting down on the edge of my bed, I made sure that no one saw me return from the hospital in Dublin. I couldn’t deal with the questions, not right now, not when Savage’s smell was still in my head. He always encompassed every emotion, every weakness I had.
He was everything that consumed me.
I couldn’t think straight when I was around him.
It had been like this since that first moment in the clubhouse when he saved me from Mike the drunk.
I still got butterflies, even now, even after everything we’d been through.
It wasn’t proper.
