My breaths scream in and out of my damaged throat. Choking, sobbing, furious breaths.
Antony swings toward me, but before he can utter another sound, I roar at him. “You are never leaving my sight again!”
It hurts to speak, let alone shout, and the end of my cry has none of the force I want it to have. It’s nothing more than a damn whisper-shout.
And still, my legs strain, and I can’t seem to release the tension in my arms to let the body drop.
Antony becomes very still, the bloodied strands of his hair dripping crimson liquid down his face, his broad, fully muscledchest continuing to rise and fall so rapidly that it looks like he ran extremely fast to reach me.
His savage gaze takes me in, following my form from my eyes to my neck, where my blood must be pooling, to my tense torso, my bare legs, still extended and knees only slightly bent, and to my feet still rammed against my attacker’s shoulders, the pressure keeping the man aloft.
Without taking his eyes off me, Antony circles behind the man, reaches for my right hand, brushes his fingers across it, and in the next second, the circlet releases from my wrist.
My would-be killer’s body drops out of sight, although the chain presses down across my chest now that his body weight pulls it in that direction. At the same time, my legs straighten out because of the outward pressure I was placing on them.
Antony immediately catches them, scooping one arm around them and swiveling them back onto the bed before he prowls up onto it, climbing over me like a beast to straddle me, his knees to either side of my waist.
“Where,” he asks, his voice a low, guttural growl like a feral animal, “are you hurt?”
Droplets of blood fall from his hair onto my chest, the warm liquid somehow shocking me more than the attack I just endured.
I try to breathe as I point to my neck. To what must be cuts and trickling blood, although I’m not sure if the accompanying bruises will be visible yet.
His gaze flickers to the location where I point, but it’s the briefest release from his scorching intensity.
“Where else?”
I assess other parts of my body, but my attacker focused mostly on my neck.
My voice is so damaged, and I’ve pushed it too far already, so it’s only with difficulty that I whisper, “Only here.”
To my shock, Antony gives me a wild grin, and it sends shivers down my spine.
In a swift movement, he lowers his bloodied head to my neck, burying his face against my throat.
His bared teeth scrape against my skin.
I gasp at the sting of pain before his tongue travels across my wounds, licking at me, a strangely soothing sensation that contrasts sharply with the amount of blood he’s smearing all over me.
With every nudge of his head against my chin, every press of his rough tongue against my throat, blood splatters from his body to mine.
Warmth pools against my chest where he presses against me, his hard muscles rubbing against my breasts, sending a shot of startling heat to my toes.
“There.” He pulls back, that wild grin still plastered on his face. “Now you need to bathe.”
Somehow, even my palms are slick with crimson liquid where my hands closed around his forearms.
“Too cold,” I whisper, recalling the water temperature as I try to make sense of the increasingly incoherent thoughts whirling through my mind.
It isn’t desire. I wish it were.
I’ve experienced shock before. It’s debilitating and unforgiving, and soon I’ll be trembling.
“Not this time,” he whispers, and I’m not really sure how to interpret his soft declaration before he lowers himself back to me.
His big chest presses against mine, but instead of rubbing against me, his arms sweep behind my back, and he scoops me up off the bed, keeping me plastered to his body as he pulls my legs around his hips and cups one hand around the back of my head.
He cradles me in a firm but painless hold, carrying me swiftly toward the bathing room.
