Page 34 of Enemy of the Heart

I spit what I’ve just lapped up into her waiting mouth, and I don’t even have to tell her to swallow, which has me smirking wickedly.

“I told you once that I wanted to stay inside of you even after I’ve left.”

Crashing my lips to hers, my new stubble scrapes against her face as she runs her palm over my jaw. Our mouths tangle, our tongues dancing as we connect.

This woman was made for me, carved out of the same stone slab.

Louhi

We’re still catching our breath when there’s a knock on the door and Honey Eyes’s voice drifts through the wooden barrier. “Lou, the nurse is here.” There’s a brief pause before he adds, “She doesn’t speak English.”

“Give us a second. I can translate.”

This is perfect, actually. I was wondering how I might scheme my way into watching Sean’s exam. I don’t think he’d tell me what happened to him otherwise. There’s no denying that some terrible things were done to these men. Based on the way Digs never quite unleashed himself on me while we were shagging, I surmise he’s battling seen and unseen forces firing shots within his mind.

I hoped that stepping into the dark together might reconnect us, but I hadn’t bargained that he’d hold himself back. We need each other, or we’ll never survive whatever the future holds.

We both slip from the bed, and I re-dress, not bothering with my boots, while Sean pulls the sweats back on. I toss my pillow onto the bed from the floor where I’d dropped it and prop the gun case against the wall.

Swinging open the door, I find a shirtless Jace with his hands stuffed into his pockets some distance from a slender, young nurse with wavy brunette hair.

Jace strides inside first. Oh, please come in. I suppose they’re being tended to in this room then.

I nod at the nurse, but she doesn’t return the gesture as she sizes me up, prompting me to arch an eyebrow. I wonder if she knows who she’s in a room with.

The two men take a seat next to one another on the sofa in the living area of the primary bedroom. I flick on the gas fireplace as she begins to speak in Russian.

When I turn back around, leaning against the mantle, I translate. “This is Amaliya. She’s going to look at your injuries.”

The petite woman perches on the ottoman and scoots in front of Jace first, but I snap at her in Russian. “No, the other one goes first.”

She whips her head around, pinning me with a glare as though I’d told her she’s a piss-poor nurse. My lips are pursed, though, and I have no qualms holding a gun to her head to ensure Sean is tended to first. Viktor’s potential anger doesn’t scare me.

Whatever she sees etched in the lines of my face has her doing what I demanded. Smart woman.

Eye-to-eye with Sean, she asks, and I translate, “She’s going to begin by listening to your heart.”

He nods. When she places the bell of the stethoscope to his chest, Sean’s grey-blue eyes find mine, and they don’t leave my face as she proceeds with her examination, looking at his bruises carefully and applying a salve to the cigarette burns.

Her next words in Russian hang heavily in the air, wrapping around my neck like a rope dangling from a tree branch. I stare at the back of her head for several moments. I’m not naïve; I know the atrocities that happen in prisons like Ex-I. While I got lucky in that everything that was done to me was done by Sean, I can only imagine the heinous things the other inmates endured.

I’d kill anyone and everyone who touched Sean without his permission. He’s mine, all mine. No one touches what’s mine.

Sean’s eyebrows furrow, and Jace glances between us, his face scrunched tightly in confusion.

“She wants to know if you were…” I clear my throat, the next two words strangling me. “Sexually assaulted.”

His chest rises with a large, silent intake of breath, his intense, stormy gaze pinned on mine as he shakes his head twice. The relief threatens to buckle my knees and drop me to the floor. I grip the wooden mantle next to me to keep me upright.

I barely register Amaliya speaking over the static that rumbles in my ears. It abates enough for me to echo the words, “She needs to set your dislocated shoulder. She says that it’s going to hurt and that you can wait to be sedated.”

His jaw tightens. “Tell her to do it now.”

I relay the message, and she nods, indicating that he should move to the bed. Translating again, I explain, “She wants you to lie face-down on the edge of the bed.”

Forcing myself to watch as she sets about fixing his shoulder, I have to fist my hands at my sides to stop myself from blowing a hole in her skull. She’s trying to help him.

Angled toward me, his face contorts, grunting through clenched teeth as a pop that I will hear forever rings through the room. Shit.