Page 16 of Damien’s Mate

Luckily they were all okay. These shifters really were made of stone. Or rubber.

He held her hand as he waited. Hers was warm now—maybe that was good? He talked to her, too. James had told him to, but he would have anyway.

He told her he wouldn’t leave her. And then he told her she was batshit crazy to be trying to rip off Vic Salzano, of all people, in the middle of a fucking summit of half the major crime families in Chicago.

Also, that Rostov was a sociopathic bastard and she shouldn’t even be with him, especially because he clearly hadn’t given her any decent jewelry, or she’d be wearing it.

“If you’re going to date a filthy rich mob boss, at least make him buy you diamonds,” he said, rubbing the back of her hand gently. “Everyfuckingbody knows that.”

James wasn’t here yet, and he had to keep talking, so he maybe mentioned that he was grateful that she’d kept Rostov from shooting him. But right after that he informed her that she wasn’t fucking allowed to get shoved in front of any more cars and what the fuck was she thinking, saving his sorry ass anyway? She should have run while she had the chance.

All the time he held her hand and stroked the back of it, and he pushed the hair back from her face and told her she had to wake up, she wasn’t dying on his watch, and if she did he was going to get back at her by selling all the shit she’d stolen and taking off to some fucking beach where there was no extradition treaty with the US.

And then he’d screw hot babes in bikinis, and she would have missed her chance with him. He hoped she’d wake up on that one and tell him what an obnoxious delusional idiot he was, but she didn’t.

It seemed like forever before James pulled up in his SUV. Lila was no better but she didn’t seem any worse, so that was good, wasn’t it?

“Jaime,” he said, getting out of the car and giving him a quick bro hug. “Thanks for coming. I owe you.”

“You already owed me. You just owe me more now. She in the car?”

“Yeah.”

James got out his medical bag and went to Lila, redoing all the checks that Damien had done, plus feeling down her arms and legs for broken bones.

“She seems stable,” James said finally. “And I can’t find any obvious fractures. What I’m most worried about is her spine. She shouldn’t have been moved.”

“I know that, I’m not an idiot,” Damien growled. “But going to the hospital would have been way more dangerous for her. Trust me.”

“Someone after her?” James said, giving him a sharp look.

“Russian mobster,” Damien said. It was as good a story as any, and had the advantage of being true—just not the whole truth. “A really, really bad one. She stopped him from shooting me, and this is the thanks she got.”

“He the one who hit her with the car?”

“Shoved her in front of it. On purpose.”

James shook his head, muttering, and then said, “I have a backboard in the back of the SUV. We’ll load her on it and take her to the clinic. I can do some X-rays and diagnostic testing there, but if there’s any spinal damage she has to go to a hospital.”

Damien drove James’ SUV while he rode in the back with Lila, muttering the whole time about spinal injuries and malpractice.

They left the stolen car where it was. It would eventually get found, but at least this way no one could trace it to anyone he knew. The last thing he wanted was to bring the cops down on James.

They took Lila in the back door of the clinic and James cut her dress off before examining her. Damien got a look at the label and whistled soundlessly. She was going to be pissed about this dress getting ruined.

There were already massive bruises all up and down her left side.

Damien winced. “Man, she must be messed up.”

James frowned. “Not as much as I would have expected, to tell you the truth. X-rays will tell us more.” He turned to Damien. “You sure she got hit that hard?”

“It looked bad to me. And the EMTs said…” He trailed off. Better not to tell James how bad they’d seemed to think she was hurt, just in case she really did have super-healing. He was going to have a hard enough time covering for her as it was.

James looked at Damien with exasperation. “Don’t tell me there were paramedics there and you fucking took her away from them.”

“I kind of jacked the ambulance?”

“Fuck. You are a complete idiot.”