Wrong Way Home - Taken (Criminal Delights 1)

Taron lost it. He was too tired for this bullshit. He removed his soaking sweatshirt and dropped it into the tub.

Colin followed him, barking like a rabid Jack Russell Terrier. “What did you think I could do? Spray the furniture?”

Taron couldn’t believe his attitude. He lifted his T-shirt and showed off his bruised side, with the healed stab wound, to prove his point.

Colin’s lips twitched, and his face became tense, looking as if it was a battlefield between two expressions. “Let’s get you out of all those clothes. Is there some kind of heater we can use?” he asked, pulling back the bedcovers, but his gaze landed on the second door in the room. “There’s more?”

Colin grabbed the waistband of Taron’s soaked pants and tugged them off, along with underwear. “You need to get warm. Now. I’ll deal with the heater if you tell me where it is.”

Taron resigned himself to the undignified circumstances, but sitting on the bed provided so much comfort he couldn’t refuse the offer. He pointed to the heater by the copper tub. At least Colin had shut up about the cage.

Once he sat his bare ass on the icy sheet, Collin tugged Taron’s socks off his purplish feet, leaving him completely naked. He then tossed all the garments into the tub before pushing Taron down and pulling the bedding over him as if he were dealing with unwell people every day of the week. The covers were heavy—stuffed with down—but after weeks without any heating, they felt like a layer of snow on Taron’s damp skin.

Before he could say anything, Colin put two of the cats on the bed.

Taron signed,

Colin let out a loud snort, and for the first time since they’d come down there, his expression brightened. “Don’t talk back to your doctor. I am prescribing bedrest, heat, and cat compresses.”

Doctor. At Colin’s age, he was likely only studying to become one, if he hadn’t been lying about it this whole time. But he lay back and watched Colin drag over the heater and turn it on. Left without a task, Taron could do nothing but shiver, even though the little aches all over his body remained a constant nuisance, but at least two more cats joined him in bed, purring.

But perhaps Colin did have some medical training, because once he got his hands on Taron’s medicine stash, he seemed to know what he was doing. On the lookout for the right items, he didn’t miss the use by dates on some of the medicines, and kept scolding Taron about it as he rummaged through the large wooden box.

“I can’t believe this. If you really insist on stocking up on all this stuff, you need to make sure you have everything you need and that it’s all usable. Once we’re out of here, I’m gonna make you a list, because you’re doing it wrong,” he said with a scowl that Taron found oddly endearing.

Colin’s anger came from a place of care. Could it be possible for him to understand or even embrace Taron’s lifestyle?

Despite his rash behavior earlier, Colin made sure not to press down on the aching flesh too firmly as he examined it in the light of the small bedside lamp. The stove had only been turned on, but Taron’s own body heat and that of the cats were making the temperature more bearable. Taron couldn’t remember the last time someone else had looked after him, and the mix of fear and glee that created, confused him to no end.

Colin had also removed his soaked clothes, but since it was still cold, he put on the first thing he could find—stripy pajamas that must have belonged to Old McGraw. They were comically huge on him. But even the hideous brown-on-brown-on-brown or the dated cut couldn’t change the fact that Taron was under Colin’s spell.

He was discreet about staring at Colin, but he didn’t need to be too wary, not with the way his blond eyebrows drew together to form a little valley above his nose as he examined the injury.

“That whole thing, getting into the river to save them, it was brave but also stupid. You could have died.”

Colin groaned and pulled on surgical gloves. “You’re such an idiot. That’s not the point. I was worried sick that you’d drown, and that I’d have to save you, and then we’d have both fucking died!”

Taron had never before felt like a marshmallow thrown into a cup of cocoa, but that was exactly what he experienced hearing Colin’s words and watching the slender fingers in gloves prepare the needle and thread.