Chapter Eight
The sound of raisedvoices broke through the haze in my brain, pulling me from the darkness to pain shrouded light. I groaned and tried to sit up, only for two pairs of hands to ease me back down again.
It took several blinks to clear the blur in my vision.
The Captain’s chiseled jawline and perpetual five o’clock shadow swam into focus. “Don’t get up. You need to stay calm and rest.”
“I was calmly sleeping until you two arguing woke me up. Thanks for that. It’s a great way to come out of a coma. Speaking of which, did you guys scare off my nurse?”
The Captain gestured at Fin, who I could only now see clearly on my other side, speaking too fast for me to catch. Then he lowered his face, too close. I shoved him back a bit.
“Your nurse left with the doctors,” he said. “They are always on call, though. Once they fixed your ribs and lungs, we’ve been working on the major healing. You should be up and around by tonight.”
I ran my hand down my side, my naked side, save for a thick wrap like an elastic bandage running from my breasts to my belly button.
“Uh, can someone get me some clothes please?” I asked.
Heat washed into my cheeks and I glared at the two men. Why would they think I would be fine laid out between them mostly naked? At least I still wore panties.
Fin grabbed a thick oatmeal hued wool blanket from the foot of my bed and lay it over me.
“Thank you,” I said, but I didn’t meet his eyes.
The memories from the car ride had stumbled back into my head and the blush that started at being nude only heated my cheeks further at the memory of me trying to lick his face.
“Sorry about that,” the Captain said. “We just needed to access your skin to help with your healing now that your lungs repaired. No one looked at anything that wasn’t completely necessary.”
My mouth tasted like sandpaper and blood. Not a delightful combination.
“Can I have some water, please?”
The Captain pressed a water bottle in my hand while Fin loomed over my right side. “What the hell were you thinking?”
I rolled my eyes. “Is it time for Daddy's lecture now? Last I checked, you have no say in what I do or don’t do.”
Fin frowned at me. “Well, maybe I should have a say in it, if you’re going to drain your magic AND mine when you make these choices for yourself.”
I sighed and a shot of pain flashed through me. “Look, whatever magic you did or didn’t use is your business. I was just taking a minute to get my bearings before you came along.”
“That’s such fucking bullshit, Zoey, and you know it.”
A loud shatter somewhere behind me made me jump as Fin stalked away.
“You were dying,” he said. “I felt it. Without my magic—the magic you grabbed through the bond and stole to save yourself—you would have died against a dingy brick building. And on that side of town, I doubt anyone would have noticed for a couple of days.”
Something like guilt wiggled into my chest, applying pressure. I didn’t want to admit he was right. Nor did I want to give him credit for saving me, despite it being the truth.
I still remembered the kiss. The anger over the last time I was injured. And his betrayal. I hadn’t forgotten a single reason I didn’t want to be here in the first place.
The Captain swung around the end of my hospital bed and grabbed Fin by the upper arms. He whispered something to him which made Fin almost deflate, and then both men turned to me.
“How are you feeling?” the Captain asked.
I took a second to evaluate my condition. Pain everywhere, but nothing like it had been before. My face ached, no doubt from that goon’s last kick.
My chest hurt the most of all.
“I think I’m doing all right,” I said. “Everything still hurts, but I don’t think I’m in danger anymore. I probably just need to rest a bit. But I can go home for that.”
The Captain shook his head. “Sorry, but the doctors said you need to stay flat like this, at least until your lungs are healed. If you sit up or move too much, it might rip something open.”
The word rip made me clench up.
“Well, then, I guess I’m staying right here for the time being.” I lifted the water to my mouth but only dribbled it down my face.
Fin huffed and slipped his hand under my neck to level me up enough to allow me to drink.
“Thank you,” I wheezed out when he eased me back down. “So anything else happen while I was out?”
Please don’t bring up the licking. Please don’t bring up the licking.
The Captain adjusted the blanket on his side to straighten the edges. “Do you want to tell us about the watch you brought with you?”
The watch. I’d completely forgotten about it. I clashed gazes with Fin, who clenched his jaw tight as he stared down at me.
“You still have it, right?” I asked.
He nodded, dug into his jeans pocket, and pulled it out. “I kept it safe, as I promised. But I never promised we wouldn’t discuss it.”
“I get that, but can we wait until I’m upright again? I hate people hovering over me throwing accusations. I’m sure they are coming any moment.”
Fin narrowed his eyes and tucked the watch away inside his pocket. Clearly, he wasn’t returning it until we had that discussion then.
I yawned and my eyes grew heavy. Fin and the Captain argued from over my head as I drifted again, but I couldn’t hear the words well enough.
It was later in the day when I woke. Light streamed differently through the windows to my right. Fin sat in an armchair, a book spread open over his crossed leg. An enormous book, but I couldn’t see the title from the angle I lay. When I peered around, the Captain was nowhere to be seen, only a toy soldier guard at the doorway facing out into the hall.
My stomach let out a loud rumble.
“Can I have some food or something?”
Fin snapped the book closed and surveyed me. “Of course. I’ll help you eat. You need to stay as flat as possible still.”
“Until when?”
He shrugged and crossed the room to a table with a covered tray. When he returned carrying a small plate, the scent of roasted vegetables caused another rumble through my empty belly.
With a chuckle, he sat the plate on the bed beside me, and grabbed a pillow to prop up my head. Then he carefully fed me spoonfuls of chicken and vegetables. Everything was warm and perfectly seasoned; Holly’s creations always were. I managed several bites, careful not to crunch my abs up as he fed the steel utensil between my lips.
There was a certain intimacy about Fin feeding me, which I wouldn’t have thought would happen. Yet another moment of agony to add on top of all the rest between us. These brilliant shining moments I only got for seconds, minutes even. Moments I would have to take with me when I left and remember with a painful ache in the future.
When a wave of nausea surged up, I shook my head at another bite.
He returned the plate to the tray and removed the pillow. “Get some more rest. We’ll check your injuries soon, see how they are progressing. My magic is almost returned. I’ll be able to use it again to speed things along.”
I blinked up at him, the daylight crowning his golden head, and then let sleep claim me once again.
Next time I woke, the light in the room had been replaced with lamps and a warm fire somewhere across the room from my head. It felt nice, but not as nice as the soft press of something against my ankle.
I blinked through grit and rubbed my eyes.
At the foot of the bed, Fin swiped a washcloth up my ankle to the side of my knee. A cold tingle followed as he repeated the process on the other side. I held my breath, trying not to move, dueling emotions blooming in my chest. I hated him, right? So why did this feel so damn good?
“I know you’re awake,” he said. “You have dirt from one end of you to the other which was strange considering you were clothed when we found you.”
Dirt. I tried to think back to the sidewalk. Me laying against the brink of death. The tingle of magic in the air. That had been Fin’s magic, not mine. The other mage himself said I barely had any magic.
“Fae sometimes borrow the energy from natural sources when we need to augment our powers,” he said. “I think you used the Earth below you when you were sitting on the ground, to keep yourself alive.”
Shit.More magic I performed with little forethought or explanation on how I accomplished it.
“I don’t know what I did. As you’re aware, I have little control over any of this.”
He swiped the cloth up, cleaning the dirt from around my knees and inner thighs. I should tell him to stop, bat his hands away, especially if he brought them any higher under the blanket. But I couldn’t manage the words to ask him to stop touching me.
His eyes were lidded, and his expression remained calm and detached as he finished cleaning my legs, carefully not looking under the blanket as he did so. Then he moved to my arms and my chest around the bandages. Some savage part of me didn’t want him calm and collected while he washed my skin so gently. I wanted to see something in his face that matched the inferno building inside me with every pass of his hands.
“Calm yourself,” he whispered, turning away to brace his hands around the table holding the water bowl. “Calm yourself, or I won’t be able to stay calm.”
“So, we’re still connected then?”
He let out a sound between a huff and a snort. “We are. I’ve been unable to repair either of our mental walls. The rest of the world is shut out, but you and I are stuck inside each other’s heads for a while, it seems.”
“Oh.” That was going to make things interesting between us. I’d gone off on him for controlling my mind for a few moments; now we had direct access into each other’s emotions and thoughts?
Fucking hell!
“Oh, indeed.” He dropped the rag into the bowl and dried me off briskly with a nearby towel.
After securing the blanket around me again, he helped me drink a few mouthfuls of water, his gaze burning into mine as I sipped.
The fragments of what happened in the car had already come back to me, but I’d been in and out through the pain. Now, with a much smaller pain level, the full force of his emotions pressed around me. They were like standing in the center of a hurricane.
Yet, his face showed nothing. Not even the tiniest hint of the chaos inside.
“My apologies, I’m not quiet in control of things yet,” he said.
My mouth opened and closed like a fish. “It’s fine. I’m sorry I’m not helping.”
Can you read my mind?I kept our eyes locked as I asked it inside my head.
A small smile curled at the corner of his mouth. “I can’t read your mind, but I can read your emotions, and knowing you, it helps fill in some of the blanks.”
I dragged my gaze from his and closed my eyes. Looked like today might be the day I take up meditation. There were things in my head I definitely didn’t want him to hear or feel.
The Captain charged into the room. I glanced at him from the corner of my eye until he stood over me, peering down at me, scanning my body as if I might have gained more injuries while he’d been gone.
“I’m fine,” I said, trying to reassure him.
A fresh scar marked his chin, almost like a starburst right where his neck and face met. Once the bandages were removed, I wondered if I’d have a scar from the surgery they performed.
The Captain braced his hands on the side of my bed but didn’t apply pressure. “How are you feeling?”
“Like some bargain bin henchmen used me for a punching bag. How are you feeling?”
He chuckled, his mouth turning in a sort of half smile. “How did you encounter these disreputable henchmen?”
I risked a glance at Fin when I answered. “It was about that watch, actually. I wanted to see what I could learn about it, but the man who I thought would answer my questions really just wanted to steal it.”
The Captain nodded. “Yeah, that happens when you play with magical forces you don’t understand, kid.”
“Kid? We’re going there, really?” I would have rolled my eyes, but didn’t have the willpower. “Well, son, if someone took the time to explain the aforementioned magical forces to me, then maybe I wouldn’t have gotten myself flattened by a goon squad.”
He gave me another wry smile and jerked back my blanket.
A chill washed over me. “Hey! Not cool.”
“Let’s try to sit you up, see how the damage looks and if we can heal you some more.”
Oh, in that case.
I let him grasp my hand and lever me to sitting in the bed. A wave of darkness swam in my vision until I blinked it away.
“Lightheaded,” I told them.
Fin pressed into my back for support, his shirt whispering over my bare skin.
“Does anything hurt?” the Captain asked, molding his grip around my rib cage.
Fin lay his hands on top of my shoulders, warm and heavy. I marveled at the difference between their touches. The Captain’s grip felt perfunctory, assessing. Like a doctor’s, or in his case, a battlefield medic.
Fin’s touch felt possessive, and almost inappropriate for even the seemingly innocent touch.
I focused on the question I’d been asked. “No, nothing hurts when you press. It’s more inside, like an ache when I breathe.”
The Captain nodded and closed his eyes. A tingle of magic surged around the three of us, and I felt that pull between Fin and I light up and flow between us like a conveyor belt, one end over the other returning after each pass.
When the swell died down, I tested an inhale. “Oh yeah, that’s much better, thank you.”
The Captain smiled at me and stepped away to grab a bundle from the table. “Some clothes and weapons I thought you might want.”
I didn’t even bother quelling my answering smile. “Have I told you today what a fine human being you are? Thank you.”
Fin stepped up to stand beside the table, glaring between us. “I don’t know why you’re bothering. The second she’s on her feet, she’ll run off again.”