Nate
The military on patrol at the barricade let us through, and we raced toward Eatonton. I’d glanced briefly at Alissa’s wound before wrapping it, and had come to the conclusion that it wasn’t life-threatening. I would probably be able to heal it, though if the bullet was still in her leg, then I would have to surgically remove it.
She was silent in the back as we raced down the dark highway. I glanced at her in the rearview mirror, not really believing she was here with me now. How many times over the past few weeks had I fantasized about seeing her again? And now here she was. Though not in quite the way I’d imagined.
As if she’d sensed me watching her, she turned her head and met my gaze in the mirror. Several different emotions flickered in her eyes. Shock. Pain. Fear. Remorse. Then…shame. That last one confused me. What was she ashamed of?
She turned away. Tears streaked her soft, delicate-looking cheeks. The woman had the facial bone structure of a runway model, every centimeter of her features well-defined and sculpted to perfection. She was absolutely stunning. The most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. I’d thought that the first time I’d seen her, and I thought it again now.
She made me breathless. Left me dumbstruck. And turned me into a hormonal-crazed teenager. That figure-hugging dress she wore outlined every inch of her perfect body. She might as well have been naked. Though she wasn’t mine and I had no cause to even think of her in a possessive way, I didn’t like her showing off so much of herself. I wanted to throw a blanket over her and cover her up. I wanted to be the only one who saw her in a dress like that.
Tony turned his head, obviously sensing my emotions. That was just part of our connection as dreg partners. Being able to sense each other’s emotions had helped us out of difficult situations many times in the past. But right now, I wished he couldn’t feel what I felt. He would only mock me for it. Right now, I didn’t want him to know what I felt. For the first time ever, I wanted to keep something from him.
I lifted a brow in challenge. “What?”
“Don’t be an idiot,” he growled out, his voice barely above a whisper. “She rubbed herself all over me back there. She would have fucked me if I’d been willing. You don’t want her, man. She’s a prostitute.”
Alissa gasped softly from the backseat, indicating she’d overheard him, even though he’d spoken quietly. I glanced at her in the mirror again, noting how her face stained with color. She turned her head and stared out the window. But she didn’t deny Tony’s words.
The urge to defend her rose swift and strong. I glared at Tony. “Leave her alone. She’s probably been through hell. Don’t judge her.”
She jerked in surprise, her gaze darting to mine in the mirror, then flickering away. She might well be a prostitute. But right now, that didn’t matter. Right now, what mattered was getting her to a safe place and tending to her bullet wound.
I couldn’t deny I didn’t want her to be a prostitute. The thought of other men putting their hands on her bothered me way more than it should. She wasn’t mine.
Tony turned to face her. “Do you deny it? Do you deny you rubbed yourself all over me and said I could have you free of charge?”
Her gaze darted to mine in the mirror again, then away. She lifted her chin and met Tony’s stare. “I thought you were one of Enrique’s thugs. I would have done anything to escape that place. Even fuck you, though I wouldn’t have liked it, and I would have pretended you were someone else the entire time.” With that barb hanging in the air, she turned away and stared out her window again. A smile tugged at my lips. Not many people were brave enough to stand up to Tony. He could be hard to take. But she didn’t seem to have any problem handling him. Pride swept through me. Damn, she was amazing.
Tony grunted and turned away, seemingly unaffected by her barb. But I felt the admiration swirling in him. He was impressed. I was glad she’d said that. The thought of her with Tony in any way didn’t sit well with me at all.
I pulled over to the side of the road about five minutes later. “Let’s take a look at your leg.” I went around the back and opened her door. “Lie back. Let me check it out.”
She hesitated, her gaze searching mine. “Are you a…doctor?”
“EMT. It’s okay. I know what I’m doing.”
Still, she hesitated, clearly afraid.
“I’m The Healer,” I added gently. “I heal things. I fix wounds. I relieve pain. It’s what I do.”
Her eyes went wide. Finally, she leaned back across the seat. “Okay.”
Tony stayed up front, staring out his window. But he wasn’t happy with the situation. I felt his unease and discomfort. I had a feeling we’d have it out later. Which was fine by me. It was obvious he didn’t like Alissa, but he didn’t like women in general, so that was nothing new. He needed to mind his own damn business. If I wanted to help a woman, then that was my own prerogative.
I retrieved my medical bag from behind the seat, then leaned over her. The dress had inched higher up on her thighs from her movements, so that now the thin fabric barely covered her. I caught a glimpse of tiny, black lace panties before I averted my gaze and concentrated on her wound. Don’t look, you moron.
She tensed as I slowly unwrapped the rag from around her thigh.
“Relax,” I whispered, trying to make my voice sound soothing. “I promise I’m not going to hurt you.”
Her gaze searched mine. Then she laid her head back on the seat.
I removed an antiseptic wipe and gently cleaned around the wound. Then I gently lifted her leg and felt along the back, searching for the exit wound. There wasn’t one.
Trying to ignore how soft the skin of her thigh felt beneath my fingers, I set her leg back onto the seat. “The bullet is lodged in your leg somewhere. I can’t treat it here in the car. I’ll have to take you back to my place.”
Tony made a noise from his seat up front that sounded like a protest, but I ignored him.
“Unless you want me to drop you off at the hospital in Eatonton,” I added as another option. I couldn’t force Alissa to go with me if she didn’t want to.
She sat up slowly, her gaze locking on mine. “No. I want to go with you.”
She did? Her trust made something tighten in my chest, and filled me with warmth, and what felt suspiciously like joy.
“Are you in a lot of pain? I can relieve that for you if you want.”
“It hurts,” she admitted.
I didn’t want her to be in pain. I gently laid my palm across the wound, soothing the pain with my healing touch. Her gaze jerked to mine.
“How did you do that? That was amazing!”
Pleasure coursed through me. The smile that spread my lips was genuine and unstoppable. Her compliment made my heart sing. I shrugged, trying to act like she didn’t make me want to dance a happy jig. “I’m The Healer.” I wrapped a fresh bandage around her thigh and set the medical kit on the floor. “Sit tight for a bit longer, and I’ll take care of it as soon as we get home.”
“Thank you.” She reached for my hand, gently squeezing it.
Her touch sent a jolt of awareness through me. I jerked my gaze up to hers. It would be all too easy to get lost in those gorgeous dark eyes of hers. To get sucked under her spell.
God help me.
“You’re welcome.” I was only vaguely aware of speaking, I was so enraptured by her.
“Let’s get a move on,” Tony muttered from the front.
I cleared my throat and pulled my hand from her grasp. She settled back into her seat and clicked her seatbelt into place while I regained my seat behind the wheel.
No one spoke for the next hour as we headed to Eatonton, though I felt Tony’s disapproval as plainly as if he’d shouted it out loud.
When we arrived at the mansion and I parked in the well-camouflaged garage out back, Tony took off without a word. He was not pleased that I’d brought her here. Tough shit. He’d get over it.
The other dregs were already there, having arrived a few minutes before us.
I helped Alissa out of the car. “Do I need to carry you?”
She lowered her gaze, her face staining with color. “I’m too heavy.”
While it was true she was tall for a woman, standing around five-ten or eleven, she wasn’t heavy. When I’d hauled her to the Escalade from the college campus earlier, I’d guessed her weight at around one-thirty or one-thirty-five. She was slender, small-boned. Well-proportioned. Sexy and feminine in every way. Certainly not heavy.
“You’re not heavy,” I assured her.
She blushed. “I’m sorry. I hate being a burden.”
I bent and scooped her into my arms. “You’re not a burden.” She clung to me, wrapping an arm around my neck. Her cheek brushed against my collar bone. Heat swept through me, making me overly aware of her soft, warm body pressed against mine. Shit. The woman was making me dizzy with desire. It was all I could do to not lower my head and brush my lips against hers. What did she taste like? I was dying to know. The male in me wanted to pound my chest like a gorilla, flex my muscles, and show her I was a man. That I could be her man. I breathed in her scent. Utterly feminine. Sweet. Intoxicating.
Fuck. I needed to get a grip before I embarrassed myself.
“Where’d you get all these fancy cars?” she whispered, her eyes wide as I carried her toward the door. She stared at Tony’s Ferrari, then Ryan’s Lamborghini. Her gaze swept over the other cars and motorcycles, then back to mine. “You guys must be rich.”
I shrugged. “We bought them after we were discharged.” My Escalade hadn’t been cheap, but it hadn’t come with near the price tag of Tony’s Ferrari. Or Ryan’s Lamborghini.
She nodded, then burrowed against me with a small shiver.
“You cold?”
“Yes. Sorry.”
“No problem. Go ahead and use my body heat if you need it. We’ll be inside soon.”
Her hair tickled my chin as she nodded and snuggled closer. “Thanks.”
Another wave of heat crashed over me. Trying to ignore the way she made me feel, I headed the short distance across the forest toward the underground maze. We were completely alone, since the other dregs had already gone inside. A wave of protectiveness washed over me. Mine. I wanted her to be mine.
Alissa remained silent as I entered the maze and navigated through all the turns that took us to our living quarters.
After several minutes, she asked, “How do you find your way in the dark? I can’t see a thing in here. It’s creepy.”
“I’m a dreg,” I explained. “I have excellent night vision. And I imagine this place would be scary to anyone who doesn’t know it like I do.”
“I doubt anything scares you,” she whispered.
If she had any idea that holding her like this—or the feelings that came over me while I was holding her—scared the living shit out of me, she’d see me in a completely different light. I might be a badass warrior. But this woman made me weak. Vulnerable. I didn’t understand it. I’d never been reduced to such a confusing mess of emotions before. Hell, I didn’t even know her. Yet when I was around her, my heart raced, my skin heated, and I was hyper aware of her every move. She made my breath snag in my throat and my mind go blank to everything except her, overwhelming my senses, so that she was all I could see, hear, smell or think about. No woman had ever made me feel like this before. She was that first breath of fresh air when I came to the surface each night. The first sip of hot coffee jolting me awake each morning. She was refreshing. Addicting.
I couldn’t let myself fall for her. She could all too easily be the death of me.
I would just tend to her wound and send her on her way once she was healed.
And try my best to forget about her.
At last, we reached the corridor that contained our living quarters. I debated for several moments where to take her, then opted for my apartment. I could lock the other dregs—Tony especially—out if I wanted to. I didn’t want any interruptions while I tended to her wound.
I set her down and unlocked the door. Sounds came from the workout room down the hall. The other dregs were releasing their adrenaline high. Ignoring the urge to join them, I focused on Alissa, who was more important right now. I needed to get that bullet out of her leg.
I switched on the light and scooped her back into my arms. Then I carried her inside my apartment. She glanced around, her eyes wide. I went into the bedroom and I set her on the edge of my bed.
“This is where you live?”
“Yes.”
She swallowed, her gaze taking everything in. “Don’t you get lonely down here all by yourself?”
“I’m not alone. My dreg brothers live here with me.”
“I meant, here, in this tiny apartment. All by yourself.”
I wasn’t sure how to respond to that, so I didn’t. I’d always been alone, other than my dreg brothers. It was all I knew. I left her sitting on the bed and went into the bathroom to retrieve my other medical kit. I always carried one in my car and kept one in my apartment. I never knew when I might need to patch someone up.
When I returned to my bedroom, she was still gazing around.
“That’s a big T.V.” She motioned to the huge flat screen mounted on the wall across from the bed. “You watch a lot of television in bed?”
I shrugged. “When I can’t sleep.” Which was more often than not. I set the medical bag on the bed. “Lay back and get comfortable. If I have to cut deep into your thigh to find the bullet, then this may take a while.”
Her face paled. “Is it going to hurt?”
“It shouldn’t. But sometimes I am unable to reach deep into an injury to heal or ease pain, and in that case, then I can inject some anesthetic into the wound if you want. You shouldn’t feel anything. But if you do, just let me know, and I’ll do what I can for you, all right?”
“Okay.” Her voice was soft, scared. She watched me with those sultry dark eyes that unsettled me for some reason. I considered myself an honest, straight-forward person. I always looked someone in the eye when speaking to them. But Alissa made me want to look away because I feared if I stared into her eyes for too long, she would snare me, drag me in. Make me lose myself in her. The woman could easily seduce me with nothing more than a look from those gorgeous “oh Nate, please fuck-me” eyes.
Yeah. That was an obvious fantasy.
Her demeanor didn’t strike me as that of a hardened prostitute, or even that of the sister of a deceased gang leader. A prostitute would be tougher, harsher. So would a gang leader’s sister. Yet she seemed too soft, too gentle.
Too broken. She’d been hurt by someone in the past. I sensed it.
Who was she? What had happened to her?
I sensed a deep pain within her. She was damaged. Like me. I wasn’t sure why I kept getting that vibe from her, but something had happened to her, something that had broken her and taken away her spirit. My instincts told me there was a lot more to Alissa than a gorgeous body and a beautiful face. The healer in me wanted to heal her, take away her pain. Both the physical and the emotional. And know the woman underneath.
Along with my healing abilities, I also had a deep intuition that most people didn’t know about. That intuition sometimes helped me locate injuries when people were unconscious and unable to tell me exactly where they were hurt. It also helped me sense when others were hurting emotionally. It was especially strong with Tony, probably because of our bond as dreg partners. That intuition made it easy for me to sense his moods, which could go from calm to violent in a matter of seconds.
The wounded soul in Alissa called out to the wounded soul in me, and filled me with a strong desire to know everything about her.
She slowly laid back on the bed, though her gaze remained on my face. She was extremely vulnerable in such a position, and it humbled me that she trusted me enough to let down her guard long enough to let me tend to her wound.
The short dressed bunched high up on her thighs, momentarily distracting me.
Don’t go there.
I jerked my gaze away and concentrated on taking care of her wound. First, I numbed the injury with my healing powers so she wouldn’t feel any pain. She tensed when I first laid my palm over her thigh, then she slowly relaxed as I began cleaning the wound and cutting into the muscle to find the bullet.
“Do you feel any pain?” I asked, lifting my gaze and looking into her eyes.
“No.”
“Good. Tell me if it hurts at all. I haven’t found the bullet yet, but the good news is it didn’t hit your femur.” I was being more careful than I would have been with one of my dreg brothers. I was meticulous by nature, but especially when I was tending to a wound. Alissa wasn’t a dreg, so she didn’t have our superior healing abilities or our hardened immunity. The risk of infection was a lot higher for her than it would be for a dreg.
“I thought you were just an EMT,” she said after a moment of silence in which I finally located the bullet about an inch from the back of her thigh. She now had a deep cut almost clear through her leg. If I’d known the bullet was that deep, I would have gone in from the back. Fortunately, I would be able to seal the outer edges of the wound closed by cauterizing it with my healing touch. She would probably be sore for a few days, but I would be able to help with a lot of her pain.
I lifted my gaze to hers. What was she getting at?
“Aren’t EMTs just trained in basic trauma and emergency care situations?”
“Entry-level EMTs, yes. I’m also an Army medic, so I have more specialized training. War injuries, like bullet wounds, I’m very familiar with. I’ve surgically removed more bullets and shrapnel from my dreg brothers than I can keep track of. I’ve been in plenty of intense, high-stress situations where I had to do emergency surgeries. If you’re concerned that I don’t know what I’m doing, I promise you I have the proper medical training, and that I’m familiar with human anatomy.” I felt the urge to ease her worries, a desire to impress her.
Color crept into her cheeks. “I wasn’t questioning your ability. I was just…surprised by how skilled you are. I didn’t realize…you were in the medical field.” There was awe in her words that made something in my chest soften.
“I promise you’re in good hands.”
I inserted the forceps, closed them around the bullet, then gently maneuvered the bullet out of her thigh. It was a small bullet. 9 mm. Which was good for her. Less tissue damage.
“I’m a nurse,” she whispered, almost nervously, as if she was afraid of what I would think of that.
I paused, my gaze meeting hers. “You are? What kind of nurse?”
She flushed and lowered her gaze. “The kind with a degree, but no actual job experience.”
My curiosity about her grew. Why hadn’t she used her degree? Had she changed her mind about a career after she’d graduated?
“Did you pursue a different career instead?”
I set the bullet aside, then flushed out the wound and doused it with antiseptic once more. Then I thought about what I’d just said. A different career. Prostitution. Shit. I hadn’t meant that. Really, I hadn’t. I hope I hadn’t insulted her.
“Yeah,” she murmured. “You could say that.” She didn’t elaborate, and I didn’t push her to reveal any more. If she wanted to tell me about herself, I figured she would when she was ready.
I debated whether or not to seal the wound closed. If I had somehow missed an area and infection got inside her leg, then it would be best to leave the wound open so I could flush it out again if necessary. But that would mean longer healing time for her. And the sooner she healed and went on her way, the better for everyone.
I finally opted to not seal the wound closed, and instead covered it with a bandage. That way it could continue to bleed out any possible infection that might develop.
I wasn’t quite ready to send her away.
I put my supplies back in the bag. Then I rose, stretching my sore neck. I had spent nearly an hour tending to her wound, and the tightness in my neck told me just how long I’d been hunched over her.
Alissa sat up and tried to pull the dress down over her thighs. My gaze automatically followed her movements, those smooth, creamy thighs holding my gaze hostage, before I quickly turned away and went back into the bathroom to put the medical bag away.
When I came back, she was sitting on the edge of the bed. Her gaze followed me as I approached. Awareness crackled between us. Damn. Why was I so hyper aware of her? One look into those sultry eyes and I wanted to yank her against me, feel her soft heat against me, run my mouth all over her, taste her, devour every inch of her. Make her mine.
Get your mind out of the gutter. She’s injured.
I paused before the bed and cleared my throat. “You’re welcome to stay here until you heal. Or if you’d prefer, I can take you somewhere.”
She hesitated, her gaze delving into mine. “I’d like to stay here, if that’s okay. You make me feel safe.” The admission was soft, hesitant, as if she wasn’t sure it would be okay.
Her trust and her vulnerability touched something deep inside me. I lowered myself onto the edge of the bed next to her. “I’m glad. You’re perfectly safe here. I want you to know I will never hurt you.” I hesitated. “If you want to talk about what happened to you, I’m a good listener.”
She turned toward me and our gazes met. Then, suddenly, her eyes filled with tears and she jerked her face away.
“Hey,” I murmured, wrapping an arm around her shoulders and gently squeezing. “It’s all right. No one will hurt you here.”
She let out a sob and burrowed into my chest. “Thank you,” she whispered. “You didn’t have to save me. You don’t even know me. Why did you do it?”
I gently patted her back, a bit awkward with a woman in my arms like this. I’d never comforted anyone before. Not like this. Finally, she leaned back and looked into my eyes.
I shrugged, my face heating. “I don’t know. You needed help, so I came for you. It’s just what I do.”
She wiped at her eyes. “Being a hero is just what you do?”
Not really, but for her, I wanted to be a hero. For her, I would do it all over again. Damn. I was a goner. I was already getting sucked under her spell. I was hooked. Snared. Completely enraptured by her.
God help me.
I rose from the bed, uncomfortable with this knowledge and with her so close, so tempting. I wasn’t a saint. Far from it. I didn’t know if I would be able to keep my hands to myself if I stayed here with her much longer. She was too damn tempting.
“Why don’t you get some rest? I’ll come check on you later.”
She grabbed my hand. “Thank you,” she said again. “I mean it. I can’t thank you enough.”
“You’re welcome.”
“Can I, um, take a shower?”
“Sure. Let me cover the wound so it doesn’t get wet, okay?”
She nodded, watching closely as I wrapped her leg with a large, waterproof bandage, then stepped back.
I left her alone, then headed for the workout room, ready for an intense workout. But even if I sweated and fought and pushed myself to the limit, I would never escape the tormenting thoughts of Alissa that clung to my mind like thirsty leeches.
Because I wanted to know more about her. Every little thing about her.
And I never wanted her to leave.