Chapter Eighteen – Lucy

 

I sat on the edge of my bed, wash rag and bowl in hand, staring down at Carter’s motionless form as he lay there in the pitch darkness. At the way he slept beneath my floral print covers, nearly as motionless as a corpse, with just the soft rising and falling of his chest to indicate he was still alive and kicking.

Well, not kicking, exactly.

I’d kept the lights off when I finally got Carter’s naked form inside my apartment. I figured turning them on would be like sending a beacon out to our assailants. That is, if they were still following us. Which, something told me, they were. Because if the man in my bed right now could take a licking like that, and still keep ticking, then why couldn’t they? Clearly, they were shifters, too.

I leaned forward, damp rag in hand, and began to clean the blood from his shoulders and forehead, trying to see how bad the cuts were. Only the sound of the fans, the sloshing of water in the bowl, and his soft breathing filled the room as I worked.

I should have taken him to the emergency room. I knew I should have. But, for whatever reason, I’d listened to him. I’d listened to the bastard. Hell, he’d fallen out of a three story building and crushed an SUV on his landing! How had he even survived the initial impact?

He didn’t react or move, just continued to lie there with a slack expression on his passed-out face. I sucked in a breath as I washed away the blood and dirt from his skin like a reverse paint brush.

There was nothing.

I sat up straighter on the bed, blinking my eyes like maybe that would allow me to see his wounds.

But, just like before, there was nothing. Absolutely nothing.

No cuts. No lacerations. No broken bones. Only minor bruises.

“Jesus Christ,” I murmured as I put the damp towel back on the edge of the bowl. “Holy shit.”

Nothing from him.

I dropped the towel in the bowl and set it aside on my small nightstand, trying to think of what I needed to do next, my mind still attempting to wrap itself around the fact that he was somehow still alive.

And in my bed. Naked.

God, how had I gotten into this mess? Giant rats? Bears falling out of hotel windows? Demons burning people alive? Curses, maybe?

Guns?

Shaking my head, I rose from the mattress and went into the small bath just off my bedroom. I pumped my soap into both palms and turned on the sink with my elbows, I found myself hoping I hadn’t picked up some kind of weird blood-borne illness from either of the two shifters I’d helped tonight.

I lathered my hands with soap, scrubbed them hard. The crimson runoff swirled in the sink, slowly whirlpooling away in the darkness. I dried them on a small towel by the door, held each one up in the thin sliver of streetlight coming in between the blinds, and checked for cuts or nicks I hadn’t known about.

In the movies, at least, you could become a werewolf from just their bite, or their claws. I wasn’t sure about their blood, though, or how coming into contact with it would affect me.

Turning my hands in the light, I continued to check for anything out of the ordinary, like strange hair growth or elongated claws sprouting from my fingertips. But, all that stuff was just Hollywood, right? This was, weirdly, real life, and not the movies.

If I hadn’t been fine to work on him, though, Carter would probably have mentioned something. Wouldn’t he have?

Of course he would have. I had no doubt about that, even after only having known him for less than a day.

Nothing. Not that I could see, at least. Sighing, I dropped my hands back to my sides and returned to the bedroom, to my patient’s side. He still lay there like a big bump on a log, his breathing steady and deep. Growing deeper all the time, too.

I pushed my hair back behind my ears with my two freshly-cleaned hands, and took a seat back on the edge of the bed.

“Dammit, Carter,” I whispered. “What kind of shit did you drag me into?”

But, even as the words left my mouth, a sense of exhaustion and bone-deep weariness was settling on me, and I had to fight to stifle a yawn. A glance at my alarm clock told me it was already nearly three in the morning. I’d been in two shootouts in one night, and driven away from the same number of crime scenes at the same time.

And here I was, stuck with Carter. The Terminator, it seemed like. His heavy features barely visible in the darkness of my bedroom. His limbs still strong and inviting-looking. But, nonetheless, powered down for the night.

I sat up a little bit straighter, rubbing my eyes. I wasn’t long for the waking world, and I knew it. I rose from my spot on the bed, still not disturbing him in the slightest, and went to step out into the living room, to find my couch beneath a pile of laundry I still hadn’t had a chance to fold.

I paused at the door, though, one foot in the short hallway that led to my living room, looking back over my shoulder at the slumbering form. Remembered, briefly but intensely, the way his hand had felt on mine back in the hotel room just before the two shifters had burst in and tried to kill us.

I remembered, too, the look on his face when I’d pulled my hand back. And the sense of shame I’d felt as I saw the hurt I’d caused him.

For whatever reason, I slowly pulled my foot back from the hall and turned on my heel. I walked back over to the bed, my footfalls as quiet as falling leaves in the darkness, and came to a stop at its side.

I kicked off my flats and sat down on the edge of my bed, and, still fully clothed, lay down next to the man who’d saved my life twice that evening. I curled up on my side like the little spoon, and pillowed my hands on the side of my head.

As I closed my eyes and began to drift off to sleep, I didn’t even have time to idly think about how long it had been since I’d last had a man in my bed, asleep…or not.

No, instead, I just felt a sense of comfort and security from Carter, from even his passed-out, injured form. That somehow, no matter what happened, no matter how bad things were, he’d be out of this bed in a heartbeat to protect me. To do whatever was necessary.

Just like I would be for him.

Just like we had done for each other already, in only the scant few hours we’d known each other.

As I drifted off to exhausted slumber, I knew, too, that the hotel room wouldn’t be the last of it, either.

Whatever was really going on in Shamrock was just getting started.