She set the picture down and moved into the living room. The floors were sleek, dark wood and there was a black leather sectional that dominated the middle of the room, facing the fireplace. Above the fireplace was a large flat-screen TV, and Hannah could imagine Liam sprawled there on the couch, looking up at a football game after a long day of work. Probably there was some woman curled up and tucked under his arm, her feet burrowing under the plush gold and black pillows that sat in the corners of the sectional. There were more family photographs around, hanging on the walls and decorating the mantle and the coffee table. One wall was filled entirely with black bookcases filled with books with titles about the law. Under the window on the far side of the room was an old-fashioned looking desk. It was black, and it had a roll-down top that lifted easily when Hannah touched it. Beneath the roll-down top, there were tidy papers arranged as well as a few expensive fountain pens sitting in their original cases. She closed the top quickly, not intending to pry into his private affairs.
Hannah wandered through the dining room and into the kitchen. It had a European feel, with a rack above the sink for pots and pans to hang. The kitchen table was small, with just two chairs on either side of it and a bowl of fresh fruit placed in the center. Everything was spotlessly clean, and when she opened the fridge, it was well stocked with a variety of foods and alcohol.
Frankly, it was a very impressive home, and she was a little amazed that Liam had done this all himself. His demeanor as a bad boy ladies’ man tempted her to have the impression that perhaps he had yet to grow up and really stabilize himself, but he had quite an impressive career, and a lovely home, and everything else that he could want, from what she could see. Maybe playing the field didn’t really make him immature. Maybe it just meant …that’s all he wanted right now.
Hannah turned away from the fridge and walked back into the living room. She wanted to go and see what his bedroom looked like, but she could hear the shower running, and she didn’t dare approach. So, she sat down on the edge of his couch and then she settled in more fully, finding the cushions quite comfortable.
Just as she got settled, she heard Liam groan and whisper her name. The sound just barely reached her ears, but it made her sit straight up on the couch. “Liam?”
She got no answer, and she began to worry. Was he hurt? Was there some other aspect to the curse? He had said her name—surely he needed her for something.
Hannah got up, rushing into the bedroom and calling for him. “Liam!”
Something crashed to the ground loudly. “Ow! Dammit! Ouch!”
“Are you all okay?” Hannah opened the bathroom door and hurried in, looking around until her eyes landed on the shower, which was made completely of glass and only half-steamed up. Her eyes went wide as she saw Liam standing there, stark naked, the rack that held his soaps and shampoos on the floor of the shower and the soap bottles rolling at his feet. “Oh!”
“Well, hello,” Liam said, sounding somewhere between amused and confused. “Something I can help you with?”
“You called me …” Hannah said, squeezing her eyes shut and spinning around so that she didn’t keep staring at his beautiful, naked body. “You—you said my name. I thought you were hurt.”
“You heard me say your name?”
“Yes,” Hannah said. “I didn’t just burst in here for no reason. I thought you needed me.”
“Oh, I do.”
Hannah felt desire pool in the pit of her stomach, the tenor of his words unmistakable. And she realized in a moment of clarity why he had said her name, and how very much she was not supposed to have heard him. Her cheeks flushed with pleasure and embarrassment, and she felt for the door, her eyes still squeezed shut. “I’m going—I’m going. Sorry. I didn’t—sorry.”
The water turned off, and she heard the shower door open. “Hannah …”
She swallowed hard, peeking an eye open, so that she could finally find the door. “No, don’t. Liam—really.” Grabbing the door, Hannah rushed into the bedroom, not knowing what he intended to do by stepping out of the shower and coming towards her. But she knew that he was used to having whatever woman he wanted say yes to him whenever he wanted her, and she didn’t trust herself not to be another one of those women—not after catching sight of him like that, standing like a Greek god in his shower.
Hannah stumbled into his bedroom and headed for the bedroom door, but behind her, she heard a gasp and then a groan of pain. There was another crash on the bathroom floor. “Hannah … Hannah …”
Stopping at the bedroom door, she turned towards the bathroom, torn. Was he playing around, trying to get her to come back into the room? Was he really hurt? She waited, her heart pounding in her chest.
“Hannah … help …”
She took a step towards the bathroom door without knowing why. “Liam?”
“Hannah!”
There was genuine panic in his voice, and it jolted her into action just as she began to smell the iron-laden scent of blood. “Liam!” Hannah shouted, rushing towards the bathroom and throwing the door open again.
He was on the tile, the shower still running behind him. He was naked and sprawled on the floor, and there was an X etched into his back, the dark, jagged lines flowing with blood that was spilling over his skin and down onto the tile. “Hannah … run …”
She didn’t know how everything had changed so quickly, and it was hard to get her mind off of him fantasizing about her, to him bleeding out on the bathroom floor, but she forced herself to focus. And she did run, but towards him instead of away from him. Ignoring the blood and the water that was spilling everywhere, she knelt beside him and took his hand in hers. “It’s okay. I’ve got you. I’m here. I’ve got you.”
“It hurts …”
“I know. I know.”
“Run—it’s not safe. Get out, Hannah.”
“No,” she said, firmly, grabbing a towel and pressing it to his back. He shouted, and she winced, hating to cause him pain. But she had to stop the bleeding. There was so much blood. So much of it—all over. “It’s okay.” Though she kept saying that over and over, she had no idea if it was. “I’m here. I’ve got you, Liam. I’m right here.”
With one hand still pressing down on the towel on his back, she pulled her cell phone out of the back pocket of her jeans and dialed Jordan, putting the phone on speaker. Jordan answered almost immediately.
“Hey, is it urgent? Wes and I are going ice-skating.”
Hannah didn’t have time to think much less say how strange it was for Jordan to be going ice-skating. “I need you. I’m at a client’s house. He’s cursed, and he’s got an X etched into his back. Blood everywhere. I can’t take him to the hospital. I need you to help me heal him.”
Jordan didn’t hesitate. “Give me the address.”
Hannah rattled it off to her, and there was a pause. “It’ll take me twenty minutes to get there at least, but we’re leaving now. Can you wait that long?”
“Just drive fast,” Hannah said. She hung up the phone and set it aside, looking down at Liam. He had lost so much blood, and he was pale with dark circles under his eyes. “It’s all right,” she whispered, both to him and to herself. “Liam, look at me. Talk to me.”
“Hannah …”
“Do you have any bandages? Any rubbing alcohol?”
Liam glanced towards the cabinets that were under the dual sink to their right. “Yeah …”
Hannah didn’t want to move away from him to get the supplies, and she didn’t think that he would remember much of this later anyway, so she just acted. Using the power that came with her black dragon scales, she opened the cabinet door from afar, moving the bottles around with her mind until she found a first aid kit stashed in the back. She lifted it, pulling it towards her until it was lying beside her. With one hand, she opened the kit, searching around in it for the small bottle of rubbing alcohol. She opened it and pulled the towel away from Liam’s back, gasping at the bloody mess that she saw there. T
he blood was still flowing freely, the pressure seeming to have little effect on it.
“Shit,” Hannah whispered under her breath. Liam’s eyes were closed. She knew that pouring the alcohol was going to make everything hurt so much worse, but she knew that was she had to do next was inevitable and cleansing the area of any bacteria first was essential. Hannah poured the alcohol over him, using the cleaner side of the towel to press it into the wounds.
Liam shouted with pain, bucking upward as the burning liquid seeped into the gashes in his back. He writhed, and Hannah felt her eyes tearing up as she forcefully held him down and watched the skin grow black around the edges of the wound. He was going to keep bleeding, and twenty minutes was too long.
Hannah bent her head down and kissed Liam’s hair. Then she got up, knowing that he was unable to tell her where to find things this time. She ran into the living room and began pulling open all of the drawers she could find—in the desk, in the coffee table, in the stand by the couch. She searched and searched until she finally found a torch for lighting candles, and then she ran to the kitchen, pulling a knife out of the knife block with her mind and winging it into her hand. She ran with the knife and torch back to the bathroom, and the whole way, she was heating the metal of the blade with the torch.
When she got back to the bathroom and dropped to her knees, Liam was still bleeding profusely. From his profile, she could tell that his eyes were closed, his mouth was slack, and his skin was paler than she had ever seen before. Hannah closed her eyes and shuddered with the knowledge of what she was about to do, and then she forced her eyes open again. Staring down at the wounds in Liam’s back, she pressed the flame-hot knife to one section of the X after another, reheating it between each new press.
Liam twitched whenever the blade touched him, but he was only semiconscious, and she was glad that he was spared most of the pain she was inflicting. All he did was groan and shudder as she carefully cauterized each section of the wound.
It was a terrible method of stopping the bleeding, usually. Cauterization heated the tissue and caused the blood to clot, stopping the person from bleeding out, but the burns that it left behind almost always created a terrible infection. They would deal with that later, though. Jordan would help with that, and they would get him an antibiotic. He would make it through the infection, but she had to make sure that he didn’t bleed out completely first.
The blood did slow as she sealed the wounds, and he soon had a mangled black X on his back, the skin red all around it. He was breathing shallowly, and Hannah lay down beside him in the blood, resting her hand on his face and stroking her fingers along his jaw. “Liam,” she whispered, searching his features for some hint of life. He was there—he hadn’t left her. But he was weak. “Liam, I’m so sorry.”
His fingers twitched towards her, but he made no other move, and Hannah continued to lie there until she heard the sound of a car pulling into the driveway. She sat up, draping the towel over Liam’s lower half to preserve his modesty, and then she called out to Jordan, “Come in! We’re in the bathroom—I don’t want to leave him.”
Moments later, she heard the lock broken on the front door and then Jordan was rushing towards her. When Jordan appeared in the doorway of the bathroom, she cursed under her breath, picking her way over the bloody tiles and crouching down beside Liam. Without having to be told anything, Jordan took Liam in her arms, and she began to impart her own power to heal his body. As she did, Jordan looked up at Hannah, her expression grim. “Is any of this blood yours?”
Hannah shook her head, although she was covered in blood. “No. It’s all his.”
“Shit,” Jordan said. “That’s too much blood. Way too much blood for one person to lose.”
“I know.”
“You seared the wounds?”
Hannah nodded. “I had to. He wasn’t going to make it.”
Jordan nodded back. “Good. You saved his life then.”
Wes appeared in the doorway, his hands braced on either side of the doorjamb. “Oh my God. What happened in here?”
“He was in the shower, and I heard him shout for help,” Hannah said, sitting up and pushing her hair out of her face. She looked at the shower, which was still running, the water no doubt now freezing cold. “When I came in, he was on the floor, and there was an X etched into his back, blood pouring from it.” She shuddered. “It was terrifying. I just—I acted. I had to stop the bleeding.”
Jordan pressed her hands to Liam’s back, pouring in her healing power. “I can feel him improving. It’s fine now. He’s going to be okay—you stopped the blood, and I’ll take care of the rest.”
“He’s going to be scarred,” Hannah murmured, reaching her fingers out and gently touching his skin which was now puckered and dark around the wound marks. “He was so perfect before this.”
“What happened?” Wes asked again, walking over and turning the shower off. “Why is he like this?”
“He came to me because he has a curse on him,” Hannah said, her eyes still riveted on Liam’s back. “A curse of mediocrity, delivered by the grandmother of a girl who he supposedly stole from. Now the girl is dead. Just proclaimed murdered a few hours ago. And now here he is.”
“Another curse,” Jordan said. “This one meant to kill him because he killed her.”
Hannah nodded. “I can only assume that’s what it is. The X on his back …it’s a bit …you know. Obvious.”
“Get cleaned up,” Jordan said to Hannah. “You’re covered in his blood, and he’s going to start coming around soon. You don’t want him to see you this way.”
Jordan stood up, her tiny frame lifting Liam with no problem. Hannah got up too, draping the towel around Liam’s waist again, her hands trembling slightly as she looked down into his face.
“I’ll lay some towels out on the bed,” Wes said, opening up cabinets and taking out towels to drape over the bedcovers. “You can lay him down there.”
Jordan carried Liam out, Wes beside her, and Hannah stood there in Liam’s bathroom, trembling. She stripped down and stood under the freezing cold shower spray, letting the water wash the blood from her skin. She stood there for several minutes, closing her eyes and gathering her wits about her again. It wasn’t the first time that she had seen someone wounded, and it wasn’t the first time that she had been the one responsible for making sure that a wounded person didn’t die. She had patched up many a wound in her time. But this—finding Liam on the floor, blood pouring from an X etched into his skin with the hatred of a curse—it had shaken her. And it had shaken her more than it should have because she liked him more than she should.
She needed to keep her head straight, now more than ever.
With that resolve, Hannah stepped out of the shower and wrapped a large, white fluffy towel around her body. She was shivering with cold, but she paid no attention to that as she hurried into Liam’s bedroom to find him lying on the bed on his stomach with Jordan sitting beside him, her hands on his torso.
Wes met her with a sweatshirt and a pair of lounge pants. “Here. I found these in Liam’s closet. I figure they’ll be warm and comfortable enough for you.”
Hannah nodded gratefully and took them, padding back into the bedroom long enough to let the towel drop and pull on the oversized clothing. The soft fabric swallowed her up, but she didn’t mind it at all. The clothes smelled like Liam, and they were soft against her skin.
Hugging her arms to herself, Hannah went back out to the bedroom and climbed up onto the big bed with its navy covers and white pillows. Liam’s eyes fluttered open at her, and he gave her a half smile. His hand reached for hers, and her fingers curled around his as their hands met.
“It’s okay,” Hannah said, lying down beside Liam and watching his face. “Rest. You’re going to be fine.”
Jordan slipped off the bed, walking over towards Wes. Hannah glanced at her friend, nodding as Jordan pointed out to the main room of the house. Jordan and Wes would give her some time alone wit
h Liam, but they wouldn’t go far. She understood without Jordan having to speak the words, and she was grateful.
The bedroom door closed behind Jordan and Wes, and Hannah abandoned her resolve to keep things strictly professional. She held Liam’s hand tightly, and she rested her forehead against his shoulder, her eyes closing. He pressed her hand ever so slightly, and then his breathing grew steadier, and his muscles went slack. He had slipped into a sleep, and Hannah was glad that he might get a few hours’ reprieve from dealing with what had just happened.
She curled closer to him and settled in to keep watch.
Chapter 10
Liam
When he opened his eyes, the first thing he saw was Hannah’s face, lying so close to his that their noses almost touched. His hand was wrapped around hers, and her hair, loose from its braid, was spilling over both of them. She smelled of soap and sweetness, and her body was so soft and warm curled against his. For one lovely moment, all he saw, and felt, and smelled was her. And then the pain came rushing back in, and he remembered everything that had happened. He remembered that he had been lying on his bathroom floor, sure that he would die, and that Hannah had saved him. He remembered two other people arriving. He remembered lots of hurried talking, and he remembered the pain easing. He remembered a small woman carrying him as if he was weightless.
Liam was desperate for water. His throat was parched and raw. But he didn’t want to disturb Hannah, who looked so peaceful lying there beside him. Leaning over, he gently kissed her cheek just because he could, and he might not ever get the chance to again. His fingers untangled carefully from hers, and he began to sit up, twinging with pain at every moment.
Rockwell Agency: Boxset Page 78