by L. A. Banks
He heard his name rasped and was at the side of the bed, squatting down, in seconds. “Easy . . . the wounds will be tender, but they’re healing nicely. Let me get you some water, don’t sit up. Lie back.”
Her body relaxed against the blood-encrusted blankets again and he went into the kitchen to get her some bottled water. He didn’t have the heart to move her to clean her up until the redness and swelling went down. He couldn’t cover her and risk having the sheet knit right into the wound—extracting it would have been torture.
“Here, baby,” he murmured, returning to her side and opening the cap. He brought the bottle to her parched, cracked lips, gently lifting her head, and watched her drink so quickly that water ran down the sides of her mouth. “Easy, easy.”
A coughing fit consumed her. “Ow . . .” She moaned and dropped back against the pillows as the fit abated. “Double ow.”
“It’s gonna hurt for a while, unless you eat,” he said, stroking her tousled hair back off her forehead.
“I can’t. The last thing I want right now is food— morphine would be good, though.”
“Drugs would compromise the healing. However, it’s coming along well.” He brushed her forehead with a soft kiss. “The scars have flattened out and by tomorrow, at worst in a few days, the pigment will normalize.”
“I don’t have a few days,” she said in a disgusted tone, closing her eyes. “I’ve got to report in. If they see this crap they might hot me right on the base.”
Max nodded. “I know. That’s why you must eat.”
“All right,” she said with a heavy breath. “What do you have that’s easy on the stomach? Scrambled eggs, something I can . . .” Her voice trailed off. “Why are you looking at me with those big, puppy-dog eyes that say ‘baby, you’re really not gonna like this’? Is it some nasty shaman brew?”
“Sasha . . . baby—”
“I already don’t like the sound of this.”
“Fresh kill.”
She just stared at him.
He rose. “I’ll be back shortly.”
“Oh, no, no, no,” she said, struggling to sit up.
“Don’t, you’ll open up your wounds!”
She eased herself back down, but her discomfort did not stop her argument.
“First of all, you could have said something more . . . I don’t know—eased me into it. You could have said ‘venison,’ or ‘rabbit’—not ‘fresh kill’ like you’ll be chasing behind a semi for road pizza.”
He fought a smile and lost. “We are not scavengers. I assure you, I’ll bring it down, not a semi.”
“Oh, that makes me feel better,” she said sarcastically. “You’re going to bring a dead deer. God, I want to wake up and be back in my bed in Colorado Springs.”
“I’ll skin it, fillet it, and otherwise prepare it outside.”
“Oh . . . thank you.”
He chuckled as he turned to leave and glanced back at her, taking in her pale complexion.
“Let me ask you something,” she said, her voice filled with attitude. “Why are you getting such a kick out of the fact that I fought her? I didn’t do it for you, you know.”
“I didn’t think you had,” he said, shocked. “You fought her for yourself.”
Sasha hesitated. “Yeah . . . that’s right.”
“If you hadn’t let her know you were not to be challenged, she would have made your life in this pack a living hell.”
Sasha sighed. “Reminds me of the good old days of grade school, junior high, and high school.” Sasha rolled her gaze up toward the ceiling.
He leaned against the bedroom door frame and struggled to get the amusement out of his tone before he spoke again. “I battled Fox Shadow for dominance earlier today, so she probably wanted to put you in your place. Essentially, make it known that while I still ruled the males of the pack, you wouldn’t get a position of title without earning it. Today you earned it.”
“I see.”
“I’m going to go get dinner. When I get back, I’ll fill you in on some of the nuances of life in the pack. Some of it doesn’t make sense to me, either, but has been done since time immemorial.”
“If I eat a little bit of whatever you catch, will my wounds stop hurting so much?”
“Yes . . . I promise.”
“All right,” she said, closing her eyes and gingerly putting her forearm over them. “Then hurry back.”
SHE WAS DISGUSTING even to herself when he came back in the bedroom with a TV tray and a plate. Blood caked her hair, her nails, crusted the bed, and a shiver finally consumed her as the scent of fresh deer blood assaulted her nose.
Max set a tray down on the dresser and came to the bed with a bowl of water and a hot towel.
“Your nail beds are going to be really, really tender for a little while, because you might have hit bone when you opened Falcon up.” He set the bowl down beside her and eased her hand into the water.
Sasha clenched her teeth.
He just held her hand steady and gently wiped between her fingers. Then he began to wipe the blood away from the rest of her body.
“I’ll feed you and then try to get you in the tub . . . we’ll get your hair washed. After you eat and heal a little more, all right?”
“Okay, okay,” she said in short bursts, squeezing her eyes shut as she sat back. “Good thing I kicked her ass.”
“Good thing you kicked it good, too.”
“Yeah. I’m da woman.” Sasha chuckled and then cringed. “Ow.”
He brushed her forehead with a kiss and offered her a warm smile. “You are most certainly da woman.”
“All right, I can do this.” She peeped open one eye as he moved the bowl to a nightstand and returned with a tray.
“Ohhh . . . Hunter . . . wow . . .” She wanted to cry, it was so sweet what he’d done, given the way he could have presented the meal.
He’d cleaned up before coming back to her, too. That earned him big points. Just seeing the trouble he’d gone to made her smile. Hunter had served the meal as though they were at a posh restaurant and had carefully laid paper-thin slices of venison in a fan on a porcelain plate, put a wine glass beside it filled with cool spring water, and had added a tall water glass filled with pussy willow stems as flowers.
“Thank you,” she said quietly, wanting to touch his face, but her fingers were too sore and it hurt to lift her arms.
“You’re welcome . . . and I’m really sorry, more than you can know, that you got so badly hurt.”
She watched him cut her meat on the plate. It was swimming in blood.
“Yeah, well, wasn’t your fault—had to establish my dominance and pee on my tree, I suppose.” She smiled as he brought a warm, dripping piece of meat to her mouth. Making jokes was not helping. She closed her eyes quickly and accepted the small piece he’d cut, and swallowed it whole. “Okay, okay, I can do this.”
Max picked a small piece up with his fingers and plopped it in his mouth as she squinted, making a gruesome face. “Steak tartar,” he said with a shrug. “Rare filet mignon. Sushi. It’s really not that bad.”
She nodded, but her facial expression remained unconvinced. “It’s just that I know where it came from,” she whispered, as though someone else could hear. “And it’s still warm.”
“If I told you I heated it up in the oven, would that make you feel better?” He smiled at her and shook his head while chewing and then swiped another piece of meat off her plate to pop in his mouth.
“Yes! Totally.” She chuckled, painfully.
“Aw . . . c’mon,” he said, taking another piece from her plate. He opened his mouth, placed the fresh venison on his tongue, and then closed his eyes. “Imagine you’re in a really, really nice restaurant. Allow the flavor of it to just roll over your tongue and to hit your sinuses right off your palate. Take your time, separate out all the flavor nuances . . . Sasha, it’s really good.”
She couldn’t believe it but the man had made saliva build in her mouth,
and just watching his mouth . . . those lush, sensuous lips work . . . as his voice had bottomed out to a low rumble . . . And the way his eyes rolled in slow ecstasy beneath his lids. Damn. If she wasn’t so beat up, he would have made her want to jump his bones.
“Try it with less resistance,” he said, picking up a piece with his fingers and bringing it to her mouth.
Slowly, carefully, she accepted the morsel from him, pulling his fingers past her lips, and then closed her eyes. This time she allowed the meat to roll over her tongue and the flavors to filter through her senses. It was so good, she moaned.
He quickly fed her another piece, then more as she licked his fingers and began feeding him in return. Strangely, after just a few bites, her nail beds were no longer sore, and she could even feel the tenderness in her side wounds ebbing.
She ate until the plate was empty. He went out and came back with more and she ate that too, her body mending itself rapidly.
Exquisite pain and restraint shone in his eyes as she finished what he’d brought her and sat back against the headboard breathing heavily. He gently kissed her sides where she’d been raked. Her hand absently stroked his hair.
“I’m going to bring you something that you’re going to have to trust me on . . . it will make you better faster than what you just had.”
She stared at him. His voice had definitely bottomed out and he had a lot more than five o’clock shadow beginning to cover his jaw. His hair had lengthened about two inches while they were eating, and he was hard enough to drive a railroad tie.
“Please don’t tell me anything really scary, Max.”
“No, no, no, nothing sick. But if you want the scars to knit quickly, organ meat is—”
“Organ meat?” she asked weakly.
He stood and raked his hair. “Heart, liver—”
Sasha squeezed her eyes shut. “You just had to ruin the moment, didn’t you?”
“You’ve got to heal from the inside out, and the pigment has to come all the way back.” He turned and left the room, calling over his shoulder, “Presentation is everything.”
HE HADN’T LIED. She couldn’t tell what part of the animal the next plate had come from, and with him feeding her what looked like gourmet samples off his long, sexy fingers . . . sometimes offering her a bit with a delicious kiss . . . whatever it was, was gone in no time.
“I’m going to draw you a lukewarm bath, clear water, no soap to sting . . . just to hydrate your skin, get the muck off, and make you feel better.”
She almost said “I love you,” jokingly, but something told her that he wouldn’t think it was funny at all. “Thank you,” she said instead.
He cupped her cheek, kissed her slowly, and then looked down at her wounds. “You don’t have to thank me . . . I love doing for you, Sasha. How do you feel?”
Her fingers played over the tender, new skin that wasn’t as sore as it had been and soon realized that she could lift her arms, sit up a bit, and even slowly bring her feet over the edge of the bed without yelping. “Much better . . . thank you, Max.”
“You are a very stubborn woman. I said you don’t have to thank me.”
She stopped him from standing with the gentle press of her hand on his arm. “Yes I do,” she said quietly. “Because I don’t take it for granted that someone will do for me. I’ve never had that. It’s new . . . and it’s very, very nice. I love it, in fact.”
He nodded and gave her his hand, and then cupped her elbow to help her stand. They both left it at that as they met in the middle of the verbal compromise, deciding without words to say the things that they loved, rather than being more specific. It just seemed less scary that way for two wolves.
She watched him putter after he’d deposited her on the closed toilet seat, readying the tub, testing the water temperature, and suddenly realized that she hadn’t gone all day. Her foot bouncing, the sound of water running in the tub made her close her eyes.
“You okay?”
Too embarrassed, she just nodded.
“Sasha, what’s—”
“Um, I really need to . . .” She nodded toward the toilet.
“Ah,” Max said and walked out of the bathroom.
After she finished, she flushed and dragged herself over to the sink to wash her hands, leaning on it for support. As much as she’d just found every tender spot on herself again, she had to laugh.
“I guess that would have made it official,” she called out, to let him know he could return. “Peeing in earshot makes you boyfriend and girlfriend.”
He laughed hard. “So if I’m in the bathroom with you we’re officially married?”
She laughed with him and sat down carefully on the now closed toilet seat.
“You ready to get wet?”
She looked at him and arched an eyebrow.
“Your mind is in the gutter.”
A half-smile tugged at her cheek. “Hey, I’m just observant—I’m naked, you’re taking off a bloody T-shirt. Pecs look great, abs are killin’ me. Soooo . . .”
He smiled broadly. “You feeling that much better?”
Her shoulders sagged. “No . . . I’m just talking trash to preserve my dignity.”
His eyes became slightly forlorn. “You are not making this easy.”
“What?” She grinned as he came to help her into the tub.
“This is the last night I get to have you to myself . . . before you go back to them.” There was no smile in his voice. The tone was sober and wistful.
“You act like I’m not coming back.” She looked at him, no more teasing in her voice, as he helped her into the water.
“It’s just that if they double-cross you . . . hurt you in any way . . . try to chain you in a lab, or . . .” He began to gently sponge her shoulders. “I’ll lose my mind. I promise you they’ll have to put me down.”
“I’m coming back—I won’t let them get me,” she promised him quietly, touching his face. Water made the velvety covering on his jaw glisten as her eyes searched his. “I will come back . . . because the thought of them putting you down hard is something my soul couldn’t withstand.”
He closed his eyes and covered her hand for a moment. “Then we need a plan.” He opened his eyes and looked at her hard. “You need to know what you’re going to say to them when you go back . . . how you’re going to play it, how you’re going to make it so we can communicate and work in unison right under their noses without a problem.”
“Yeah. I know.”
They fell silent as his steady, consistent touch sponged clean water through her hair, over her shoulders, and down her breasts. The steadiness of it, the calm reassurance of it, made her relax and lean back and close her eyes.
“You’re my contact,” she murmured. “You are a tracker-shaman. They employ shamans and others with psychic abilities, so they’ll buy it.”
“All right,” he said, pouring water down her bent legs. “So I found a disturbance in the Rocky Mountain chain here—which is why you came . . . you heard me talking in a bar, asking questions at the Road Hawg earlier that night. After what you learned about Rod, you had to be sure there were no more like him around. You found me, we went to a diner, and you investigated further. I said come up to see some tracks and abnormal wolf patterns that flow up and over the Canadian border. It goes all the way up into the Cassiar Mountains, up near Yukon Territory.”
“Also why Doc was up here. Great minds thinking alike, we bumped into each other. You want to protect the few scattered Ute tribe members that are here and not in Utah . . . so you were willing to work with me, be my guide. But I had to get back to report in, plus a storm was coming.” Her voice became quiet. “Then Doc told me what happened to the squad . . . and I was more determined than ever to hunt down anything that might have escaped and close a dimensional distortion, and make sure nobody is smuggling virally infected DNA.”
She was glad that he had allowed the silence and the light, trickling sound of water to speak volumes for a while.
So much had happened in such a short span of time that Rod’s death, the deaths of the other squad members, and Woods and Fisher being on the run still didn’t seem real. Until there was actual closure, it would remain a floating, airy thing that she couldn’t wrap her mind around. Just like all the things Doc had told her. He’d said them plain enough, but it was so new, so unbelievable, that she had to remind herself that things had changed. And yet Hunter had helped her devise a plan that was close enough to the truth that she could pass a lie detector test, even get past the in-house psychics. That was genius.
“I’m going to try to get them to let me run point on finding genetic smuggling operations.” She sucked in a huge breath. “I’m going to say that a source put a bug in my ear. A little birdie told me that the North Korean thing was only the tip of the iceberg.”
Max’s hands kept working, untangling her hair, and then he bent over to let the dirty, blood-darkened water out of the tub and replenish it with clean water. “Canada, especially up in the Yukon and above, is the perfect trade post for Russia, China, Pakistan, and Europe. All a good smuggler has to do is bounce off the tip of Russia, hide their way through Alaska, and pick up a hot trail in the Yukon. Finding a person out there is like finding a needle in a haystack. Borders are weak; the temps for moving DNA are perfect. And every legend you’ve ever heard about the wolf originates in said climes. We don’t understand it, but there’s gotta be a reason.”
“Okay,” she said, nodding. “You’re my outside contact, have seen one, and it’s on the move. You’re my shaman.”
“I see dead people, lady,” he murmured, brushing her ear with a kiss.