Inside the Flame (Elemental Mages Book 2)

by Rose O'Brien

  He frowned. It would be great if his body would stop reacting to her. Maybe he was just hungry? He hadn’t eaten in—gods, he couldn’t remember. That was it. It was the calorie deficit that was making him feel funny, not a certain elusive smile.

  Climbing in the truck and starting the engine, he looked back at Bast, who was carefully cleaning dried blood from her fingernails with one of her daggers.

  “Where to, your magnificence?”

  Bast leaned forward and spoke in Jen’s ear. “This is why I like him. He knows how to address a lady.”

  Jen almost smiled again. Theron kept his eyes ahead.

  Bast directed them west and before long, they found themselves on the outskirts of the city, driving on a road that might have been paved at one time. They’d been driving for about fifteen minutes when Bast signaled for them to pull over. There was a little cinderblock house set back from the road and several hundred yards from any of its neighbors. The facade was spartan, and there were no lights on the exterior or shining through the windows.

  “This is the place,” Bast purred.

  As Theron slid out of the SUV, his shoulder gave another staggering scream of pain that ricocheted around his chest. Holding back his grunt of pain, he was grateful Jen and Bast were on the other side of the vehicle and couldn’t see his wince.

  Jen was right. Something would have to be done about that shoulder.

  “No offense, Bast, but this place doesn’t seem like your style,” he called.

  In the darkness, Bast was nearly invisible, her hair, skin and black leather blending into the night.

  “That’s the point, darling.”

  With a wave of her hand, the metal door swung open.

  “I have little crash pads all over the place. They’re just places to sleep off a hangover or bring a hookup. No sense in making them conspicuous.”

  With a clang, the metal door shut behind them, sealing them in darkness. A sizzle of fear lit off at the base of his skull, but he ignored it. Fire mages had a fundamental distrust of the dark. It was anathema to their nature.

  Bast snapped her fingers and candles flared to life around them. They were standing in a little entry hall. To the right, there was a traditional looking kitchen with a wood oven and basin. It was clean, but it clearly hadn’t been used in decades.

  “Bathroom’s down the hall,” Bast said, indicating a closed door ahead of them. “Never bothered to get the place wired for electric, but there’s running water.”

  To the right was a large room. A double mattress with a carved wooden headboard sat against one wall. It had black satin sheets and was heaped with furs and pillows.

  At his raised eyebrow, Bast said, “I make some concessions to comfort. I may be a war goddess, but that doesn’t mean I have to sleep on an army cot.”

  He just smiled at her.

  “Try not to get your mage blood on my sheets,” she said.

  He spotted a fireplace in the corner. It was a fat-bellied ceramic and stone number, with a metal chimney that led up to the ceiling. Wood had already been laid. It was a chilly night already, with the promise of lower temperatures in the air. The wood lit easily with only a second’s concentration, but even that tiny effort left Theron feeling drained. He needed food, meds and rest, in that order.

  Bast stepped in front of him, pressing her body in close and running those shimmering gold nails against the fairy leather covering his chest.

  “It’s yours for the night, gorgeous,” she purred by his ear. “I’ll ward the place when I leave. Nothing, and I mean nothing, will come anywhere near you.”

  She pulled back and he met those glowing yellow eyes. His head swam for a moment and he wasn’t sure if it was from all the exertion or from the heavy energy Bast was throwing off.

  She held up a black claw like the one she’d given him after their weekend in Cairo. She slid it into the pocket of his fatigues.

  “Call me sometime,” she said.

  And with that, she was gone.

  A noise behind snapped his head around. Jen was by the door, the bag with her camera and clothes was at her feet. In her hand was the first aid kit from the SUV. The thing was the size of a small suitcase.

  “Let’s get to it,” he said, gesturing with his good hand to his busted shoulder.

  Moving to the bed, Jen set the first aid kit down and started rummaging through it, pulling out some squares of canvas and some gauze. There was the rattle of a pill bottle and she turned, pressing six white pills in his hand.

  “That’s twelve hundred milligrams of ibuprofen. It ought to bring the inflammation down.”

  He swallowed them and stayed quiet. Jen’s movements were nervous, her breathing a little uneven. He didn’t want to spook her, but he didn’t want to move away. She touched the items she’d pulled out of the case, one by one, like she was running through a checklist.

  She turned and almost bumped into his injured arm before she jerked back.

  “Sorry!” she said quickly and a little too loudly.

  Reaching out with his good arm, he caught her hand in his and met her eyes.

  “What’s got you so jumpy, princess?”

  She looked away, not meeting his eyes.

  “I know how to fix your shoulder, but it’s been awhile,” she said. “If I do it wrong, I could really hurt you.”

  She was worried about hurting him? That surprised him. What had changed, and when did it happen?

  He squeezed her hand and she met his eyes again.

  “I’m already hurt. I doubt you can make it worse.”

  Her mouth was tight and lines of worry showed around her eyes, but she nodded.

  “Okay.” Her voice was strong and sounded confident. “Lay on your back on the floor.”

  He fought a groan as his shoulder blade came in contact with the floor, his left arm cradled against his body, and watched as she pulled her boots and socks off. She padded over to him on bare feet.

  They were adorable feet. Nothing else about Jen Jiang was adorable, but her feet were. They were small and slender, with long toes and trimmed, plain nails. He hadn’t expected her to be the type to paint her nails, but for just a second, he thought that paint belonged on those nails.

  For all her fast-talking toughness and the absence of anything soft and feminine about her, he still had the niggling sense that it was a front. It was like a new coat of paint that didn’t quite hide what was underneath it.

  “I’m going to straighten your arm,” she said, sitting beside him. Her fingers wrapped around his wrist and her other hand was under his elbow, gently lifting until his arm was at a forty-five degree angle from his body.

  The movements caused a grinding pain in his shoulder and he winced.

  Her movements were slow and steady and he concentrated on breathing evenly, trying not to groan through his clenched teeth.

  She put her left palm against his and wrapped her fingers around his thumb as he did the same. Her right hand gripped his forearm below his elbow. Her dainty feet were placed against his ribs, just below his armpit.

  Leaning her weight back and using her legs for leverage, she started pulling, slowly and steadily. The pain began to build and his breath quickened until it was leaving him in short sharp puffs. He could feel the muscles and tendons in his arm stretching in directions they were never meant to go.

  Jen was growling with exertion, pulling with everything she had. He was grateful she’d taken her shoes off. His ribs were sore from the collision with the truck and the fight. Her bare feet felt like branding irons. Her boots would have been even worse.

  There was a sudden shift in his shoulder and with a loud pop, the bone slid back into the socket. Jen released his hand and leaned back. The pain had decreased by about ninety percent, he realized.

  “You’re amazing!” he said, starting to move his shoulder around to test it.

  “Don’t move it.” That was an order if he’d ever heard one.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he
responded, staying where he was on the concrete floor.

  She knelt by him again, the canvas and gauze in her hands. With quick movements, she folded the canvas into a triangle and gingerly worked it under his arm, wrapping it around and tying it behind his neck in a sling.

  While she worked, he watched her. A little crease had appeared between her thin, dark brows as she concentrated. Her bottom lip was caught between her teeth. She was dusty, bruised, bloody, and exhausted. And she was gorgeous.

  Jen began pulling long strips of gauze from the roll. As she leaned over him to work them under his back, he caught her scent. Her hair smelled like orange blossoms. And beneath the dust and sweat, her skin smelled like honey.

  She leaned back and began tying knots in the gauze, binding his arm to his torso. Sitting back, she nodded.

  “You can sit up now.”

  He rose slowly, trying not to move the shoulder.

  “It feels good. Thanks,” he told her, feeling a little awkward.

  As she moved back to the first aid kit, he saw the blood on her shirt.

  “Shit!” At her startled look, he continued, “Your ribs. I forgot about them. I’m sorry. We should have done you first.”

  She glanced down at the blood stain and the ragged skin showing through the tears in her shirt.

  “I kind of forgot about them too, actually,” she said.

  She lifted the hem and touched the wounds with a hiss.

  “Not deep, but they hurt like a bitch. The bleeding’s mostly stopped. They could use some sutures, but I can’t do it on myself, and you’re one-handed.”

  Levering himself up off the floor, he went over to the first aid kit and pushed some things around until he found what he was looking for.

  “Surgical glue and butterfly bandages. Works just about as well as stitches, and they’re a lot easier to apply.”

  Between their three hands, they made quick work of cleaning the wounds. Jen hissed when the isopropyl hit the raw gashes, but otherwise didn’t flinch. So, she could handle pain.

  He applied the surgical glue since he had a better view of the wounds. While she held the hem of her shirt up, he filled the three gashes with adhesive. Her skin was warm where his fingers brushed.

  With his help, she was able to pinch the skin together and apply the little butterfly strips to hold it all together. Theron held a gauze pad over the wounds and she handed him strips of tape to hold it in place.

  When he was satisfied that the wound was treated as well as it could be, he held up his right fist for her to bump.

  “Now that’s fuckin’ teamwork,” he said.

  One side of her mouth twisted upward, and she rolled her eyes.

  ***

  Jen made quick work of brushing her teeth. A shower was out of the question. The surgical glue would need a few hours to fully set, so she used about fifty baby wipes from a package she’d found in the first aid kit to clean all the blood and dirt off her skin.

  Slipping on a fresh shirt and khakis, she unbraided her hair and started running a brush through it until it fell in dark, kinky waves around her shoulders.

  When had it gotten so long? It was past the middle of her back now. That’s what happened when you didn’t go to a salon for five years, she supposed, but there weren’t many of those in war zones.

  Her bare feet made almost no noise as she padded back down the hall to the main room of Bast’s little cottage. The place was clean, but clearly it was used very rarely. And judging from the satin sheets on the bed, it was used for one purpose only.

  As she came into the room, she saw Theron standing by the little fireplace. The flames dancing inside were the room’s only illumination and heavy shadows filled the corners of the room. It didn’t get cold in Iraq very often, but it was currently the middle of winter. It was chilly and there was the threat of a freeze in the air.

  The room was warming quickly and Jen was thankful. If it was one thing she hated, it was being cold. Having grown up in Los Angeles, cold was not in her vocabulary.

  Putting her back against the wall, she let herself slide down to a sitting position. She pulled her knees to her chest, folded her arms across the top of her knees and let her head fall forward. As her eyes fell closed, she tried not to think about how much the gashes on her ribs hurt.

  “You’re not sleeping there.” Theron’s voice sounded loud and harsh in the near darkness. She looked up at him, eyeing the sling and the gauze that bound his arm to his chest.

  “You’re too busted up to sleep on the floor,” she said. “Since you won’t take the morphine, you’re going to need to be as comfortable as possible to get any rest.”

  The big stubborn brute had refused to let her inject him with the painkillers she’d found in the first aid kit.

  “It doesn’t feel right,” he said, turning his eyes to the gigantic bed that dominated the room. It wasn’t so much a piece of furniture as it was a playground.

  “I’ve slept like this more than a few nights.” She put her head down again. “Don’t worry about me.

  She’d slept in this exact position in more airports than she could count, in armored personnel carriers when she was embedded with military units, and in other random places over the years.

  “I can’t help worrying about you.”

  His voice had softened and her eyes found him again in the darkness. The firelight caught in his hair and brought out red lowlights beneath the blonde. In the harsh shadows, his dark blue eyes looked black as they landed on hers.

  “That’s your damage, not mine,” she told him, resolutely shutting her eyes and putting her head down again.

  Footsteps moved over to the bed and she heard the rustle of cloth. She peeked and saw him sitting on that ridiculous black satin covered bed in his T-shirt and boxers. His fatigue pants were laid across the foot of the bed and he was settling that gun belt of his on the headboard, no doubt so he could draw his guns in a heartbeat if he needed them.

  Despite his injuries and his weariness, his body was all coiled, deadly potential. He was a living weapon, always sharp and ready to cut. She’d do well to remember that, no matter how beautiful he looked in the firelight.

  He settled awkwardly beneath the sheet and blankets, trying not to jostle his busted shoulder. As he stilled, he blew out an exasperated breath. She shifted slightly, trying to find a comfortable position and the sound of her feet against the floor sounded loud in the silence of the room.

  They stayed like that for several minutes, each shifting uncomfortably, trying not to make any noise. When Theron’s voice came out of the darkness, she almost jumped, the tension having wound her tight.

  “Jen, I—" he began. Silence stretched. He started again, “I’m too keyed up to sleep, adrenaline is hitting me hard. How about you?”

  “Same.”

  “So,” he said quietly into the firelit darkness. “Tell me things.”

  “What kind of things?” she said, fighting a smile. The guy was relentlessly positive and it was a little infectious.

  “Hmmm,” he said, thinking. “When did you get into comic books?”

  She almost asked him how he knew she liked comics, but remembered the nickname she’d given him.

  “Not long after I got to Baghdad. I create and stare at long blocks of text all day for work, so I find reading for fun difficult sometimes. I discovered an online comics subscription and got sucked in. I was in a pretty dark place and those stories always felt really hopeful, good overcoming evil and all that. I like the movies, too.”

  She couldn’t believe the number of words that were pouring out of her, but here in the dark, it felt good to talk. No other human knew about her comic book addiction or how much she loved superhero movies.

  Theron shifted in the firelight, turning to look at her.

  “I used to love them as a kid,” he said. “But sneaking them into the Academy was damn near impossible. And these days I don’t have a lot of time to read anything aside from dossiers and situ
ation reports.”

  He moved slightly and groaned, his face contorting in pain in the firelight. Before she knew it, she was on her feet and striding to his side. Sitting on the edge of the bed, she checked the sling. Her fingers brushed his shirt and she could feel the heat of him in the fabric.

  “Try to be still,” she said, her voice soft.

  “Just trying to keep eyes on the door. It makes me nervous having you all the way over there. If anything busts in here, you’re in a bad spot.”

  Her eyes fell on the empty space beside him in the bed. The satin sheets looked so much more comfortable than her place on the floor. It would make him relax and get some rest if she curled up next to him. A rested protector was more effective than a tired one. And it put him and his guns between her and the door.

  Practically speaking, this was smarter. The logical part of her brain nodded in agreement.

  And he’d be more comfortable. Wait. She cared about his comfort now? Considering he’d saved her life tonight, yeah, she did. But it was more than that.

  She liked him. There had even been a moment back in the cemetery when she’d been leaning into him when she’d had the oddest urge to kiss him.

  Another part of her brain sounded an alarm bell. How smart was it to sleep next to him?

  The logical part chimed in again. He was badly injured. She was hurt. And he’d given her no indication that he thought of her that way. He’d angrily rebuffed her clumsy attempt at seduction the night before, after all. “What if I laid down here?” she asked, indicating the empty spot. “I could keep watch while you rest and wake you up if anything happens, but you’re between me and the door. Would that help you relax and rest?”

  He met her eyes and something fluttered in her belly.

  “That could work,” he said, his voice low. She eyed the space between the wall and his uninjured shoulder. That bed had looked a lot bigger a second ago. The space suddenly seemed about as big as a postage stamp.