Wicked Ink (3 page)

For the first time he took in what she was wearing. A pair of drawstring sweatpants hung from her lush hips, and a large T-shirt crept off the jut of her creamy shoulder. This was not the Dory he was used to seeing. Normal Dory was buttoned up to the top of her neck and decked out like the accountant she was. Beautiful, untouchable by the likes of him. This Dory was softer somehow, with curves and dips he had never noticed before. Ugly lust rose in him. He wanted to drop her to the floor and take her then and there, releasing all the pent-up rage inside him. He took an involuntary step back, breaking his eye contact with her body. It was disgusting of him to even be thinking things like that. Where was his decency? He needed the chair and the purge more than ever after two hours of running around with his body supercharged on all things dark and evil.

“Garrett?”

Blood blossomed on his shirt as the tattoos surrounding the wound in his chest gave out. The last thing he saw before the darkness finally claimed him was a pair of bright blue eyes widening in horror.

* * *

It was not easy to kick open Garrett’s door and drag him through it. Dory had never been inside his apartment. Since he was always so private, she was tempted to look around, but the deadweight in her arms was not going to go away, so she’d just have to stay curious a little longer.

He had fallen forward as a huge splotch of blood came gushing out of his chest right above his heart. She could have sworn something black had swirled beneath his white T-shirt, but it had disappeared too quickly for her to be sure.

The nearest piece of furniture was a black leather couch. She aimed for it, figuring she would drag him the last two feet by the hair if she had to. But they made it right before her legs gave out under her, thank God.

Arranging him as best she could on the sofa, she swung his legs up on to the long expanse of leather. All six foot plus of him didn’t completely fit, but it was the best she could do, since she didn’t want to tend to his wound while he was lying on the floor.

Running to the kitchen, she snagged a pair of kitchen scissors from a wooden knife block and quickly tore through three drawers until she found a handful of small towels. Surprisingly they all had flowers on them, but it didn’t matter…they would soon be covered in blood. She could replace them with new ones when she was done.

She headed back to the couch, thinking she could find bandages later. Maybe he had a first-aid kit in the bathroom or something. She had one in the living-room closet of her apartment, but she didn’t want to leave him alone until she was sure he was going to make it.

“Don’t you dare die on me,” she said fiercely as she cut away his T-shirt and unstuck the fabric from the long slit in his otherwise perfect skin. Blood seeped out of the cut, which looked like a stab wound. She gagged but got down to business without thinking too much about what she was doing.

He mumbled something and grabbed her around the waist. In his weakened state, pushing him away was akin to shaking a small kitten off her foot, but his hands kept coming for her. She ended up kneeling by the couch to make herself a smaller target. He was probably delirious. He kept muttering the words “Need chair” between guttural growls.

“You need to calm down or I’m not going to be able to do anything for you.” She ran a hand over his brow, trying her best to soothe him as her mother had done for her when she was a young girl. Pressing the small hand towel to his wound, she tried to stanch the blood. She’d never seen blood so dark before, but she chalked it up to the fact that she hadn’t seen much blood at all over the past seven years. She made a point not to be anywhere near it, but this was a special circumstance. She was willing to put her fears aside for this man who had been nothing but kind to her when kindness was sometimes hard to find.

Once the wound stopped gushing blood, she popped up and fetched a bowl full of water from the kitchen, along with the one remaining hand towel.

She sponged the cut, careful not to rub against the raw edges and make it worse. He was going to need stitches. It would be a shame for his beautiful chest to be marked by scars, but it was probably inevitable. At least he had enough darkly inked tattoos to make it less noticeable.

After she cleaned the cut, she grabbed a bottle of whiskey she had found in the cupboard above the refrigerator and poured it into the wound while trying to soothe him with words.

He shot up off the couch and nearly took her out with a fist, but she still had catlike reflexes from all those years of ducking hits. She grabbed his arm and pinned it between the couch and her body to keep him still. She didn’t want a black eye for her efforts, thank you very much.

Laying her hands on his ribs, she willed him to settle down. It was something she’d learned during her time in rehab. While it didn’t always work, it was worth a try.

He came off the couch in a rigid arc, his head pressed into the cushions and his heels digging into the arm of the couch. She tried again, having seen someone who was coming down off drugs do the same thing long ago. At the thought of drugs, she got sick to her stomach again. It would be a huge shame if he were a drug addict or a dealer. He always seemed like such a good guy—hardworking and friendly. But appearances couldn’t always be trusted.

Memories tried to assail her, eating at the edges of her mind, but she thrust them away. She would not go back down that dark hole where she’d lost control of herself after her mother’s death. She had turned to someone whom she’d thought had her best interests at heart, but instead he’d consumed her soul. He’d hooked her with drugs, then kept her by his side by making her believe she wasn’t worth more than a dime bag.

She was different now. Better. Clean. There was no need to go back to the ugly times when they were behind her.

Regardless of what Garrett might or might not have done, he was a human being. She was not going to let someone else die again while she stood by and fluttered her hands like some too-stupid-to-live heroine in an old romance novel.

At the second touch of her hands, the breath rushed out of him, and he clenched his jaw so hard she could hear his teeth grinding together.

Then he relaxed, his brow unfurrowing, his arm going limp against her body, his back sagging against the leather cushions. She stroked his forehead, murmuring soft, nonsensical things—things that might not mean anything but seemed to calm him nonetheless. She was certain the storm had passed for the moment, which was why he caught her so totally off guard. One minute he was relaxed, and the next his hard lips were fastened to her as if he were drawing her very soul from her.

His previously limp hand caged her neck as he deepened the kiss. Her mouth opened without her express permission, and she rode the tide of the feelings surging in her chest.

His lips were hard, his kiss demanding. He explored her mouth with his eyes closed. She should have closed her eyes, too, to better revel in the feel of him, but she couldn’t seem to stop staring at his divine face…and she was powerless to make herself pull away. Sure, she knew in her heart that he was far, far out of her league. But who could blame her for sinking into the sensation of being held by Garrett?

As quickly as the kiss had started, it stopped, and he sank back against the couch again without ever opening his eyes.

She slumped back on her heels, stunned. What on earth had just happened? Would he even remember the kiss? She should just forget it. Chalk it up to a moment out of time. Yes, that’s what she’d do. She was only happy that he had fallen unconscious in front of her rather than alone in his apartment.

Once she calmed her racing breath and rubbed at her tingling lips, she returned to reality. She listened to his breathing, grateful that it was smooth and regular. She took a small step away from the couch, but kept glancing back at him even as she let her gaze run over the apartment. Somehow she had to distract herself from the incredible feeling of his lips on hers, the way his hand had cradled her head and sent something akin to electricity charging though her entire body.

Three unusual photographs decorated the wall. They were black and white and stark, but each was punctuated with one punch of color. One showed a red cardinal sitting on a tree bare of leaves, another a bush with a handful of orange leaves, one of them drifting toward the ground. In a third, pink flowers glowed against a black-and-white spring setting.

The rest of the apartment was equally stark—the furniture was all black, and the walls where bright white. She didn’t want to leave until he came to, so she stayed where she was, even though this might be her only chance to get a glimpse of the rest of the apartment.

She did glance into the bathroom. It too was filled with black and white, from the towels to the toothbrush holder with its lone toothbrush and the shower curtain. And there wasn’t a first-aid kit in sight.

Going back to the living room, she opened his coat closet. For a second she stared in stunned silence, trying not to gape at the stairs tucked into the corner. They could only lead up to the apartment that Mrs. Marteski used to rent right before Garrett had moved in.

She didn’t have time to ponder that, because Garrett had started muttering to himself again.

After backing away from the closet, she leaned in close to make out his words. But even with her ear poised over his mouth, she couldn’t make out what he was saying. She knew it was time for her to run next door for her own first-aid kit, but she didn’t want to leave him. She finally gave in, dashing around to her apartment, hoping all the while that he would stay put for just another ten seconds. She kept his door cracked open and took a few seconds longer than planned to grab a new T-shirt, squelching the urge to pull on a pair of trousers and a button-down shirt. She snagged a bra, too, and that at least made her feel better.

When she came back, he was sitting up on the couch with his hands in his hair. His head snapped up as soon as she stepped into his apartment. She stopped in her tracks, noticing the predatory look in his eyes. Would he attack her? He always had a smile for her, but this man looked wholly different from the Garrett who had accepted her stew a few hours earlier. Different even from the man who had kissed her until her very toes had throbbed.

“Are you okay?” she asked, holding the kit to her chest like it could actually save her if he was to rush her.

“Yes,” he croaked out, then cleared his throat. “Actually yes, I think I am. Have I been out long?” His eyes darted everywhere, resting on object after object without darting back to hers.

Deliberately stepping into his line of vision seemed like the only thing to do, but he still avoided her gaze when she dropped the kit by the couch and leaned over him. She tipped his chin up toward her. She wasn’t very tall and his face was right at the level of her breasts, which she tried hard not to be self-conscious about.

He finally looked up at her. The pain and torment in his eyes reminded her so much of the face she used to gaze at in the mirror. She didn’t deny the urge to stroke his short hair.

“It’s going to be okay. Are you still hurting? I think I have some aspirin in my medicine cabinet if you don’t.”

He jerked his chin out of her grasp and growled. She held firm. She had a sixth sense about these kinds of things, and something told her he was not going to hurt her. She also knew somehow that he was not on drugs. The signs just weren’t there, even if the pain was.

“You should go home.”

“Not just yet, big guy. Since I practically carried you into this apartment after you collapsed on me, I think I deserve some kind of explanation of what’s going on.” She would not mention the kiss. He’d probably been delirious. It would be best to chalk it up to an aberration.

This time he looked at her without any goading. “You might think you deserve some empty words, but I’m not going to give them to you, and I’m not going to lie to you. Now, please leave.”

Instead she sat on the couch next to him and grabbed his right hand, holding it between hers even as he tried to pull away. She might not be tall, but she had made sure she was strong.

“Well, see, I think we have a problem there, because it’s not every day I have to stanch a massive blood flow from what looks like a blade wound. Now, I think you might need stitches on that cut, but something tells me you wouldn’t want to tell an E.R. doctor how you came by it.”

His head came up slowly this time, his eyes assessing her as if seeing her for the very first time. She struggled against closing herself back into her mousy, comfortable self, but he brought out something in her she couldn’t cage quite so easily.

“You have some kind of experience with this sort of thing?”

“I’m not telling my secrets until you tell yours. Since I figure that will be about the time hell freezes over, we’ll both have to wait.” She took a breath and calmed her racing heart. Took her eyes off those lips that had kissed her in a way she hadn’t been kissed. Ever. “Now, I got the cut to stop bleeding with the help of your kitchen towels, and used some pretty good vintage whiskey to disinfect it. I have my first-aid kit here.” She lifted it up inanely as if he couldn’t see it sitting on her lap. “I’d like you to let me at least use a butterfly bandage to pull the edges together.”

He continued to stare at her as if trying to unnerve her, but dammit, it was not going to work.

“All right, Nurse Nightingale, you can bandage me up, but no questions,” he said. “But make it quick. I have things to do, and they need to happen soon.”

“Well, that was awfully cryptic, thanks for the noninformation.”

He growled again, but this time it sent new tingles down her back. She did her best to ignore that and her tightening nipples. She set out the few things she was going to need, including some antibacterial cream, since who knew where the knife had come from or what had been on it when it went into his chest.

“This should heal up okay,” she said as she worked. “It looks like a pretty clean slice. Sure you don’t want to tell me how you got it?”

He grunted, which was never an attractive thing, but she continued on as if she hadn’t heard him.