The woman, Ms. Pruit, gave him her prune face of absolute disapproval. He wanted to growl, but he’d probably give the bitch a heart attack. She told him how to get to the room, and he didn’t waste any time stalking past her to the door. She took her time hitting the button to unlock the door, but he didn’t deign to so much as turn around. He was used to the bullshit. He was tatted, bald and wearing his Torpedo Ink colors and looked what he was—a killer.
He just needed to see Seychelle look at him with that same bullshit, judgmental, dismissive look he got everywhere he went, and he could walk out of the hospital and never look back.
He pushed open the door to her room. The curtains were drawn to darken the space and she didn’t have a roommate, which he thought was good, or maybe it wasn’t. He went straight to the bed. Her gaze jumped to his face immediately. Bog. Those fuckin’ blue eyes of hers. Long lashes. She didn’t give him the prune face. She gave him a faint smile instead. Bog. That fuckin’ mouth of hers.
There were bruises and scrapes on her face. One cheek was swollen. The bump on her head, just above her eye, was enormous. Her arm was bandaged in places, and from what he could see of her leg, it was as well. He couldn’t help himself: he touched one of the scrape marks near the giant goose egg. “Looks like it hurts.”
Her smile widened just a bit, and he caught the faint hint of a dimple on her left side. His heart contracted. “A little. They gave me something for it. I remember your face. You tried to help me.”
“You saved me and the kid. Thought I’d thank you, but Ms. Prune at the front desk thought your virginity had to be protected, so to get in, I told her I was your fiancé. I was going to add that it was too late for your virginity to be protected but thought she might have me arrested just for sayin’ the word.”
He figured she’d order him out. He was deliberately crude and thought the claim on her would frighten her, but she did the unexpected. She laughed. Little golden notes flickered in the air above her head and surrounded him, taking his breath. It had been a long time since he’d seen notes like that floating just from a voice. The sound played over him like some kind of song, and once again, just to piss him off and show him it wasn’t a fluke, his body responded.
He became aware of every nerve ending coming to life. His blood surged hotly and rushed through his body to pool like hot magma in his groin. His cock was scarred, and filling with life all on its own was impossible—and yet she’d managed to make it do just that. Not to mention he had learned, almost before he knew what a cock was, to control that shit. The shock was almost too much for him to comprehend.
“Thanks for the laugh. I’m not fond of hospitals.” She turned her face away from him.
He parked himself alongside her on the bed, crowding her a little. He heard the note in her voice that told him there was a reason—a sad one—that she really didn’t like hospitals.
“I could break you out of here,” he offered. “I brought my bike, so it might be rough going, ’specially with you in that gown, but it’s doable.”
She laughed a second time just like he’d hoped, and the golden notes scattered in the air around him like confetti. He fuckin’ loved that sound and ignored the strange phenomenon. He could only deal with so much. She turned her face back to him.
If he was any kind of decent man, he’d wince at the damage, but instead he touched the scrape marks gently with the pad of his finger. They were badges of courage. She’d done what no one else had. She’d risked her life to save him—to save the kid. Those raw scrapes and that hellacious egg were suffered to save him. She’d made that choice. He couldn’t help but think those lacerations, bruises and bumps said quite a lot about her.
“Are you going to tell me your name?” Seychelle asked, her blue eyes drifting over his face, touching on the scars there, on his jaw and the light growth of beard and mustache.
Was he? Hell. “Yeah, baby, I can do that. My brothers call me Savage. Probably for a reason you don’t really want to hear.”
That little dimple flashed again, and his cock jerked. His reaction to her was genuine. Real. Maybe it was because she had risked her life and wasn’t a vain, haughty, judgmental bitch, or someone who chased after him not because they knew the first thing about him or cared but because they wanted something from him. Seychelle hadn’t wanted a thing except to save him and the kid. More likely it was because of the lacerations and bruises that belonged to him.
“Savage.” She repeated the name softly. Her voice was melodic. A whisper of sound that played down his spine like the touch of fingers. Three golden notes floated into the air.
He liked the way she said his name, a little too much. He shook his head. If he had any kind of sense at all, he’d leave. Right the hell now. Just get up and walk away. He was there to thank her, and he’d done that. He’d wanted to know she was all right, and he’d done that too. Instead of thinking with his brain, he was thinking with his dick. He looked around the bare room. “How long you in for?”
That smile came out again, tying his gut into tight little knots. The dimple was a turn-on any way he looked at it, when nothing turned him on. Her mouth? Those lips? She was lying there bruised and scraped and his body was reacting all on its own, proving he was an even bigger monster than he’d thought. But damn, it felt good. He hadn’t known he was capable of getting it up without commanding it first in his brain. His brain wasn’t even engaged. He had proof of that, because he was still sitting on her bed.
“It is kind of a prison, isn’t it?” She looked around the room as well. “Although I’ve never actually been to prison, have you?” She looked up at him.
His gaze met hers. Those damn eyes. So blue. Seeing too much. One eye was very bruised. She was going to have a hell of a shiner. It was already coming up, dark purple and swollen.
“Grew up in a prison. Been there a time or two since.” Both times he’d been there to assassinate a prisoner. Why the hell had the truth come out of his fuckin’ mouth?
He never talked. He kept his mouth shut. He didn’t like people or their reactions. He didn’t understand them, and he didn’t want to. Most of the time, he was contemplating killing them. He was disciplined and had been since he was a child, yet he couldn’t stop himself from telling her the truth because he hadn’t thought before he answered. Staring into those blue eyes, he drowned. Went under and acted like a fuckin’ pussy-whipped asshole. He had to get out of there before he ran his mouth and had to take her out. He had too many secrets to just sit there and cough them up because his dick was hard.
“Harsh. But you survived. Good for you.” Her voice sounded drowsy. Sexy. It was that tone she had. Musical. Low. Soft. It played over his entire body as if she was stroking him with caresses—or licking him with her tongue.
Her lashes lowered, those long, thick, feathery lashes that he knew he was never going to get out of his mind. At the same time, she touched him. A brush of her fingers against the back of his hand. On his bare skin. His body went still. That small brush got under his skin and rippled outward, spreading slow, flickering flames that kept growing hotter and hotter. It was as if she’d branded him inside his body and that stream of heat turned into a smoldering fire that began to consume him from the inside out.