Even when he wasn't holding a knife to her throat, he looked...menacing. Longish dark hair, piercing blue eyes, a strong jaw covered in stubble that might have been considered sexy at another time, full lips that she had a feeling tended to curl in a sneer more often than not, all moved around by what she would bet was a cut, broad shouldered, slim hipped body...
His sharp tone rudely interrupted her cataloging of his injuries and attributes. "Now. This is how this is going to go. I'm going to sit on the toilet and you are going to gather whatever bandages, antiseptics and antibiotic creams you have, bandage me up, give me a couple aspirin or whatever you have, hand me your phone and maybe a bottle of water, then I'll leave. No harm, no foul."
He knew she probably couldn't think of it that way – at least not now – but he was doing his best not to have to do anything he might regret. And he'd meant exactly what he'd said – if she cooperated, he'd leave her pretty much none the worse for wear – despite the fact that his body might not want him to leave her in quite such a pristine condition.
Nonetheless, his body did not dictate his actions, so he eased himself down onto the toilet and looked up at her expectantly, tucking the knife away where he could easy get to it.
Nervous beneath his heavy gaze, she set about the task he had assigned her, although she didn't believe a word he'd said about him leaving without killing her first. That wasn't how it ever went in all the cop shows she'd watched. He would kill her because she could identify him.
He kind of had to.
Chapter 2
While she mentally enumerated the reasons why she wasn't going to survive this encounter and gathered her medical supplies – such as they were – he was easing his shirt off. Cursing up a storm as he did so, especially when he got to the point where he had to peel the cotton away from the bandage it was sticking to. Then, once he had divested himself of his shirt, he reached down to pull the bandage off where the bullet had entered his ribcage, exiting on the same trajectory out his back.
When Jenna turned around, his naked, broad, tattooed chest greeted her, and as striking as it was, it couldn't turn her attention away from that awful looking insult to his otherwise gorgeous flesh.
When she had everything ready, she took a wet washcloth, doused it with antibacterial soap, then bent over, trying to get to him, but it was such an awkward angle that she finally sank to her knees, doing her best to clean the area first and trying to avoid, frankly, looking at the wounds themselves.
That was when she noticed the gun, casually tucked into the waistband of his pants. Just the sight of it sent a chill down her spine, and it mesmerized her for a long second, until she shook herself out of it, although her eyes kept drifting towards it throughout her attempts at nursing.
It was good to have something to do. Her jangling nerves calmed somewhat as she concentrated on cleaning at least some of the muck and mud off him, but it was not an easy job. She tackled the skin around it first, and then carefully began to clean closer to it, frequently ringing her cloth out and adding more soap.
Throughout it all, he had remained annoyingly stoic. Jenna knew that if their positions were reversed, she would have been screaming bloody murder. She almost wished he would at least flinch or whimper from what she was doing, but he did neither.
"Okay," she said, letting a breath out she hadn't realized she was holding. "I've gotten the area that surrounds the entrance and exit wounds pretty clean, but now I'm going to wash them out as best I can, and it's going to hurt like a motherfucker, I would imagine."
The injuries themselves were swollen, angry red craters that leaked blood steadily. He was losing a decent amount of it – she was amazed he was still standing. And she was beginning to realize just how useless the cloth was – it was just pressing dirt and debris into the affected area. Jenna rose, putting her stuff down on the edge of the vanity and heading for the door.
He was up in a flash. She found her wrist caught then jerked hard, which whirled her around and slammed her – for the second time, but this time facing him, which she found was much worse – up against him as he wrenched her arm up behind her back until she had to rise up on her tiptoes to try to relieve the sharp pain.
"Where do you think you're going, miss?" he hissed, leaning down to get right in her face.
Jenna gulped then answered as quietly as she could – doing her best to subdue the tremors of fear wracking her body that she knew would be audible in her voice. "That washcloth isn't doing the job right – it's n-not able to get the dirt out; I'm just k-kind of wiping it into you. I have an empty squeeze bottle that I usually use for ketchup that would work much b-better to irrigate the wounds and wash the dirt down and away. It might help you avoid an infection."
She stood, moving as little as she could despite the pain, and keeping her head down, avoiding eye contact with him and hating herself for cowing so easily.
So she grabbed her balls in her hand and forced herself to look up at him as he stared down at her. "It's just down the hall in the kitchen. You could come with me."
He didn't say anything beyond, "Next time, don't make the mistake of thinking you're free to move about as you please." And he did accompany her to get what she needed, not letting go of her arm as they made their way there. She found the tall plastic bottle with the pointed spout she was looking for, but he didn't release the agonizing hold on her arm until he'd closed the bathroom door behind them again.
When he settled back onto the toilet seat, she filled the bottle and then resumed her position on the floor next to him. She had grabbed a roll of paper towels, too, to catch the runoff.
It took her some time and a lot of what she wished was saline, but was just tap water, to get it as clean as she wanted it. Eventually, she applied a pressure bandage that was comprised of most of what she had for first aid supplies, securing it by wrapping even more gauze all the way around that big chest of his, ripping it in two to tie a knot as tightly as she could over it.
She was surprised when he told her he wanted to climb back into that disgusting shirt, but she supposed that it would provide some slight protection for him if he intended to be running through the woods in the dark.
Then she stood, wondering if knees that were still wobbly from the excruciating trip to the kitchen were going to hold her, saying much more bravely than she felt, "Okay, you're bandaged. Here's a brand new bottle of generic aspirin. Would you like to come with me to get the phone?"
He knew she was ticking off his list of demands, not that he could blame her. She wanted him to get out of her house as fast as possible, and that was his aim, too. He gestured for her to move out into the hallway ahead of him when there was a loud knock at the door.
The knife reappeared from nowhere, taking up residence at her throat again.
"Were you expecting someone?" he snarled.
"Of course not, it's two in the fucking morning!"
"Well, send them away."
No, I'm going to have them in for tea, she thought, but didn't say. She tried to take a step forward, only to have him haul her back against him again.
"I hope it goes without saying that you're not to do anything stupid, like let on that I'm here... You wouldn't want to put whoever it is in danger, too, would you?"
"N-no."
The pounding started again, and he pushed her towards the door. Jenna turned back to look at him but, just that quick, he had melted into the shadows until she couldn't see him any longer.
Even the lamp light didn't reveal him when she flipped it on. The banging was becoming even more insistent. "I'm coming, I'm coming. Jesus H. Christ, hold your horses!"
It was Penny Keefe, her neighbor from about five miles down the road. She looked like she'd been rudely torn from her bed, too – hopefully not for quite the same reason as she had. "Have you heard?"
"Heard what?"
While she was trying to look and sound as normal as possible, she was wondering at the same time whether she should try to sen
d Penny some sort of signal, perhaps saving her own life? Or should she not, perhaps keeping them from both being killed by the man who was somewhere behind her? Was she kidding herself? Was she already essentially dead but for the killing, and therefore, why not just yell it out loud, duck and hope for the best?
In the end, she did none of those things, cursing herself for a coward the entire time.
"There was a big drug deal gone bad, not too far from here – can you believe it? Gangs up from the cities, there's a manhunt going on to round up the members." At that moment, they both heard a helicopter fly over; its huge spotlight sweeping through the darkness, illuminating everything around them for a short time before it moved on. "I just wanted to warn you keep your doors locked and arm yourself as best you can."
Penny was one of the loudest advocates for her to have a gun, since she knew Jenna was a single woman living out here alone.
"Thank you, Penny," she said, hoping she sounded grateful enough, considering that exactly what the woman had come to warn her about had already happened. "I'll be fine."
"Well, be on alert, at least. The police aren't sure how many of them there were, and they think at least some of them are injured, which makes them that much more dangerous."
"I'll be very careful. Thanks for the heads up." She tried to close to the door, but Penny leaned her not inconsiderable weight against it, stopping her.
"You know, at the very least, if you won't have a gun in the house, you should at least get yourself a big fucking dog. The barking would make anyone think twice about coming near this place."
Jenna gave Penny a patently false smile. "Right then. First thing tomorrow morning, I'll go down to the pound and ask for a 'big fucking dog'."
"Fuck off. But be careful!" Penny jerked her chin up at the other woman. "You got something, right there, on your neck, just under your ear, by the way."
Jenna knew exactly what it was and wanted to lick her finger and wipe it away, but she figured that wouldn't quite get rid of it. Luckily, Penny was on to bigger and better things. "Don't forget book club at Tzara's Friday night – it's BYOB – and a dessert, of course."
"I'll be there."
"Your lemon bars are the price of admittance!" she heard Penny warn as she turned away, even through the closed door.
All she wanted was to be able to sag against that door in relief, but he didn't give her the chance to. Instead, he unceremoniously dragged her away from it, and she knew he had been listening to every word they'd said.
"Change in plans," he announced huskily, tugging her towards the back of the house after checking that she'd set the locks again.
And that was exactly the direction in which she did not want to travel with him. So she dug her heels in as best she could, not that it slowed him down in the least, although she did note that he was holding his arm against his side as if it was bothering him – not that she was surprised in the least. And he wasn't moving as spryly as he had been, either, she didn't think.
Perhaps all the discomfort and blood loss were getting to him.
Then he demanded, "Which bedroom has the biggest bed?" She found she couldn't be concerned with how he was feeling any more. His bald inquiry made something at the bottom of her stomach come alive with an even worse fear – even more than finding him in her house had, frankly.
Jenna knew she had to answer him.
"M-mine," she whispered tremulously, hoping he wouldn't hear her.
But he did. He opened each door he encountered on the way, checking out her office – which was a term she used loosely. There was a twin bed in there, but you couldn't really tell for the piles of crap – mostly books – that were on and around it, as well as the desk she'd crammed in there but never used.
Her bedroom was the biggest room in the house, too, with a huge, king-sized bed she really didn't need, left over from her nasty ex husband. But, as much as she wanted to burn it in her front yard in a very wild, definitely naked, pagan ceremony, celebrating her freedom from the asshole, she couldn't afford to buy another bed, so she was still sleeping in it.
He ended up sitting on the edge of it, still holding on to her arm in a tight, painful grip.
"I'm going to need to hole up here for a while – at least until they stop the active manhunt."
Jenna's mind went blank. "You want to what?"
He gave her a hard look. "I don't want to. I have to." He didn't want to do any of what he was forced to do to survive – especially not to her.
He knew she was terrified of him, knew all of the horrible possibilities of what he could do to her were running constantly through her head, especially now that they were in a room with a bed in it. But he couldn't relent. He knew she'd never believe him, but he was not her worst enemy in this situation. And he wasn't going to bother to try to explain it to her, either. He was even more alone than he thought he was less than an hour ago, injured and unable to trust anyone – cop or crook or seemingly innocent civilian. There was no telling who out here might be in collusion with the bad guys.
He snorted to himself. And some of the worst guys were the cops. He'd found that fact out for himself quite starkly, since one of them was directly responsible for the injury he was sporting.
No, he had no choice. He would cultivate and use that fear as long as he needed, to keep himself, and her, safe, to what extent he could.
When he'd thrown the light on in the bathroom, while she'd been checking him out, he'd been doing the same thing to her. He'd seen the outline of her body through that thin cotton gown of hers, had felt his baser urges – which he'd been tapping into in other areas of his life for quite some time in order to accomplish what he needed to – rising to strain against the confines of his mud caked jeans. And he had to consciously rein it in. He was no angel – in fact, he had been many unsavory things in his life in the name of survival – but a rapist wasn't one of them.
That didn't mean, however, that his body listened to him. Even in his depleted state, when he felt as if a truck had run over him, that part of him always heeded the call.
Then she asked him something he hadn't expected.
"Will you tell me your name?" No, of course he wouldn't, idiot.
His expression said that, too, without him having to open his mouth.
"Something? Anything? Should I just call you 'hey you'?"
"It doesn't really matter what you call me," he answered. "Help me off with my shirt."
Jenna stared down at him, biting her lip hesitantly.
An eyebrow rose. "Well, I can keep it on, if you like, but you're probably going to want to burn these sheets when I'm gone, if I sleep in my clothes."
Assuming she lived, she would want to burn them no matter what he slept in, but she didn't say that. He was right, of course. She did as he asked, watching him warily as he shifted that wicked looking knife from hand to hand. But then, when that was done, he gestured with his free hand – the one not holding the weapon – towards his pants, which he quickly unbuttoned and unzipped, taking the gun from where it had been tucked against his back to put it on the nightstand, where it looked incongruously masculine nestled in next to her creams and perfumes, "These too."
"But…"
"Just do it," he said impatiently, standing, if a bit unsteadily, his arm held to his side.
Determined that his pants were all she was going to remove, Jenna hooked her fingers into his waistband and peeled them off him, leaving his relatively clean briefs intact, thankfully.
His wry chuckle surprised her, and his knowing look had her blushing fiercely against her will. "Nicely done. Now get me a scarf or something."
"Why?" she asked automatically.
"Because we're going to sleep in this bed together, and I need to make sure that you don't escape while I'm asleep."
He hadn't reclaimed her wrist since she'd helped him out of his clothes, and that left Jenna free to take a step – a big step – away from him. "No, please…"
He stood immedia
tely, bearing down on her like the wrath of God himself, all traces of weakness evaporated as if they had never existed.
Everything in her screamed that she should run, but where to? She'd never make it out the door, and making him chase her seemed counterproductive. It was just going to piss him off.
He recaptured her with ridiculous ease, one foot caught in mid-stride backwards, towards the kitchen, until he yanked her arm, bending it up behind her again and pushing her ahead of him towards her bureau. "Scarf. Now," he breathed.
She wasn't much of a scarf person, although she knew she had one in the top drawer. It took her a minute to rummage around one handed and find it, since she never used it.
He was not a patient man. But he didn't punish her for not being quick enough in the method she would have expected – by applying more pressure to the arm he already controlled.
Instead, she yelped in surprise when she felt the crack of his hand on her bottom, although it had the counter effect to what he had intended, making her less able to concentrate on what she was doing and more concerned with simply avoiding another swat.
But that was an impossibility, since she couldn't go anywhere and he didn't seem in any way inclined to stop.
"Ow – stop – Jesus, that hurts!"
Under The Cover Of Love Page 2
