"Fuck," I hissed, rushing forward, dropping down in front of her, wrapping my arms around her to share the warmth of my coat.
A low, tortured whimper escaped her as her face nuzzled into my neck.
"Don't hurt me," she whined, her arms slipping reluctantly around me under my coat.
"I'm not going to hurt you."
"I told you I wasn't going to be a good captive."
"Yes," I agreed, reaching down to grab her under her ass, hauling her up. "You did," I said, yanking her up. "But you don't need to kill yourself to prove it," I told her, wrapping the edges of my coat as far around her as I could, then lifting her up, starting back toward the house.
"Is she okay?" Lenore asked, rushing to follow behind me as I made my way up the stairs.
"She's cold."
"I will have Ly warm up my rice packs," she told me, calling down for him to do so. "You need to warm from the center," she added.
"I thought you were supposed to chafe the arms and legs," I said, having seen it done for the homeless many times in the past.
"No," Lenore and Josephine said in unison.
"It stresses the heart," Josephine added.
"Get her into something warmer," Lenore demanded. "I will get more blankets."
I moved in front of Red's door before suddenly deciding to take her to my room.
Because I had warmer clothes.
That was the only reason.
"Here. Sit," I demanded, putting her on the bed, yanking the covers up over her as she shivered. "Don't fight me on this," I demanded when I came back from grabbing sweat clothes from the closet. I pulled back the blanket, yanked her up, then reached to pull off her shirt. "I'm not trying to stare at your tits, Josephine," I told her, frustration seeping into my words. "I'm trying to keep you alive," I added, getting a grudging sigh from her, but she let me take off her too-thin shirts, and slip on my warmest hooded sweatshirt.
The bottoms of her pants were wet from likely stepping in the small stream that wrapped around two sides of the property.
She didn't bother to fight me when I yanked them off, and one look at her made me more concerned than relieved that she wasn't making a fuss.
Her eyes seemed a little unfocused. Her breathing was weaker.
"Shit," I hissed, pulling the pants into place, slipping on the socks, then pulling the blankets up over her, trying to seal in whatever warmth I could.
"Get in with her," Lenore said, making me turn to find her coming closer with her heated rice bags, slipping them under Josephine's clothes—one on the chest, one near her groin.
"What?" I asked, shaking my head.
To that, Lenore let out a small, humorless laugh.
"I think you all forget it because you feel cold all the time, but you are all really warm. Hot even. It's like being close to a furnace. Get in there with her. You will warm her up faster than my little heat packs or the blankets alone. I will go make her something warm and sweet to drink."
I didn't bother to ask her why it should be sweet. I didn't think the coven of witches she came from got much right in the world, but it was hard to argue with them knowing more about how to recover from exposure to the elements than I did.
So I took a steadying breath, moving to the other side of the bed, pulling off my shirt and pants, then climbing in.
I thought it would be difficult, what with being naked around the woman who had been problematic for my sex drive. But the touch of her frigid skin as I pulled her over my body was enough to chase away anything but what I recognized as concern for her, maybe even fear that she wasn't going to make it.
Humans were so fragile that way.
Five extra minutes too long in the cold, and it could all be over.
I tried to convince myself that I gave a shit because it would be inconvenient to have to find a new nurse to help with Red. Though, I knew it wasn't that. But since I wasn't ready to unravel that, I went ahead and forced the thoughts from my mind.
It took a solid forty-five minutes before she stopped shivering. And there was one heart-stopping moment where I waited for her to take her next breath.
It was maybe another twenty minutes after that when I felt her take one slow, deep breath, exhaling it.
"For someone who acts like he's always half-frozen to death, you are really warm," she mumbled, turning her head so her colder cheek pressed to my chest. "You ever hear that old saying about people that have cold hands have warm hearts?" she mused, sounding half-asleep.
"The only thing warm about me is my skin, Josephine."
"That's mostly true," she agreed, her hand pressing flat against my pectoral muscle, and it was becoming harder and harder to remember I was here just to warm her up. And easier and easier to notice just how fucking naked I was.
"It's completely true. Don't think just because I saved you tonight that I'm a decent man. I'm not."
"You love Red."
"I'm responsible for Red," I clarified.
"Someone who feels responsible for someone gets them the medical care they clearly need. They don't sit up with them every night reading them poetry."
"Don't read into things that don't mean anything."
"Don't be so hard on yourself," she shot back. "It must be difficult to be a biker, ah, leader..."
"President," I clarified, getting a snort out of her.
"Okay. President. That's an obnoxious title, but okay. I get it is hard to be that, to have all of them looking to you for leadership. But it doesn't mean you have to be a complete dick."
"I was this way before I became their president," I told her.
"Rough upbringing?" she asked, her fingers gliding over my shoulder, my upper arm.
"Something like that."
Not many men lived the life I had lived before Earth and came out of it kind and well-adjusted. I don't know what the fuck happened with Daemon. In that case, I figured his brother just got the lion's share of the seriousness in that family. Or that Daemon himself shirked most of his responsibilities in the underworld, leaving Bael to pick up the slack, and Daemon to fuck around and have fun.
"You?" I asked, not even believing it was coming out of my mouth as it was. I didn't ask fucking humans personal questions. I didn't care enough about any of them to get to know them. And yet here I was, asking a woman I would need to execute in a few weeks what her fucking childhood was like. What was wrong with me?
"Not as hard as a lot of other people, no."
"You don't judge your hardships on the fact that other people have it worse."
"It wasn't awful. We were just really poor. And then my mom passed."
"What about your father?"
"He wasn't in the picture after he knocked up a coworker."
"So you have no one."
I wanted to believe I wanted to learn this information so that I knew if people would be looking for her or not once she was dead. She was relatively young, very pretty, a nurse. That was the kind of woman who made the news cycle nonstop when she was missing or murdered.
"Not anymore," she admitted, wiggling a bit, and it was becoming problematic. "I had someone. But that ended before I moved to Utah. It's just me. I guess you picked the ideal victim, huh?" she asked, sighing out her breath. "No one even to look for me."
I wanted to tell her not to call herself a victim.
But that was exactly what I'd made her.
I wanted to tell her not to feel so sorry for herself.
But what right did I have to say that, when I was putting her in this situation?
"You have coworkers who will have noticed you are missing by now."
"They don't like me."
"Now you sound like you're pitying yourself."
"Hey," she snapped, planting her hands on either side of my body, pushing up to look down at me. "You don't know the situation, so you don't get to tell me I am pitying myself."
"What's not to like about you?" I asked.
"I'm new. That's usually enough reason som
etimes."
"For insecure people, yes," I agreed. "Sounds like you should pity them instead of yourself. Imagine how miserable they must be to dislike you just because you're new."
"I guess," she agreed, reaching up to tuck her hair behind her ear, letting out a growling noise when it slipped right back out again. "This stupid hair," she added, sighing, as she rolled off to my side, but didn't put much space between us.
"What's wrong with your hair?"
"I cut it," she told me, shaking her head at herself. "It used to be long and I cut most of it off. That was actually what I was thinking about when you..."
"Abducted you," I supplied when she didn't want to say the words.
"How can you say it so easily?" she asked, brows knitting. "Like it's nothing? It's a big deal to kidnap someone. Even to bikers."
"I've told you, and shown you through example time and time again, that I am not a good man, Josephine. I won't apologize for it. It's how we have all survived this long."
"Just barely though, right?" she asked, looking over toward where Red's room was. "Maybe if you tried to be better men, you would be able to take her to a hospital for proper treatment instead of snatching people off of the streets."
"Near-death experiences make you mouthy," I observed, getting a strange choking laugh sound out of her.
"Near-death experiences make me realize you must find me valuable enough not to kill, so I figure I can get away with a lot more than I have so far," she told me, climbing out of the bed, grabbing frantically at the waist of my pants when they immediately started to fall down when she stood.
"Where do you think you're going?"
"Down to the... what the hell?" she asked, reaching into her pants, pulling out the rice bag I'd forgotten all about.
"Heated rice pack," I explained.
"For like... cramps?" she asked, testing the weight of it in her hands.
"And warming up hypothermic women who don't realize how fragile they are."
"I'm not fragile," she snapped, lowering her eyes at me.
Right.
We were in the evolution of womanhood where words like that no longer made them feel cherished, but condescended to. As much as I researched the changes in the world, the social ones were the hardest for me to wrap my head around.
Where I came from, everyone had been equal since the beginning of time. This shit with the humans since the beginning of time, hating on one another for race or sex or orientation, it was absurd. But it kept us busy down in hell, so we couldn't bitch too much.
"In terms of how easily your life could end, yes you are. No more fragile than the average man in that respect, but still fragile. What?" I asked when her brows scrunched together, her lips pursed.
"Sometimes you say things in a really strange way," she said, shaking her head. "Like you're not from here or from this time or something. Maybe it's because you read so much," she decided. "My mom used to accidentally adopt a southern accent if she watched too many movies based there."
That was the perk of more modern humans, I guessed. They were more far removed from the 'myths' and 'lore' of old. When they encountered something that didn't fit in with their world, they found easier explanations that didn't involve the supernatural, heaven, or hell.
It made it easier to exist among them. Easier than when having a birthmark in the wrong place could end up with you being dragged through the streets and hanged.
Red always took an immense amount of pleasure in the fact that she was found guilty of witchcraft three times during the Burning Times. Luckily for us, we'd always managed to get her out before they tied her to a stake, lit her up, and realized she couldn't die.
Remember that time they caught me rolling around with the priest? she would bring up randomly through the years. And since a priest couldn't possibly get horny, I must have spelled him into it. Humans were a lot of fun when they were so dumb.
Only Red would consider witch trials—both the inquisition sort and the physical tests—fun.
That was why it was so hard to watch her waste away. She'd always been so full of life, someone who managed to take every shitty hand she was dealt and make a win come out of it.
"Yeah," I agreed, snapping out of my swirling thoughts. "That must be it."
"How old are you?" she asked.
"Ancient," I answered honestly, but got a snort out of her.
"You look like you're in your mid-thirties."
I did.
As I had for hundreds of years.
"How old are you?" I asked instead of confirming or denying her assumption.
"Twenty-seven."
Twenty-seven.
Twenty-seven years passed in a blink for us. But it was enough time for her to be conceived, born, to go through all those formative years, go to college, lose everyone who ever meant anything to her, then find herself abducted and held captive.
She wasn't going to make it to twenty-eight.
That thought shouldn't have bothered me.
But I couldn't shake the dark mood it made course through me.
"What?" she asked, shifting feet.
"Nothing."
"You look angry."
"That's my face," I told her, feeling my lips twitch despite myself when she let out a small laugh. Light, girlish. It wasn't a sound many women shared with me. I liked it more than I had a right to.
"Do you ever smile?"
"I don't remember the last time I had reason to. No," I said when her face went sad. "Don't feel bad for me," I demanded. I had never been plagued with something resembling a conscience, but I couldn't take pity from a woman whose life I was going to need to take eventually.
"I—" she started, trailing off then I threw off the covers and climbed naked out of the bed.
Nudity tended to work well in ending uncomfortable conversations.
Sometimes, because of desire.
Other times, because of shock.
I didn't let myself stop to see which one Josephine had on her face, just walked to my bathroom for a shower.
Of the cold variety.
Chapter Ten
Jo
I almost died.
Legitimately.
I wasn't exaggerating.
I'd been stupid and reckless and a little too optimistic about how close the house was to a main road or another house, anywhere that I could find help.
When I'd heard Ace coming, I'd panicked, gotten all turned around, then somehow found myself closer to the house again.
Crouching there by that pile of wood, I had all the classic signs of hypothermia. The shivering, the slow pulse, the shallow breathing, the drowsiness, and even confusion.
The confusion maybe most of all.
Since I had been sure in those moments that Ace's eyes had been glowing red, that his tongue had been forked, that there had been weird bone-line things starting to jut out of his forehead.
Clearly, my consciousness and my unconsciousness had merged, creating some weird, otherworldly creature out of the man kneeling before me, my captor that was there to save me.
I didn't remember much of anything after that until I woke up feeling like a furnace was underneath and around me.
It took a long couple of minutes before I realized that the warmth was coming from a body. More specifically, Ace's body.
I should have jumped off of him, ran away screaming.
I didn't do that, though.
And I tried to convince myself that I stayed because I was cold, because it was important to warm up completely after a brush with hypothermia like that.
I knew the truth, though.
I didn't want to move because it felt good being close to him. And not just because he was warm.
Was that screwed up?
Yes. Yes, absolutely.
I had almost just died.
Because I was trying to run away from him.
Then there I was, snuggling up to him, making small talk with him, and enjoying it more than it could h
ave possibly been healthy psychologically.
Then, oh, then, he had to get out of that bed.
Naked.
The man just stood up and bared it all.
Let's just say... there was a lot to be bared.
I was annoyed at myself for noticing, but he'd surprised me. I hadn't been able to look away fast enough.
Yeah, that was the story I was going with.
I never really considered what Ace was like under all those hoodies and grandpa sweaters.
Apparently, he was built much like a Greek god was. He was nearly six-and-a-half feet of sculpted, yet not bulky, muscle. I guess I pictured him always curled up with a book, not working out. But, clearly, he had a dedicated regimen for his body to look that good. From his eight—yes, eight—pack and right on down to those deep dips of his Adonis muscles.
Normally, that was as far as the average woman could see of the above-average man.
But when my eyes followed those indents, they didn't meet the waistband of his pants. Oh, no.
They found more skin.
Ace was big everywhere.
And he was even bigger still because he was hard.
There had been a deep, undeniable pulsating need inside when my eyes landed on his cock. That primal, cavewoman part of me could practically feel the fullness of him inside.
The sensation was so intense that even after he turned to walk away—and we weren't even going to talk about that biteable ass of his—I'd needed to press my thighs together for one long minute to calm the chaos there before I could even focus enough to walk out of his room.
"Hey there, pretty lady," a voice said as soon as I moved into the hall.
I turned to find who had to be Daemon, even though he hadn't visited with Red. From what I understood, Daemon and Bael were new additions to the team or gang or club, whatever it was that they called themselves. I figured maybe they didn't check on her because they didn't know her like everyone else.
Daemon looked younger than the others, but with the same rough-and-tumble biker look that most of them had with his dark hair, tattoos, and several visible piercings.
"I, ah, hey."
The Healer (Seven Sins MC Book 2) Page 9
