Page 4 of Wanted
Things would have been so much better for everyone if only he’d succeeded.
Chapter 1
Marcus
He never should have squatted down in front of Pony’s friend, Cynthia, out in the waiting room. Yes, she’d needed to hear that she’d done well in her attempts to take care of Pony. And yes, she’d absolutely needed to hear that she was now free from that incredibly toxic bond, but his lower leg prosthetic hurt at the best of times and it was killing him now. Phantom leg pain, they called it. It had been three years and it hadn’t gone away yet, he knew he was stuck with it.
Suck it up, buttercup. Pain means you’re still alive.
Yay, him. He shifted his leg, easing the angle of his knee to take some of the pressure off his stump, and waited.
Pony lay with her back to him, her small shoulders way too thin and the edges of what he could see of her cheek and jaw too sharp. Cynthia, the girl Spencer had called Puppy, was bony, but Pony… she was positively skeletal. At first glance, she was the worst case he’d yet tackled, physically. Mentally, he didn’t like what he’d thus far seen, but it would be days yet before he was comfortable enough to solidify what he’d assessed—that she was stubborn, angry… hurt. Layers and layers and layers of fiercely buried hurt lay deep in the woman before him, swallowed back the way a dutiful slave submissive would do if he or she didn’t know how—or weren’t allowed—to voice their needs.
It had been a long time since his last case, but if he was successful at nothing else, he was determined that that would be one of the first things he helped her change.
“Good morning,” announced a very young woman in nursing scrubs. Too young to have graduated with a masters’ in nursing, the assistant strolled cheerfully up to Pony’s bedside. When no answering hail was forthcoming, she paused to peer at Pony more closely. “Are we sleeping? Her eyes were closed.”
“More like sulking,” Marcus corrected.
Pony curled in that much tighter around herself, but she didn’t argue. Eventually, he would get her to a point where she felt safe enough that she could. In the meantime, Marcus hunkered down in his chair and did his best to hold onto his own spiking temper as the nursing assistant peeled back Pony’s blankets and he took in the rest of Pony’s very poor condition. Ethen O’Dowell was no master; he was a criminal and death by bullet had been far too kind. Apart from the clenching of his fist, Marcus didn’t move as he counted down the ladder of bumps that was her spine, poking through the gaps in her loosely tied hospital gown.
Noticing the direction of his darkening stare, the assistant quickly adjusted Pony’s gown to cover her better. “There, we wouldn’t want you to get chilled now,” she said, eyeing him uncertainly, but talking to Pony. “Can you sit up for me?”
She didn’t move.
“Sit up,” Marcus calmly ordered, letting his inner dom inflect every nuance of that command.
Pony responded. Grudgingly, she uncurled and pushed herself up until she was sitting on the edge of the bed. The thinnest damn legs he’d ever seen dangled over the mattress’s edge and pinpricks of blood dotted her white pillow where she’d been lying.
“We’ll have to change your bandage,” the assistant said, bending around to peer at the far side of her head. He couldn’t see how much blood was seeping through her bandage, but he could see how much of her head had been shaved. He had to force himself to relax his clenched fists.
“Don’t bother,” Pony told her. “I’m fine.”
The younger woman laughed. “Oh, it’s no bother. I’m happy to do it. If I were in your place, I wouldn’t want to go out in public with a bloody—”
“I said”—Pony raised her head, instantly abandoned all hints of her former apathy in favor of aggression—"I’m fine.”
The assistant lost her smile. Marcus almost found his. There she was—the backbone of the fighter inside of Pony’s damaged soul, the one who’d been strong enough to survive her dom’s abuse.
“Behave,” he ordered, shifting Pony’s aggression from the nurse to himself.
Make me flashed through her narrowing blue eyes before just as quickly vanishing as her face shuttered against him. She dropped her gaze to her knees, hiding from him the only way she could, but too late. He’d already seen it and every dominant fiber of his being had just come snapping awake. The start was so vibrant he could physically feel the tingling sting in his skin.
Oblivious to the silent exchange, the nurse rallied her cheerfulness and tried again to get on Pony’s good side. “I brought your clothes.”
Through the clear plastic bag she set on the bed by Pony’s hip, Marcus took note of the dark reddish-brown blood stains on what looked like a white blouse and dark blue business skirt.
“You’ll want to change as soon as you get home, of course,” said the CNA, “but at least you won’t be leaving here in paper scrubs.”
He’d need to get her clothes. According to the paperwork he’d been given, filled out in part by the Black Light lawyer who had been hired to help keep her out of state custody, and her friend Cynthia, Pony had very little in the way of personal possessions—just the work outfits for a job she had apparently lost months ago and her harness.
The torso harness that had chafed her ribs and back until her skin opened into sores was now part of the evidence the hospital intended to use against her. And, she wouldn’t need work clothes, at least not for a while. In fact, everything from her time with Ethen O’Dowell, Marcus decided, was about to get left behind. If he only had thirty days to help her prove she could take care of herself, then he wasn’t going to spend it dealing with the complications that would surely arise by giving her tangible ‘master reminders’ to hold onto.
A clean break, that’s what she needed and that’s what he would give her.
Turning to him, the assistant said, “You’ll have to step outside now, please.”
And give her a chance to either bolt or lash out at the unsuspecting nurse’s aide?
