Page 4 of Savage Escape

As soon as he touched her, she jolted awake. Her left arm shot out and just about connected with his jaw before he ducked it. Her other hand reached out and clutched his left wrist. Feeling like a fool, the man tried to put his hands up in the universal sign of surrender and leaned into her line of sight. Caden Quinn was lethal with or without a weapon, tortured and weak, and even half dead. She was dangerous.

Wild, dark eyes glared up at him from under her matted hair. Nathan held very still while she assessed the threat. A blood-soaked arm moved to her side before recognition sparked in those shark eyes and confusion was scrunching her eyebrows.

“What... how in the fuck...” Her voice was hoarse, like she’d screamed for hours and her face was scrunched in confusion. Then she was scanning her surroundings, panic and frustration starting to seep into her dark eyes. She swept the place twice before the confusion disappeared and was replaced with a smirk that instantly had the man feeling defensive.

“Ah.” She fractionally untensed and the wild in her eyes softened a bit. “Fancy meetin’ you here.”

Blood-caked hands retracted, dark eyes set on his, and still smirking like she’d won a prize, she let out a laugh. Or what he assumed was supposed to be a laugh. It kind of wavered off into a pained moan. Red fingers fluttered to her chest and thenaway just as quickly, like she didn’t want him to be aware of her broken ribs.

“Yeah.” Nathan settled for a grimace and tried not to scowl at the woman. “Fancy.”

“Nathan Savage.” Her busted lips curled, and she blinked up at him again. The thing about Caden was that she could turn anything into an insult; even his own name sounded like something rotten.

“Where are you hurt?” Nathan decided on ignoring her smirk and went back to searching for serious damage. She should have been dead from all that blood loss and not smirking up at him like she was privy to some secret joke.

“If you wanna keep those fingers, I’d keep ‘em to yourself.” Red hands swatted his and went up to cover her naked chest.

“Like you’re in any state to be makin’ threats.” Nathan frowned at her smirking face and settled on his heels. “I’m only tryin’ to help ya.”

“I don’t need any help and I can sure as hell still kick your ass.” The smirk was now gone, and Nathan felt a tingle of satisfaction at her reaction. At least he irked her as much as she did him.

“Where are you hurt?”

“Leave me alone, Savage.” Her jaw clenched and her fists balled.

“I’m not gonna leave you alone to bleed out in this goddamn cell!” Nathan prided himself on keeping a level head at all times, but he always seemed to be short on patience when Caden Quinn entered the equation. “Look at ya! You look like you’re two heartbeats away from dead. It looks like you suffered some head trauma, those look like electrical burns—which means you’ve been tortured—so internal injuries that Caden can’t do shit about, a broken rib or two, and you’re covered in your own blood! You’re gonna die if you don’t let me help you!”

How much more did he have to spell it out? She wasn’t stupid. Why was she pretending like she was?

“It’s not my blood.” She positioned her body against the wall like she was getting ready to strike out if he moved towards her. “I am fucking fine.”

Well, that changed things. Seeing as how she wasn’t the owner of all that blood, Nathan could, without a nagging conscious, retreat to what would now be his half of the tiny cell and attempt to rein in the temper that only flared up when this woman was within a ten-mile radius of him.

“Whose blood is it?” When he settled into the reality of his situation, he put his attention back on the mercenary and blushed. “Oh, sorry.”

That predator gleam in her dark eyes sharpened when he shrugged out of his shirt. Surprise had her blinking at him when he tossed it to her. Nathan decided not to get offended as the surprise dissolved into suspicion and hesitance.

“Would you just put it on!” He couldn’t take the suspicion anymore.

Dark eyes shot to his and Nathan was wishing he’d gotten tossed in with someone—anyoneelse. No one ever looked at him like Quinn looked at him. Like she couldn’t decide what he was. A bad guy pretending to be a good one, waiting for a moment of weakness, or some kind of alien not yet accustomed to human interactions. He didn’t like either thought.

And if anything, she was the alien.

What kind of life had this woman led that made her suspicious of common damn courtesy?

“Christ, it’s a shirt! Not a bomb. I’ll not be asking for anything in return. I’m not that kind of an asshole.”

After a long minute of intense scrutiny, the merc finally came to a decision and pulled it over her head.

Nathan figured she finally decided that she could trust him or kill him outright should he prove to be that kind of asshole.

“The blood... it’s my first cell buddies.” Her voice was gravelly, and high sounds kept dying in her throat. “Who also couldn’t keep his hands to hisself.”

It wasn’t a subtle threat, but Caden Quinn was about as subtle as a steeled-toed boot in the face.

“Are you all right?” The question was met with a glare and a slight shaking of her head.

Other than the coat of blood (that wasn’t hers, he had to remember) and the bruises and scrapes he could see, she looked fine. She wasn’t moving stiffly or favoring any limb that he could tell, so he dropped it and tried not to scowl at the woman.

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