Page 34 of Angel's Kiss
“I’ve had worse!”
“That does not make it better!” Christine yelped, horrified. “Now give me that.” She grabbed the bottle from Erik and set it on the nightstand. “Keep the pressure while I get these off,” she ordered, untying their makeshift tourniquet from his abdomen, then resolutely setting to unbuttoning his ruined shirt and vest.
Erik moved to stop her, panic evident in his eyes and slack mouth, but Christine stopped him with a fresh glare. He was tense and stiff as she pushed away his hand to inspect the wound as quickly as she could. The deep cut was on his right, below his ribs (which were terribly visible), and the length of her little finger. She used a towel to clear away the blood and, without warning, grabbed the brandy and splashed it over his side, provoking an indignant yelp from her patient.
“That’s twenty years old!” Erik cried.
“It’s not like you paid for it,” Christine snapped back as she took her own swig and she did have to admit it was good. She pushed a towel into Erik’s hand. “Use this to keep the pressure on. I need to get ready.”
“It’s still good brandy,” Erik argued as Christine returned the liquor to him so she could rummage through his impressive store of ointments and herbs.
“Do you have anything cheaper?”
“No.”
“It is not my fault you’re a snob then.”
“I am nota snob,” Erik protested.
“Everything in here is labeledin Latin,” Christine shot back, drawing out the needle and thread and trying to let her irritation steady her hands.
“It’s scientific,” Erik huffed.
“It’spretentious!” Christine cried, and Erik gaped at her. She bit her lip, sure she had gone too far, and settled herself next to Erik on the bed. Their thighs touched in this position, and she could feel how incredibly tense Erik was as she prepared her needle. “I’m going to sew this up. It will hurt.”
Erik took another deep drink of brandy and braced himself as Christine nodded for him to take away the towel staunching the blood. She glanced at him, maybe for reassurance, maybe to comfort him. The intensity of his eyes only served to remind her how intimate and unusual this was. Of course it would take mortal peril for him to finally let her feel his skin. Christine swallowed as she prepared for the first stitch.
“I do, you know, want you to touch me,” she muttered as the needle pierced skin.
“What?” Erik gasped in confusion and pain. Christine did not look up and kept stitching, pulling his pale skin back together.
“You think I don’t want you to touch me. You askedwhyI would want it,” Christine went on, every ounce of her strength focused on keeping her voice and hands steady as she continued her task. “Well, I do want it. Though I can’t really say why.”
She could feel Erik staring at her as he tried to steady his breath. “Are you saying this to distract me?” he asked through gritted teeth as she secured another stitch.
“Yes,” Christine replied. “But also because it’s true, and I don’t know when I’ll have a better chance to make you listen to me, you stubborn fool.”
“Why are you mad at me?” Erik gave a quiet grunt as the needle did its work.
“Because I’m mad at myself. This is my fault,” Christine replied in a whisper. She could feel Erik’s gaze boring into the top of her head, as if he was trying to read her thoughts like a book.
“I let him lunge at me,” Erik told her slowly as she finished the final stitch. “It was the easiest way to disarm him.”
“Youlethim stab you?” Christine pulled out one of Erik’s vials, grateful that calendula was a Latin name.
“I told you, I’ve had worse,” Erik said as she dabbed the wound with the ointment.
“You keep saying that as if it makes this better!” Christine snapped, grabbing bandages while she avoided Erik’s eyes. “You wouldn’t have had to get yourself skewered if I had listened to you. If I hadn’t been stupid enough to talk to that bitch.”
“You weren’t stupid, you were optimistic,” Erik protested, and Christine looked up into his ardent eyes. “I told you, it’s one of the things I love most about you. Your willingness to see the best in the worst people.”
Christine looked down again, blushing. “Get these off so I can bandage you up,” she muttered, tugging at his shirt and vest. It was absurd, asking him to disrobe to make the moment less awkward.
“No, we can work around them,” Erik protested, the tension in his body returning. She wanted to protest, but there were other battles to fight tonight. Awkwardly, she wrapped the bandages around his abdomen, trying not to look and invade his privacy. She failed, and more than once she noted how his pale skin was marked just as his face was, crossed with strange textures and raised lines, like—
“Ah,” Erik winced as she tightened the last bandage and Christine was forced to look up at him again. Was that why he was hiding? Was that why he did not want to be touched? Was his body as bad as the face behind the mask? Christine found herself staring at the mask again, and the lines and odd texture that peeked out at the edges. Some of which were stained with vivid red.
“Erik, you’re bleeding.”
