Page 11 of Blade's Runaway Bride
I dress quickly, grateful for the clean clothes even if they swallow my frame. The shirt falls to mid-thigh, and I have to roll the boxers' waistband several times, but they'll do for sleeping.
Just as I'm wondering where Blade has gone and what I'm supposed to do now, the door opens. He enters carrying a bottle of water and what looks like a first aid kit.
"Thought you might be thirsty," he says, setting the water on the nightstand. "And those scratches on your legs need cleaning."
I'd almost forgotten about the cuts and scrapes I'd acquired running through the woods in my escape. Now that he mentions them, they sting beneath the borrowed boxers.
"Thanks," I say, taking the water and drinking deeply. I haven't had anything to drink since before my escape, and my body suddenly realizes how dehydrated it is.
Blade watches me drain half the bottle in one go, his expression unreadable. When I finish, he gestures to the bed.
"Sit. Let me see those cuts."
I hesitate only briefly before perching on the edge of the mattress. He kneels in front of me, opening the first aid kit and taking out antiseptic wipes.
"This will sting," he warns, before lifting the hem of the boxers just enough to expose the worst of the scratches on my thighs.
Chapter 5 - Blade
I kneel before her, examining the scratches that crisscross her thighs. Some are shallow. Mere surface abrasions from branches and thorns. Others are deeper, angry red lines where barbed wire or something similarly vicious caught and tore her skin. She must have been running blind through that forest, desperate enough not to care what stood in her path.
"This will sting," I warn her, lifting the hem of the boxers higher to access a particularly nasty gash.
She doesn't flinch as I clean the first wound, though I know the antiseptic burns like hell. Tough little thing. Or maybe just too exhausted to react.
Why the fuck am I doing this?
The question circles my mind as I clean each cut. This isn't me. I don't play nurse to strays. I'm the guy the club calls when someone needs to be hurt, not healed. Yet here I am, on my knees before a woman I found on the roadside, tending wounds like I give a shit.
Reaper's face when I said she'd stay in my room flashes through my memory. That mixture of surprise and suspicion. Can't blame him. In all the years I've been with the Outlaw Order, I've never once brought a woman back to my room. The club has plenty of empty beds.
We keep rooms ready for visiting members or for when someone needs to crash after a party. Kelly could have taken any one of them.
Or Evelyn could have handled this. Reaper's old lady knows how to deal with traumatized women. She was one not so longago. But the thought of handing Kelly over to anyone else, even Evelyn, sets my teeth on edge. And that makes no fucking sense.
I tell myself it's strategy. She's our only lead on Charles's location. After two days of dead ends, she literally fell into our laps, wearing a fucking wedding dress no less. If anyone's going to get that information out of her, it should be me. I found her. She's my responsibility.
But responsibility doesn't explain the possessive heat that flared in my gut when she stood before Reaper and Ghost, ready to pull her behind me if anything went sideways.
It sure as hell doesn't explain why I'm still on my knees, wiping blood from the thighs of a woman who's practically a stranger.
"You don't have to do this," Kelly says quietly, breaking into my thoughts. "I can take care of it myself."
I look up, meeting her blue eyes. They're clearer now after her shower, less wild with fear and exhaustion, though dark circles underneath betray how tired she still is.
"I know," I reply, returning to my task. I don't offer further explanation. I don't have one that makes any sense.
Her skin is soft beneath my rugged fingers, pale and unmarked except for these fresh wounds. The contrast of her smooth flesh against my scarred, tattooed hands is stark. I shouldn't be touching her at all. Women like her—young, beautiful, untouched by the violence that defines my existence—they don't belong in my world.
Except she has been touched by violence, hasn't she? Running from a forced marriage to a biker, witnessing four deaths tonight without breaking. There's steel in her that doesn't match her delicate appearance.
"Almost done," I mutter, reaching for the antibiotic ointment.
The boxers have ridden up dangerously high on her thighs as I've worked, and I'm suddenly acutely aware of how close my hands are to parts of her I have no business thinking about.
She makes a small sound—not quite pain, not quite something else—as I spread the ointment over a particularly deep cut high on her inner thigh. My fingers freeze.
"Sorry," I say, pulling back slightly.
