Page 79 of Dance for Me

“She’s there?”

“Just do it.” His hand shook terribly as he searched for the switch. His heart plummeted into the dark as muted light bathed the room, and the broken figure tossed carelessly on a blood-stained mattress, limbs bent in unnatural directions, her back to the door. “Goddamn it, little one.”

His knees were weak, but he forced his legs to work. He crossed to her, his throat and chest tight enough to squeeze the breath from his lungs. Falling to his knees beside the mattress, he reached out and brushed his fingers over her hair.

They came away sticky and red.

Jasper’s voice floated through the open doorway, cold and controlled. The tone he used when his emotions were compromised.

Braun turned her, ever so carefully, onto her back. Tendrils of ice wound into his chest, strangled his lungs, his heart, until his vision blurred.

That beautiful face, capable of expressing so much emotion, was slack and waxy pale. Swollen and bruised, smeared with blood. The eyes he loved were closed, blackened. A gash cut deep into her hairline.

He blinked, clearing his vision, and studied what had been done to her. Part of him couldn’t believe he was bearing witness to such cruelty. Part of him was gearing up to hunt down her father and rend him limb from motherfucking limb.

There were gouges along her throat, bruises forming on her windpipe. He wasn’t a doctor, but he thought her legs were broken. One was, for certain, from the ugly angle it rested on the mattress. The other didn’t look good.

His fingers were cold when they pressed against her throat, seeking a pulse. He didn’t expect to find one, not with the blood in the other room. Not when she’d obviously been worked over by experts with a knack for causing pain.

He closed his eyes, squeezing them tight as he prayed for a miracle. Prayed to every God in existence, to every ancestor in his Irish heritage. As he offered everything he had, everything he could think of to sacrifice in exchange for her life, he drifted back to that morning.

Kissing her. Teasing a laugh from her, bringing hesitant joy into her eyes. The joy which often seemed dubious, as though she couldn’t bring herself to accept the fact she deserved to be happy. That she deserved to be loved.

The joy which came faster and easier with every moment she spent with him. It showed in the way her eyes grew brighter when she saw him, the way she hugged him of her own accord. She’d gotten braver over the last week—kissing him first, taking his hand and dragging him upstairs to bed. Their bed. The house had been dead before she came into it.

Braun was beginning to think he had been, too.

Blood throbbed under his fingertips. One slow, weak surge of blood passing through the artery.

His eyes popped open, popped wide. “Bodie? Bodie, can you hear me?” He cupped her face as gently as he could, struggling not to hurt her. “Bodie, I’m here, little one. Hold on, you hear me? You stay strong for me and you fight to stay alive. I’m fighting for you, too, baby, I promise.”

“Braun? Ambulance is ten minutes out—oh, holy fuck.” Jasper growled audibly, the sound vibrating on the air. “Is she alive?”

“I think...I think she is.”

“Okay, brother, let me see.” Taking charge, Jasper whistled for Atticus. “Gonna need that first aid kit, Atticus. You got your knife on you?”

The air changed as Jasper and Atticus entered. The empty space filled with barely contained lethal testosterone. Atticus reached into his jacket pocket, slapped a folding knife into Jasper’s hand and dropped the kit beside Braun. “Think there needs to be a reckoning for this. Want me to make some calls, get the ball rolling?”

Jasper’s face was hard, his eyes roving over Bodie’s body with a critical eye. “Not yet. There’s time for that once our poppet's on the mend. We need to stabilize her legs. This is gonna be rough, so I need you to keep your fucking heads on straight and do exactly as I tell you. Braun, you need to find something to stem the head wound.”

He couldn’t bring himself to take his fingers away from that barely-there pulse. It was his only reassurance she was still with him.

“Fuck, he’s in shock. Atticus, grab something off that pile of clothes there, would you? Fold it into a pad, then press it against that laceration. We need to try and keep what little blood she has left inside her.” Jasper snapped open the knife. “Braun, I have to move her legs. It might bring her around, and if it does, she’s going to be in a world of pain. Can you deal with this shit?”

Snap out of it, asshole. She’s alive. We need to keep her that way.

“Yeah. Yeah, I can cope.” His lips felt numb.

Jasper laid her limbs straight, quickly removing her boots and socks. His fingers dug into the tops of her feet. “Shit. No pedal pulse in her right foot. A faint one in her left.” Slipping the blade under the cuff of her jeans, Jasper painstakingly cut upwards, hacking through denim mercilessly until she was bare to the thigh. He attacked the other one, muttering under his breath. “This is where it gets bad. Be ready for her to wake up. Keep her calm, she’s gonna hurt.”

His fingers curled around her right calf just below her knee, thumbs resting on either side of the bone. Gently, he ran his cupped hands down until he stopped at what Braun assumed was the break. “Braun, take the pad from Atticus. Put plenty of pressure on it. Head wounds bleed like a bitch. Atticus, get onto the other side of her. Put your hands exactly where mine are, okay?”

Moving like a shadow, Atticus obeyed. It seemed neither man was inclined to do anything but what Jasper told them. Apparently, he knew what he was doing. “The hell you know how to do this shit, Jasper?”

“I’ve got some secrets of my own,” was the cryptic reply. “Now, you feel where the bone's jutting up under the skin? That’s putting pressure on the artery in her leg. If we don’t reduce the pressure, she could end up losing her foot. So, I’m going pull gently on her foot, Atticus, and you’re going to tell me when that bone lines back up as best it can. Then we need to strap it into position and do the same with her other one.”

Braun watched the big man gulp. “The EMTs—”

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