Page 7 of Reaper Released

“You good, Ray?” Doc asks. Taking a nervous breath, she nods. He sits on the bed at the side of her, and I walk around to the other side, standing next to it.

“I’m gonna cut this off, okay?” He points to the fabric. She nods and takes a deep breath, looking over towards where I stand, but not at me. She closes her eyes as soon as she feels him touch her. She grits her teeth and flinches. He looks at me, then goes back to what he’s doing.

I sit down on the bed and take her hand. She gasps at the contact and shoots her eyes open, glaring at me, trying to tug her hand back. I tighten my grip. I rub the back of her hand. “How's that?” I ask.

“Tolerable!” she whispers.

“Good, concentrate on that, nothing else.” She nods, staring at our hands. She grips me tighter. Jesus, this girl. She grits her teeth, but not a single tear comes out, and she doesn’t make a single noise. No more than a few gasps and clenches, as Doc’s rooting around in the wound, trying to find the bullet. A few minutes later, he claims he has it, and cleans the wound, stitching her up. She never takes her eyes off my hands encasing hers.

Doc hooks her up to an IV and gives her some antibiotics to help with infection, then he tells her to eat and rest. I grab the rest of her food and sit facing her on the bed. She sits up slowly and finishes it all.

“What's your name?” she asks in the softest of voices. After hearing her bark orders at the others, it catches me by surprise.

“Steel,” I reply, and her skin pebbles at the sound of my voice. She flicks her gaze to meet mine. I twitch the side of my mouth, but give no other indication that I know it’s my voice alone that has done that to her. I grab a blanket off the chair and lay it over her.

“Steel?”

Fuck, that sounds good, her saying my name like that, all breathy and shit.

“Thank you.”

“Get some rest, Sunshine. You’re gonna need it!” She freezes as I say that. Her gaze is unreadable, but there’s something in her eyes I can’t make out. They glaze over for a split second before she nods and slides to lay down.

Once she’s asleep, I head out to the bar to catch up with Ares and figure out what’s happening. Ares’s sitting at the bar, rather than his normal seat in the booths. I slide in at the side of him, signalling to Roach to grab me a tequila.

“How’s she doing?” He sighs.

“She’s a tough motherfucker, she's out now for a bit! She stitched her own arm. Ten stitches in that, and eighteen in her thigh, cleaning it with fucking tequila. Then I fetched Doc to remove a bullet from her side that she was gonna try and sort herself. He stitched her up and put her on an IV and gave her antibiotics.” I shake my head and smile at what I thought was myself.

“What the fuck’s wrong with your face?”

“What?”

Pointing, Ares huffs, “Your face?”

I rub at it. Maybe I have some blood or something on it.

“You’re fucking smiling?”

“Am not!” I spit.

“Are too.”

“What are you, five?”

Ares punches me in the arm, laughing. “She’s something, ain’t she?”

“She sure fucking is!”

Meeting Doc at my room to remove the IV, we both step through the door, but she doesn’t stir. She doesn't even move.

“Just take it out. Yeah, I’ll keep an eye on her.”

Nodding, he moves around the bed, removing the IV and heading for the door. “She may be out for a while. I slipped her a little something into the IV. Don’t tell her, though. She’ll have my balls for a necklace.”

Laughing, I let him out as the Fucked Up Five came barrelling down the corridor. “We wanna see her!” Viking says, ever the front man.

“She’s sleeping!” I bark at them, crossing my arms over my chest filling the doorway.

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