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I hadn’t realized it at the time, but when I was with him, those old fears hadn’t surfaced. I hadn’t thought about that event or those men—not once. Orin, although rough and demanding, never made me feel like I wasn’t the center of his world. He never made me feel like I was nothing to him, and my pleasure was always at the forefront of his mind.
Being with him wasfreeing. I could trust him with my body, knowing he would treasure it. Sex—even the thought of having it—was always a trigger. I hadn’t wanted to be intimate with someone for so very long …
Until him.
The events of almost two months ago seemed like ancient history.
There had been no more attempts on my life.
No times when I thought I was being watched by one of the rival clans, although I knew Orin still watched me. I never saw him, but I would often catch a hint of sandalwood on the air when leaving a class or feel him close by when I left a practical placement for one of my classes. He was everywhere, in the shadows I stared into, in the darkness of the night.
I was torn from my thoughts when the door to the apartment flew open and Keir walked in with Caolan. Caolan looked ashen as he wilted against the other man, and I assessed him quickly.
“Put him in the spare room,” I ordered, pointing in the direction of the bedroom I had repurposed to hold the two gurneys the clan had appropriated when I accepted the role of medic. They acquired everything else I could’ve possibly needed too. First aid supplies. Linens. Infusion pumps. Ventilators. A defibrillator. A top-of-the-range autoclave, plus a whole lot more that had overflowed into storage shelves in the hallway and living room.
I still shook my head at the sheer number of drugs held in the locked cabinet on the wall just inside the door.
Keir grunted and changed directions, hoisting the other man up onto the edge of the bed. Once he had Caolan settled, I shoved him out of the way and started to triage. There were some nasty-looking wounds across his ribs and a small bullet hole near the top of his shoulder. They weren’t life-threatening, but they would need to be treated before infection set in.
“Pass me that saline,” I ordered Keir, holding my hand out for it without taking my eyes off Caolan’s body. There was blood pooling at the small of his back, which meant there was another injury there I hadn’t seen.
When Keir returned with the saline, I put it down and shoved my hands under Caolan’s good shoulder. “Help me turn him. I need to see where that blood is coming from.”
Keir took the brunt of the weight, shifting the other man over so I could get a clear look at the wound. There was a cut on the small of his back. It wasn’t particularly big, but it was deep and bleeding openly.
I looked up at Keir from under my lashes. “Hold him steady.”
He nodded, and I grabbed the saline to flush the wound. With the blood gone, I could see how jagged the wound was.
“How in the hell did this happen?”
“His car wrecked. I had to drag him out of there. He’d been impaled by some twisted metal.”
Jagged metal. That would definitely do it. After cleaning the site the best I could, I patched him up with some gauze, then indicated for Keir to return Caolan to his back. Now that I wasn’t afraid of him bleeding to death, I addressed the shoulder wound next. It was a clean through-and-through, somehow missing his clavicle and shooting straight through the muscular mass of his trapezius.
I cleaned that, patched it, then moved on to the last wound on his side. After irrigating it, I could see that it was road rash. “Jesus, what the hell kind of car wreck did he have?”
“There was a shoot-out. He must’ve taken that one in the shoulder and lost control.”
“And where were you?”
“Ahead of him. We were picking up a shipment, but we’d taken two cars. When he didn’t arrive a few minutes after I did at the compound, I circled back and found him. The car had caught on fire. I barely got him out in time before it went up.”
Caolan was a lucky bastard then. So many other things could’ve gone wrong. “Okay. Leave him here to rest for twenty-four hours. He’ll be unhappy about it, but he’ll be able to move around slowly after that.”
I didn’t notice it until then, but relief crossed Keir’s face. He touched my shoulder lightly and said, “Thanks, Fallon.”
I shook my head. “It’s no problem. I’m going to wash up. Come out when you’re ready, and I’ll make you something to eat.”
The grin he gave me transformed his face. “You going to feed me, Fallon?”
I didn’t know why, but that sounded like he was flirting with me, and I wasn’t quite ready for that. In fact, I didn’t think I’d be ready for anything again with the way Orin still haunted my thoughts.
I ran my eyes over Caolan once more, then stepped from the room. In the bathroom, I washed my hands and then splashed some cold water onto my face. Staring at my reflection, I noticed the dark circles under my eyes were back, looking more bruised than before.
“Pull yourself together. Orin doesn’t want you,” I hissed to myself. “He’s made that perfectly clear.”
Although he’d been around, Orin hadn’t approached me. I knew he needed time, but it had been three weeks since I’d last seen him, and each day he stayed away only confirmed that he wasn’t willing to trust me with his past.
