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Oh, thank fuck. He closed his eyes as he started chest compressions again, sending his gratitude upstairs to the big guy that he’d been given the foresight to offer Sarah a key to the house. “Upstairs! Bring oxygen!”
“What?”
“Oxygen!” he almost screamed it. “Adrenaline!”
Two repetitions later, he heard footsteps pounding up the stairs, through the bedroom. Sarah appeared like an angel in the doorway, all dressed up in her smart-casual wear she reserved for days with her beau and boys, a small oxygen canister and a syringe in her hands.
“Jesus, Connor, what the actual fuck?”
“It’s been too long. Get the adrenaline in, the mask on.” He breathed deep and blew hard as Sarah poised the needle over Jenna’s heart. “Sarah!”
“I-I’m not qualified, Connor. I could do more damage…”
More damage? His girl was pretty much on the cusp of being irretrievably dead, what other damage could there be? He snatched the syringe from his friend’s hand, gauged his mark, and stabbed the needle through Jenna’s chest into her heart.
His fingers trembled as he depressed the plunger and removed the syringe. Seconds ticked away slower than hours as he waited for an answer to his prayers. Prayers running in his mind like a mantra. Not giving a shit he was naked, or that water was spreading quickly over the tiles, his attention focused solely on Jenna.
She sat bolt upright with a wheezing scream, her hands grasping for something to hold onto. They latched onto Connor’s arm in a death grip, nails drawing blood in her panic. Green eyes darker than jungle moss darted manically around the bathroom.
Sarah scrambled away, sneakers slipping on the wet tiles. She came back a moment later with an armful of towels, tossing one at Connor. “Take her out, Connor. I’ll clear up in here.” With a quick glance at his nakedness, she kindly threw another towel at him.
“Jenna, you’re okay, baby. I’ve got you right here.” Connor swirled the towel around her shoulders as she doubled over, rubbing the cotton briskly over flesh pebbled with the chill off the floor. “Stay with me, Jenna.”
Shaking, she didn’t seem to be listening. Her teeth clacked together. “He’s…he’s coming for me. He’s so angry.” Her hand twitched as she reached for her throat. “He’s going to make me pay for being a bad girl. Bad Twenty-Two. Bad girls don’t see the light of day. Bad girlsdie.”
So did good girls, he thought darkly. Good girls came damn close to losing their lives through no fault of their own. It infuriated him she referred to herself as that fucking number, relegating herself back under Sire’s control after so long. So much work fading away under the bastard’s rigorously taught lessons.
“Good girls live, and you aremygood girl,” Connor told her emphatically. “Jenna ismygood girl. Twenty-Two doesn’t exist anymore, baby. She’s gone, never to be controlled by Sire again. Jenna is here, with me, and she’s my good girl. Only mine.”
Maybe if he reiterated it over and over, it would sink in.
He got to his feet, pulled Jenna up with him. Picking her up felt right, just as pressing his face to her hair and breathing deep felt right. The warmth of her skin returned, banishing the corpse-gray cast under her mottled flesh.
He couldn’t banish the image of her laid dead on his bathroom floor.
“Connor.” Sarah stood with her hands on her hips as he continued to stand naked, just swaying with Jenna held tight. “Take her to bed, climb in with her, and cuddle her. You both need it. This was…” she looked at the waterlogged floor. “Traumatic. Process it before it knocks your feet from underneath you.”
“Shedied, Sarah.”
“She gave it a fucking good try. Now she needs you to step up to the plate and smack aftercare out of the park. Seeing as you’re the only man for the job—the only Daddy, for that matter—you should get your head pulled out of what could’ve been into what is. She’s alive, Connor. That’s a miracle.”
Jenna was his miracle. Sarah was right; he’d made Jenna promises he wouldn’t break, and they started from the beginning of the freaking saga.
“Yeah. Yeah, she is.” He moved toward the bedroom and the visibly upset German Shepherd watching him with worried jade-toned eyes, then paused. “Sarah, thank you. I don’t know how much longer I could have gone on with the CPR before…thank you.”
“As long as you’d needed to,” Sarah said firmly. “I have no doubts.”
Connor did. His lungs still burned from the effort and his palms felt hot and swollen from his frantic compressions. Eventually, he would have tired. He would gotten slower, less effective, and she would’ve slipped away forever.
Because of a goddamn nightmare.
He’d heard of people, patients, reacting to stimulation in their dreams as they would in real life. Dreams became so realistic, they couldn’t differentiate between subconscious suggestions and reality. But he’d never come across an example of subconscious suggestion being responsible for cardiac arrest.
Jenna remained silent, almost catatonic, as he settled her into bed. How the fuck was he supposed to let her fall asleep after this? He wasn’t sure he’d be able to sleep beside her for fear it would happen again and he wouldn’t hear her. That her heart would stop and he’d wake to find her cold and gray beside him.
He checked the puncture wound in her chest, marked by a single drop of blood on her pale skin.
He slipped under the covers onto the fresh sheets, gave Luna a mock glare as the dog jumped up and laid against Jenna’s legs. Her head propped on one foot, she huffed and watched Sarah through the doorway.
