“I think this is good enough,” I told her, giving her thigh a squeeze as I grabbed the triple antibiotic to start smearing it over her liberally before wrapping her with the gauze. “He even grabbed some crackable ice packs if you want them for your bruises,” I said as I helped her into her robe.
“I’m okay,” Abigail said, wincing at her reflection as she followed me out into the room.
“Ibuprofen then,” I insisted, knowing the ache was only going to grow through the night. “Baby,” I called when she took her pills, then accepted one of the meals, sitting off the side of the bed with her plastic fork in her hand, staring off at the wall. “You okay?”
“It’s not over,” she said, her sad gaze slipping to me. “Two people were shot today, two others were killed, and it’s still not over.”
There were actually three bodies, but it was hardly the time to pile on.
“No,” I agreed, squatting down in front of her. “I don’t think it is.”
“He’s not going to give up.”
“Probably not. Until I force him to. And as soon as we get some sleep, love, I’m going to work out a plan to make that happen. This needs to be done. We need to be able to move forward.”
“You’ve done enough already.”
“No.”
“It’s too much.”
“Okay, listen to me. We’re not doing this,” I told her, watching as her gaze found mine.
“Doing what?”
“The whole ‘I can’t ask you to do this, I’m too much of a burden’ bullshit. So I’m shutting that shit down right now. This is not too much. You’re not asking me to do anything, I’m offering. There is a difference. And, yes, you are worth it. Case closed.”
“Cary…”
“It’s not open for discussion, love. That is just how it is. I get that you’ve been beaten down for so long—your whole fucking life, really—and it is hard for you to accept that someone will not only do this for you, but believe you are worthy of all of this and more. But I’m not the kind of man who blows smoke. I’m not saying it just because you’re hurt and scared and need comfort. I mean it.”
“I don’t want anything to happen to you,” she told me, voice cracking.
I wanted to promise her that it wouldn’t. But that wasn’t the kind of life I lived. My job was risky. Handling her situation was risky.
“I’ve been in this life for a long fucking time, love. Longer than you’ve been alive, in fact. And I’ve managed that because I’m careful. I can’t promise you nothing is ever going to happen to me. But I can promise I will do fucking everything in my power to come home to you.”
“Hey, Cary?”
“Yeah?”
“I know this might be too much or too soon. But I think today really… it showed me how easily I could lose this. And you. And I don’t want anything to happen without saying it. Because I need you to know,” she said, her voice gaining strength as she went on. She reached out, placing her gauze-covered hand gently over mine. “I love you. And I think a part of me always has. All the way back to our letter writing days.”
“You know what, baby? I think I fell for you after your third letter. Just took me this long to realize it.”
Leaning up, I pressed my lips to hers. Soft. No expectation. Because she needed food and rest, not sex.
“But we are going to have plenty of opportunities to say that to each other in the future, okay?”
“Okay,” she agreed, but sounded dubious.
She wasn’t wrong to have her doubts.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Abigail
Okay.
I loved Cary.
And I truly, genuinely appreciated the way he was determined to take care of me.
But I swear the man was treating me like I was on death’s door instead of a little banged and scratched up.
I mean, did I totally lean into it for a day or two? Absolutely. I felt crummy. He seemed to truly enjoy making me feel better.
Once all the cuts scabbed over and the bruises stopped being so tender, though, it was starting to drive me a little crazy.
The man wouldn’t even let me get up to get my own socks when my feet got cold.
To be fair, it probably wasn’t just the obsessive caretaking. It was a bit of cabin fever from being locked in the hotel room again.
You’d think that, after being locked in Raúl’s home for ninety-percent of my time the past several years that I would be used to having my world be very small, very enclosed, and more than a little suffocating.
Maybe it was simply because we’d moved on from the hotel already, and that forward motion had felt good, so being back felt like steps in the wrong direction.
It was temporary.
Cary promised me that several times a day.
For the time being, though, everyone thought the hotel with guards on the lower floor was the safest bet.
There was a reason you didn’t see people get kidnapped from a crowded restaurant or event. There were too many witnesses, too many possible Good Samaritans, too big of a chance of getting stopped.
Cary had floated the idea of Hailstorm to me. Which was, apparently, some paramilitary camp with electric fences, dogs, tons of ex-military people with guns, and an entire building made of shipping containers.
Objectively, it was probably the best bet. But it sounded loud and crowded and completely lacking any privacy.
So we’d gone with the hotel.
A choice I was regretting more and more as each hour passed. And then I went ahead and felt super guilty for feeling that way since it was a nice thing Cary was doing, and all the guards who didn’t have to go out of their way to help protect me.
“We’re going to get out of here, love,” Cary said, coming back in from the hallway where he’d gone to take a call. “I just want to make sure we do it right this time,” he said, coming up behind me, and running his hands down my arms.
It was a chaste touch.
But my body started to heat up regardless.
See, Cary was firmly stuck in the “she’s too fragile to touch” mindset. So there had been a lot of snuggling and light caresses, but nothing that went even remotely sexual.
But my body hadn’t felt fragile in a couple of days, so the lack of contact was making me hypersensitive to even the slightest of touches.
I leaned back into him, turning my head upward toward his chin, making him lean down and press a kiss to my forehead.
My hand shifted to slip on top of his, grabbing it, and sliding it up my thigh.
A deep, sexy rumble moved through him as he realized my intention just a second before I pressed his hand between my thighs.
“It’s been too long,” I told him, pressing his fingers inward to make contact with my clit.
“You’ve been too hurt,” he replied, his fingers taking over, rubbing at my clit through the material of my pants and panties.
“Not anymore,” I said, feeling his cock getting hard against my ass as I reached for his other hand, slipping it under my shirt, then sliding it up to cover my bare breast.
Need sparked through my system, flickers of a flame fanned by each swipe of his fingers.