I huffed a sigh. “What a shame.”
Her answering smile was tight. Sam was still part of her family, even if he was an asshole who’d tried to kill me on more than one occasion. “Mauricio and Sam were… involved,” she told me in a soft voice. “He’s taking it pretty hard.”
Now that made a whole lot more sense. In the hallway, Sam was backing away from Kai with his bloody hands raised defensively.
“She’s got you all fucking fooled,” he spat, pointing in my direction. “Mark my words, that bitch is faking. She’ll be the end of us, just wait and see.” He spat blood onto the wooden floor, then cast a venomous look in my direction before stalking away.
Oh Sam, buddy. I almost feel bad… This is gonna sting when you realize how right you were, but by then it’ll be far too late. Your friends will be dead, and I’ll be long gone, drinking vodka with Stanley in Iceland.
29
M oana had grabbed a stack of antiseptic wipes and dressings, and given me an apologetic smile before going to patch Sam up. That left me with my surly jailer, who slouched onto a bar stool at the kitchen island.
I folded my arms, watching him as he reached for the medical box and started hunting through it. My patience snapped all of twenty seconds later.
“Oh my god, stop ,” I exclaimed. “You’re getting blood on all the first aid supplies, you gross thing.”
Kai’s head snapped up, looking at me like he was surprised to find me still in the kitchen. “Excuse me? I’m not gross.”
I twisted my lips in disgust. “Are you sure about that? What if you have some blood-borne disease and the next person who goes to get a Band-Aid gets infected because you’re too arrogant to clean up your hands?”
His brows hitched. “First I’m gross, now I’m arrogant too?”
Scowling, I jerked the medical kit out of his reach and took out the antiseptic wash and some wipes, then found a handful of dressings. He seemed to only have two small cuts on his face and split knuckles on his right hand. Nothing major.
“Trust me, you’ve always been arrogant,” I muttered, putting the lid on the box to keep it somewhat sanitary. “And I’m happy to slap you with a whole dictionary of adjectives if you’d like me to really destroy that inflated ego more.” I pushed the supplies across the counter to him.
He stared at the pile a moment with a small frown on his brow. Then he awkwardly picked up a wipe with his left hand and tried to open it with his teeth. Pathetic.
I gave a small sound of frustration and rounded the island to snatch the wipe from his teeth. “This is painful to watch,” I muttered, tearing the packet open. Not bothering to give him any warning, I liberally doused the splits on his knuckles with disinfectant solution.
Kai hissed, and I ignored him, cleaning up the blood with far from gentle swipes. He was a big, tough arms dealer; I wasn’t going to baby him over a couple of split knuckles.
“Fucking hell, Danielle,” he grunted when I applied the Band-Aids to his hand and peeled open another wipe for his face. “I think I’d rather get patched up by a pissed off porcupine.”
I glared at him while soaking my fresh wipe in the antiseptic solution, then held his gaze as I slapped it against the cut on his cheek bone. He flinched, and I bit back a smirk of satisfaction.
“Don’t be a fucking baby, Kai,” I said, wiping the cut far more thoroughly than it needed. “It’s not like I’m torturing you.”
He went silent, his mood souring with an obvious shift. Tough shit, sweetheart. You don’t wanna feel bad? Don’t torture people. Otherwise, suck it the fuck up and own your decisions.
Of course… I couldn’t give him that opinion. Not when I was his victim in this scenario. So I just pursed my lips and finished patching up the two cuts on his face. One on his cheekbone and one on his eyebrow. He watched me with those whiskey dark eyes as I worked, and I tried really hard to ignore how close we were.
“I would have thought you’d know how to block a punch better than this,” I eventually said, simply to try and break the building tension between us.
He huffed a short laugh. “He came out second best. Always does.”
“Good,” I murmured, sticking the last Band-Aid on and pressing the edges down far too hard. “You’re done. I’m going to shower.” I took a big step away from him and felt like I could actually breathe again with some space between us.
He tilted his head, watching me with a curious expression. “I thought you were hungry?”
My stomach gurgled at me like it’d been summoned. Fuck, yes. I was starving . “I suppose.”
Kai gave a nod. “Then sit down and drink your coffee. I’ll make breakfast.”
I tried to summon up an indignant refusal, to tell him where to shove his offer of breakfast because I was his prisoner not his friend. But my stomach cramped hard, and I gave a small grimace instead.
“Fine,” I muttered. It was a good thing I hadn’t been holding my coffee when Sam knocked me over, or there would be more than blood to clean up off the floor. And I’d much rather spill blood than coffee any day of the week.
Kai smirked at me like he’d won something, then pushed my coffee closer as I slid onto the stool he’d just vacated. “How do you like your eggs?”
“Cooked,” I replied, being deliberately difficult.
He didn’t take the bait, though. Instead, he just flashed me that fucking blinding smile and nodded. “Cooked eggs, coming up.”
I glared, then when he turned his back to get ingredients out of the fridge, I took a long look at his backside. Oh yeah, the infamous Ares definitely didn’t skip leg day. His butt was totally bitable, and his thighs… holy hell. The strength in those thighs, even through his charcoal gray sweatpants, had me imagining all kinds of things. Most of them naked.
It wasn’t until someone cleared their throat beside me that I realized I’d been staring. Then I blushed for real and gave Eli a nervous look. Somehow he’d slid onto the stool right beside me, and I hadn’t even noticed him approach. Either I was losing my touch in a big way or I had just been hypnotized by Kai’s ass.
“Good morning, Danny,” Eli murmured in that deep voice of his. “How are you feeling?”
I frowned at him. Eli was the hardest to read, and not just because of his tendency to listen rather than talk. His poker face was flawless, not a single thought crossing his face as he stared back at me. I knew very little about him from the file I’d compiled on Kai’s crew either. He was thirty-nine years old, born and raised in Tanzania, indentured to become a child soldier at a very young age. Somehow he made his way from an African warlord’s service to the British military, then into the Royal Marines. That was where most of this crew had met originally. They were all ex-armed forces from various countries, including Mo.
“I feel like I’ve been kept in a dungeon for an indefinite amount of time, tortured, terrified, and nearly killed,” I told him in a clipped voice, narrowing my eyes with accusation. “But thanks for asking. Did it help ease your guilt over being complicit in all of that?”
Eli’s brows rose ever so slightly, and I gave myself a mental back pat for getting a reaction out of him.