Marked

CHAPTER THREE

Casey dropped the injured man sprawled over her shoulder onto her bed with a grunt, not entirely sure how she’d gotten him from the car to her house without collapsing herself.

He flopped onto the mattress, rolled to his back and groaned long and loud in pain. Fresh blood from numerous cuts seeped through his torn black T-shirt, ran down his massive forearms in rivulets. His black jeans were ripped at the thigh, and blood continued to pour down his pant leg and over his boot. His face wasn’t much better, a myriad of scrapes and scratches over almost every part of it.

Nausea pooled in Casey’s stomach as she took a good look at his injuries. She pressed the back of her hand against her mouth to keep from losing her dinner.

He needed a hospital. He needed an IV and medical professionals who knew what to do to help him. He needed—

“Meli, help me.”

His outstretched hand, coated in his own blood, beckoned her.

She moved forward, almost as if someone were pushing her, and hesitantly slid her hand into his. His eyes remained closed, but his fingers tightened around hers with stunning force.

Okay, that didn’t seem right. Something was off here. She tried to clear the fog from her brain, which seemed to be hanging like a shroud.

“T-Tell me what to do to help you,” she whispered.

“Lavender.”

“What?” No way she’d just heard him say—

“Fresh”—he hissed in a breath—“lavender. It grows. Here. Does it not?”

“Um, yeah,” she said as her mind spun. He tried to shift his big body farther up the bed. Letting go of his hand, she helped him lift his legs. He groaned when she touched his injured limb.

“I’m sorry,” she said on a cringe, then remembered what he’d asked for. “I don’t understand. Why do you need—?”

“You must get it for me. Steep the lavender in boiling water,” he said from between clenched teeth, as he fisted the once-white comforter at his sides. “Soak rags and bring them to me. Hurry.”

Casey stared at his wounds, momentarily transfixed by the damage. Her head was spinning. Nothing seemed to make sense. Not who he was or what had happened to him or how she’d gotten him here, into her house. And now he wanted lavender? That request was more ludicrous than anything else he’d—

“Now,” he rasped in a firm voice. “You must bring the lavender now. Before it’s too late.”

She felt herself nodding, but didn’t know why. And then her legs were moving and she was rushing out of the room, filling a stock pot with water in the kitchen and setting it on the stove to boil before she ran out of the house.

Lavender. Have to get lavender for him, because he needs it.

Outside, the moon peeked over a tall Douglas fir, splashing shadows across the surface of the lake as she moved and her mind battled some unseen force that seemed to be spurring her on. Somewhere in the distance an owl cried, the sound almost eerie in the stillness. The few houses nestled around the lake were separated by forest and distance, the nearest at least an eighth of a mile away, and tonight she was glad.

She pulled up short at the edge of her small yard and yanked a handful of lavender from the flower bed. Back inside she went right to work, waiting for the pot to boil and tossing the herbs inside to brew. While that heated, she raced for the linen closet off the hall bathroom and grabbed as many washcloths and hand towels as she could find, then hauled them back to the kitchen. She tossed the washcloths into the pot, grabbed the stack of clean hand towels and headed for her bedroom.

Halfway there a wave of nausea washed over her, and she paused in the hallway, one hand on the wall, to catch her breath.

It’s okay. I’m okay. It’s just seeing that blood. And the weird virus you’re fighting. Nothing more.

She swallowed once, twice, and waited until the dizziness passed, then moved forward.

The sight that greeted her tore a gasp from her mouth and brought that sickness right back to her stomach. Her patient was sitting up on her bed, bare to the waist, tearing his pants at his injured thigh. His face was scrunched up tight and his lips were compressed in obvious pain. Dark hair fell over his face. In the light from the hallway, the cuts and gashes and—oh, God, claw marks?—across his torso were a thousand times worse than she’d imagined.

She forced herself to go into the room, though she wanted to run away, and flipped on the bedside lamp. “I—oh, God.”

He was drenched in sweat. An ear-shattering roar tore out of him as he ripped his pant leg in two all the way to his waistband, then fell back against the pillows.

Casey immediately rounded the bed, dropped the wad of towels near his feet and took the top one, pressing the soft cotton against the gush of blood to slow the stream. Swallowing hard, she continued to apply pressure even as he growled low in his throat and writhed beneath her.

This was insane. He needed a doctor. He’d die if the wound wasn’t closed, continue to bleed out all over her grandmother’s antique white lace duvet. Somehow she had to get him back to her car and take him into town, where he could get real help. Why on earth had she brought him here in the first place?

Frantic, she glanced toward the doorway, then back at his leg. She didn’t want to leave him, but she needed to get to the phone.

“Have to stitch it closed.”

His gravelly voice brought her head around, and she looked at his face, this enormous dark and dangerous man who’d stalked through XScream earlier tonight with the arrogance of a warrior, now mere feet from death’s doorstep.

“I…I can call someone. If you hold this, I’ll go—”

“No!” He leaned up quickly, though she saw the shot of pain in his contorted features as he did so. He grabbed her wrist tight. That warmth spread through her body again. “Needle. And thread. You have those, don’t you?”

The haze returned. Thicker. Denser. Surrounding her body and blocking out her peripheral vision until all she saw were his dark-as-night eyes. Until all she heard were his words. Until all she felt was his finger stroking her pulse point, over and over again.

Slowly, she nodded, as she had before, like he was willing her to do so.

With his free hand he pressed down on the towel over his wounded thigh, then ground his teeth together. “Get those and come back.”

She hesitated. Stared at him. And had the strangest sense she’d met him before. Somewhere. Or maybe not him. But definitely someone like him.

Crazy. He was a stranger. Someone who had obviously gotten in over his head tonight. He could be a criminal. A mercenary. A madman. But even as the thoughts flickered through her mind, she dismissed them. Right now, he was nothing more than a man who needed her help.

Heart pounding, Casey turned and left the room, and when she came back with her sewing kit, she saw he wasn’t holding it together nearly as well now. His breathing was labored. Sweat dripped down his forehead. His skin was pale, his eyes clouded. She suspected he was fighting with everything he had left in him to keep from passing out.

Her hands shook as she dug through the kit and found a needle, then stilled as another thought struck. “It’s cotton. The thread is cotton. That’s not good, right? I mean, hospitals use something sterile. I need—”

“Cotton’s fine,” he rasped. “It’ll be absorbed into my skin within hours.”

She wanted to ask how that was possible, but he lifted those cloudy onyx eyes to hers before she could, and she got that fuzzy-headed feeling again, like someone else was controlling her from the outside in.

“I may pass out. I’ll try to stay awake, but I’m not sure I’ll be able to…take it. After you stitch up the wound, bring the lavender towels.” He squeezed his eyes shut tight. Blew out a breath. “Bring the towels, wring them out and lay them over my wounds.”

“But how will that—?”

“The lavender has healing properties. Trust me. On three. Alright, meli?”

His eyes locked on hers. And something passed between them in that moment. A connection she couldn’t explain. A familiarity that touched her somewhere deep inside. As her heart raced, all Casey could do was nod.

He nodded back, then lifted his hand from his injured leg and dropped back on her mattress with a groan.

Casey’s stomach flipped around like a fish out of water as she went to work. After cleaning the needle, she tried not to think of what she was doing or the way blood ran down her hands as she worked. She made methodical stitches and remembered her home-ec teacher’s words from high school: Small, even stitches, Casey. Don’t rush.

Oh, Lord, if Mrs. Stevens could see her now.

She tried to stay focused, to keep her hands from shaking. At some point she realized the man in her bed had stopped groaning and that his muscles had gone lax. She looked up only to discover he’d passed out sometime after she’d started, though she didn’t know when. Fear that she’d killed him nearly paralyzed her. She reached up quickly with her bloodied fingers, felt his pulse. Weak but consistent. She breathed out one sigh of relief, then forced herself to refocus and kept stitching. Only when she had the wound completely closed and she was snipping the end of the thread did she notice the blood flow had slowed considerably.

At least that’s one good thing.

She’d used all the towels she’d brought to mop up blood as she worked, and there were other cuts on his arms and torso that needed tending. One quick glance down and she realized her T-shirt was ruined, soaked clear through in places from his blood. Seeing no reason to salvage it, she lifted the cotton over her head and bunched it up against a nasty-looking wound beneath his ribs. He moaned, tried to move slightly, and that’s when the breath Casey hadn’t realized she’d been holding came out of her on a rush.

He definitely wasn’t dead. He was sleeping.

Probably better. She didn’t know how he could have endured that pain without anesthetics. She’d have been dead already.

She was hesitant to stitch up any other wounds, even though she thought they might need it. He’d only been concerned with the one, and he was a man who’d obviously been through his fair share of fights before. She noticed then, as she looked across his bare chest and toned abdomen, the myriad of scars that crossed his skin.

And the strange tattoos on his forearms that ran down to his fingers. Ones she was almost sure she’d seen before.

Who was this guy? And what had really happened to him tonight?

“Meli,” he said in a rasp, turning his head toward her.

She used the ruined shirt in her hand to wipe the blood from his face as gently as she could as she bent over him. And out of nowhere, a wave of tenderness she couldn’t contain whipped through her as she looked down at this big, strong, hulking male who was so completely vulnerable to her right now.

The emotion was completely out of place. She didn’t know him. Didn’t have any tie to him. And yet, she couldn’t have turned away from him if she’d tried.

Maybe it was because she’d watched her grandmother die only months before. Then she’d been powerless to help. Now she wasn’t. As she studied his chiseled features, ran her fingertips over his silky eyebrows, she felt that flash of familiarity all over again.

Then again, maybe it was something more.

“Shh,” she said softly, shaking off the strange thought. “It’s over now.”

He lifted a hand, as if in slow motion, and ran his fingers over the bare skin of her arm. A shudder ran down her spine, and electricity raced over her skin. “Towels,” he said weakly. “Lavender.”

“I’ll get them,” she whispered. “Just lie still and breathe.”

His hand dropped to the mattress as she turned and left the room. In the kitchen, she used tongs to lift the soaking washcloths from the steaming water, transferred them to a colander and squeezed out as much moisture as she could. While they cooled in the sink, she poured juice into a cup and dug through the cupboards until she found a box of bendy straws she’d bought for her grandmother, when she’d been too weak to lift a glass. She put everything she needed on a tray and took it back into the bedroom.

She laid a damp rag over each of his wounds. He flinched as the towels touched his tender skin, then sighed in what she could only describe as relief when each of his wounds were covered. Amazing. She’d always loved the scent of lavender, but who knew it could be so totally calming?

She lifted his head with one hand and gave him a sip of the juice, then placed the glass on the side table as the soothing fragrance wafted through the room. Glancing down at his body, she realized his blood-soaked pants needed to come off, so she went to work cutting them from his legs as carefully as she could.

It wasn’t easy. And after ten minutes with the scissors, making no progress whatsoever, she went into the garage and came back with wire cutters. The fabric—it was like nothing she’d ever felt before—sort of a cross between leather, superstrong vinyl and…Kevlar. But that didn’t make sense, did it? She looked closely as she pulled the garment free of his body. It was thick. As strong as steel. And he’d torn it with his bare hands? On closer examination she discovered the inside housed unusual holsters for tools—weapons?—in strange pockets she’d never seen in any pair of pants before.

Okay, that was weird.

She was about to open the first of the many holsters to see what was inside when she glanced back at her patient and realized…he wasn’t wearing underwear.

A flush heated her skin as her eyes took in the sight of him there, splayed naked in front of her on the bed. Even beat to hell, bloodied and bruised, he was stunning. Strong roped muscles in his shoulders and arms and pecs, taut abs and trim hips, and lower…

That flush turned to a white-hot burn she felt everywhere.

Oh, yeah. Do not go there.

She turned away, calling herself ten kinds of idiot as she put his things on a nearby chair and moved to the closet, where she grabbed a blanket from the top shelf. The comforter beneath him was soaked with his blood, but she didn’t want to move him just yet. Gently, and without looking at his hips again, she laid her grandmother’s quilt over his battered body and tucked it up around his neck to keep him warm. Then she brushed the back of her hand against his forehead to check his temperature.

Stay professional. You’re just being a Good Samaritan. But oh, hell. She had an overwhelming urge to be anything but.

He moaned, tipped his head her way, eyes still shut. Absurdly thick, dark lashes any woman would die for fanned over the soft skin beneath his eyes. He didn’t feel hot, so she figured that was a good sign.

“Just breathe,” she whispered. “And sleep now.” She reached over to turn off the bedside lamp and forced herself to step away. “I’ll check on you in a little while.”

“Thank you, meli,” he whispered as she walked out of the room.

She hesitated in the doorway, struck by the fact he’d used the same term of endearment her grandmother had always used. His accent was definitely European, but not like any she’d ever heard. Eastern European maybe? But even that didn’t fit. Her grandmother had been born outside Athens, then immigrated to the United States when she was just a girl. And though Casey’s roots were Greek on her mother’s side, she knew for certain the endearment meli was not a Greek one.

Strange, she told herself, but not a biggie. In the grand scheme of things, what this man called her was trivial at most. Making sure he didn’t die on her watch was all that mattered.