The drugs had kicked in and lessened the throbbing in my leg and arm. Clearly, my judgment had been clouded when I decided to make the hazardous journey to the snack bar and summit it like a rookie climbing Everest. I had no idea how I was going to get down.
I could feel Reyes hovering, sticking to the shadows but looking on, watching, waiting. I was just about to tell him to beat it when the door opened and my biker guy, Donovan, walked in like he owned the place. Mafioso and the prince were right behind him. I looked away in embarrassment. Face sutures couldn’t possibly be appealing. Thank goodness I had a huge white bandage covering half my face. Maybe he wouldn’t notice. I’d hate for him to fall out of love with me so soon after falling in.
He fixed a curious gaze on me, then sucked in a soft hiss of breath.
I covered my face with one hand, the other still impossible to raise without screaming.
“What the fuck happened to you?” he asked. He moved a barstool aside for a better look. “Did Blake do this?”
“Who?” I asked, peeking between my fingers.
The prince was studying my leg brace. I had changed into shorts with Cookie’s help and she reattached the leg brace to keep me from bending my leg. Apparently, the tendons had to heal first. The bandages around the knife wound were visible from between the straps on the brace. He put a hand on them then glanced up at me, worry in his eyes.
Mafioso stood against the wall at my feet, hands in his pockets, a decidedly uncomfortable expression lining his features.
“Blake, the guy whose life you saved the other night.”
“Oh, no.” I closed my fingers again. “This is my own doing.”
“Kind of hard on yourself, aren’t you?”
“How’s Artemis?” I asked, but I knew the answer instantly. The same regret suffusing the air. The same pain as when Cookie told me about Garrett.
“She’s gone.”
My mouth pressed together. I’d had enough death for a while. I breathed deeply before saying, “I’m so sorry.”
“Me, too, darlin’.”
“Did you find your guy?”
“Who, Blake? He wised up and went to the police.”
“I would have, too, if you had been looking for me.”
“Somehow, I doubt that.” I felt his fingers slide along my forearm and rest on my wrist. With the greatest ease, he tugged my hand away from my face. From where I was sitting on the bar, my head was actually a little higher than his, and I looked down. He was quite handsome for a scruffy biker sort. Of course, scruffy biker sorts were exactly my type.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
He’d kept the fingers of one hand laced within mine while the other fished something out of his pocket. “I brought you a key.”
I blinked in surprise when he placed it in my palm. “A key to what?”
The prince spoke up, a bitterness in his voice. “To the asylum.”
“Whenever you need to visit Rocket,” Donovan said, glowering at his cohort, “you can go in through the front doors. No more scaling fences and climbing in through windows.”
“You’re ruining everything,” the prince said.
Clearly he didn’t want me visiting, and I thought we were friends. “I’m sorry. I wouldn’t go in there if Rocket’s information weren’t so invaluable.”
“You misunderstand his annoyance,” Donovan said.
“Our annoyance.” Mafioso seemed just as perturbed.
Donovan grinned. “They don’t want you to have a key, because watching you get on your stomach and crawl through that itty-bitty window is one of our favorite pastimes.” He held up a gloved thumb and index finger to emphasize the small size of the opening.
The prince smiled. “I especially like it when the window closes about halfway in and you get your ass stuck.”
He high-fived Mafioso.
“I’m completely appalled,” I said, completely appalled. “You guys have known all this time? You watch me?”
“Mostly just your ass,” the prince said with a wink. Charmer.
“What happened, sweetheart?”
I glanced back at Donovan, at the sympathetic gaze in his eyes, and it all came rushing back with hurricane force. A lump swelled in my throat, and my eyes blurred instantly with wetness. “I got one of my best friends killed.” A telling moisture pushed past my lashes as I studied Donovan. At least with a biker, you knew where you stood, which was usually ten feet away from his bike. There were no illusions that you would come first. No promises or guarantees or sweet nothings whispered in your ear.
My breath hitched in my chest, and he stepped within my reach.
So reach, I did.
I wound my fingers into his shirt and pulled him closer. I should have been thinking about how bad I looked. My face had nearly been sliced off, but all I wanted was the taste of him on my tongue. I eased over and pressed my mouth to his. He leaned forward and let me kiss him. The kiss was gentle and patient and a little hungry.
I led my hand inside his jacket and pulled him closer. He deepened the kiss, just barely, trying desperately not to hurt me.
“Is this for me, Dutch?” Reyes growled—so close, I could feel the heat layer over me like a warmed blanket. I offered him a mental fuck you, and he disappeared. But the pain that exuded out of him just before he did so stole my breath and I gasped.
Donovan broke the kiss instantly.
When I raised my lashes, the prince had his hand on Donovan’s shoulder, as if coaxing him to stop. Donovan nodded in acknowledgment, and the prince dropped his hand.
“Sweetheart,” Donovan said, appreciation glittering in his eyes, “I don’t know where to touch you without hurting you, and the last thing you need right now is to be hurt.” He brushed his fingertips along my good cheek. “But I’d be a liar if I said I wasn’t tempted beyond comprehension.”
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that,” I said, suddenly embarrassed. The little girl sat wide eyed, the NC-17 rating way above her pay grade. I was seriously going to have to get rid of her.
With the help of his two bodyguards, Donovan lifted me into his arms.
“What are your names?” I asked Mafioso and the prince as they carried me to my bed, which made no sense, since all my bedding was on the sofa. But they threw a couple of blankets down, moved my supplies to my nightstand, and called it good.