David nodded. “She is weakening. Can you hear it?”
“Yes. I fear she will die if we do not find her soon.”
“I’ll search as long as I can, then let you know when I seek shelter.” As one of the oldest and strongest immortals, David could withstand several hours of sunlight. Most could withstand only minutes.
“And I will continue searching throughout the day.”
“You should rest.”
“Not until I find her.”
“Very well. I will rise as soon as I can.”
“Thank you, my friend.”
Ready to begin their search once more, the two stepped off the edge of the roof.
Chapter 3
Pressing two fingers to Roland’s tanned throat, Sarah was relieved to feel a slow, steady pulse.
She straightened and stared down at him, filled with equal parts of awe over his beauty and the utter perfection of his body, and compassion for the agony his injuries must be inspiring. He looked extremely uncomfortable.
Moving to stand at the other end of the futon, she bent down, tucked her hands under his arms, and pulled until his head rested only a few inches from the metal arm on this side and only his calves hung over the other. A simple endeavor, one might think, yet it took her half an hour and, by the time she finished, she was sweating and out of breath.
All of those movies she had seen in which women her size dragged unconscious men his size across the floor, hoisted them up, and tossed them in the backseat of a car or across the back of a horse were very misleading. She exercised and lifted weights six days a week and had barely been able to move him two friggin’ feet.
It hadn’t helped that he weighed a lot more than the futon, which had insisted on moving with him every time she pulled. Her shins were going to be every shade of the rainbow tomorrow.
After carefully tucking a pillow beneath his head (his hair was so soft), she went into the bathroom and retrieved all of the first aid supplies she could find.
There were quite a lot of them. When she had moved up here from Texas last summer, she had cut her hand badly on a broken glass while unpacking. (Thinking of how much the small, though deep, cut had hurt, she couldn’t imagine what Roland must be experiencing.) She had been unable to get it to stop bleeding, and the box containing her first aid stuff had remained stubbornly elusive. Since she hadn’t had health insurance at the time (she could barely afford it now), a trip to the emergency room would’ve proven too costly, so she had wrapped a washcloth around her hand, held it in place with a tight layer of duct tape, driven fifteen miles to the nearest Walmart, and bought enough gauze, nonstick pads, first aid tape, butterfly closures, and antibiotic ointment to take care of the cut and any other gashes the moving boxes’ contents might inflict during the next few months.
Fortunately for Roland, there had been very few.
Dumping the gauze and other paraphernalia on the coffee table, she went back for washcloths and two bottles of witch hazel, swung by the kitchen to grab a couple of bowls, then added them to the pile.
Sarah seated herself beside Roland on the futon, her hip touching his. Her gaze fell to his groin and lingered wickedly. The towel remained where it had fallen on the kitchen floor, leaving him bare.
He was very impressive. She felt guilty for noticing, considering the condition he was in, but … how could she not?
Forcing her gaze away, she poured witch hazel into a bowl, saturated a washcloth, wrung it out, then carefully began to bathe away the blood and dirt that coated Roland’s skin.
His face had escaped much of the devastation to which the rest of him had been subjected. On the left side of his high forehead was a pink mark that would be a large bruise tomorrow. Another darkened the opposite cheekbone, disappearing into the coarse stubble. His full lower lip was split. Other than that, his face was flawless. No swelling marred his lowered eyelids or the skin his crescent-shaped lashes shadowed. His straight nose, neither too long nor too short, was unbroken.
He really was handsome. Not a soft, pretty-boy, male model handsome, but an overtly masculine, smoothly angular, I’m hot, but can kick ass handsome.
His hands made her want to cry. Again. And she was not one to cry easily. If she weren’t so exhausted, she would have held it together much better earlier. But two nights of little or no sleep had taken their toll. (Damned students, stressing her out. Thank goodness the spring semester had finally ended.)
His fingers were long and tapered, his nails neatly trimmed … and a hole the width of a nickel went all the way through each palm. It was despicable, the atrocities some people could commit without a qualm.
Sarah rinsed the first hand well with witch hazel (she had chosen witch hazel over alcohol to clean his wounds because it would hurt less), applied thick sterile nonstick pads to both sides, then wound gauze around and around it, topping it off with first aid tape. The other hand received the same treatment.
She opted not to use antibiotic ointment because she thought she had read somewhere that it wasn’t supposed to be applied to the insides of puncture wounds. She did spread the ointment over the numerous lacerations on his arms, torso, hips, and thighs, though. Some of those were shallow. Some were so deep she had to use the butterfly closures to hold the sides together.
Witch hazel. Antibiotic ointment. Butterfly closures if necessary. Gauze. First aid tape. She really didn’t know what else to do.
None of his wounds were still bleeding, which was good.
But weird.
Her hand had bled for hours, stopping only while she had kept pressure on it. When she had later removed the duct tape and towel to replace them with bandages, it had started to bleed all over again and had done so off and on for a couple of days.
Yet Roland didn’t appear to be bleeding anywhere. Not even his hands.
How was that possible?
Was it part of his illness? Did whatever caused his photo-sensitivity also make his blood clot faster? The news segment about the photosensitive children hadn’t mentioned anything about that.
Even the stab wounds in his eight-pack abs no longer bled. It was a little unsettling.
Okay, majorly unsettling. It just didn’t seem natural. If his chest weren’t rising and falling with each breath, she would think he was dead.
Sarah rinsed out the bowl and filled it with more witch hazel. Amid a great deal of unladylike grunting, she managed to roll Roland onto his side away from her so she could inspect his back.
It, too, sported long, deep gashes and what appeared to be more stab wounds, all of which were encrusted with blood, dirt, grass, and weeds. And, like those in front, these wounds no longer bled.
Sarah went to work, cleaning and doctoring them, starting at his wide, strong shoulders. His back was broad, muscular, naturally tanned like the rest of him. A long slash began where his neck met his right shoulder and sliced down toward his left armpit. It took the rest of her butterfly closures to secure it. Another looked as though the weapon that had carved it had glanced off his ribs down on his left side. A third slit his narrow waist on the right.
It all seemed a little off.
Didn’t most criminals sport guns now? Even petty criminals?
She would think that whatever enemies Roland had acquired posing as an illegal arms dealer would have shot him, not attacked him with knives.
Sarah mulled that one over for several minutes while she ministered to him.
Maybe they hadn’t wanted to attract attention? Sound did tend to carry out here, echoing through the countryside.
But there wasn’t much gun crime in this area. At least not compared to Houston, where she had been born and raised. She would think if someone heard a gunshot way out here, they would attribute it to hunters, target practice, a truck backfiring, or someone shooting off fireworks.
Plus, there were always silencers.
Sarah blushed as she bathed the dirt and blood from Roland’s lower body. He had the sexiest butt she had ever seen. While every guy she had dated in the past had had no butt, Roland’s was firm and muscular. And his legs …
Like the rest of him, they were well-muscled and honed to perfection (that perfection broken by a cut where one of his attackers had tried to hamstring him).
It felt decidedly intimate, touching him like this while he slept. She tended to be a little shy around men and had never taken sex as lightly as her peers. (Most of the women and girls she had known had treated sex like a recreational sport and were insanely unconcerned about disease.) Consequently, she had only had two lovers thus far, both of whom had been long-term relationships.
Her first lover had been reed-thin. The second had been similarly thin when they had begun dating and a good fifty pounds overweight by the time their three-year relationship had fizzled out. Neither man, as far as she knew, had ever so much as touched a weight, let alone lifted one.
Roland, on the other hand, was built like an Olympic athlete and, for just a moment (okay, maybe two or three … or four), made her wish he was uninjured and she was easy.
Shaking her head, Sarah decided she had drooled over the poor guy long enough and set the damp cloth and bowl of witch hazel on the coffee table. The black material of the futon where he had lain was smeared with as much dirt, blood, and plant materials as his back had been. She had no idea how she was going to clean it later and, for now, did not want any of that sneaking back into his wounds.
Rising, she strode to the narrow linen closet next to the bathroom and withdrew two white sheets. The first, she shook out, folded in half, and spread across every inch of the futon’s seat that Roland didn’t cover. Then she eased him onto his back and covered him with the second.
Her work done, she stood, staring down at him for several minutes.
He seemed at once a stranger and not a stranger to her. Strong yet vulnerable.
Sarah bit her lower lip.
The rise and fall of his chest was barely discernible.
He had told her to wait until an hour before sunset to call Marcus. Though she wanted to do otherwise, she decided to respect his wishes.
For now.
In the basement of a large, isolated farmhouse, a pair of russet eyes opened. Bastien perused the darkness briefly to ensure no one had encroached upon his sanctuary.