"This ain't my first rodeo, cowboy."
He flinched under her hand, so she moved closer and tried to be gentler when she pulled the torn skin together.
She talked to distract him. "I used to work nights at a hospital. I was thinking about being a nurse, or maybe a doctor, but changed my mind after a year working the front desk in the ER. I learned a lot though. There was a nice doctor that took me under her wing and showed me the ropes. She was like a mentor, and taught me a lot." Emma shot Dustin a quick look and said carefully, "No claw marks."
"What?"
She blew out a sigh and pressed another stich into his skin. "You don't have any claw marks, so that rules out bears and big cats."
"Stop it. Stop with the guessing. I'm not talking about it."
"Fine, but I want to know what werewolves are doing in the area and why they nearly ripped your throat out, Dustin. This could've killed you."
"Nothing can kill me. I'm invincible," he said through a smirk.
"That's not true. You know it and I know it. The A-Team was annihilated by Logan and Winter. People die, and tonight it could've been you."
"You would've missed me, huh?"
She wanted to claw that grin off his face. It was a fake one. A forced one. It wasn't real, and they'd been through enough during the Blackwing interview process that he didn't have to hide real feelings with pretend bravado. When Emma jammed the needle into his neck, he snarled loud enough for her to hear this time. Fast as she could to distract his wolf from his aggression, Emma pulled the back of Dustin's hair and leveled him with a look. "What's going on, Dustin."
He stood there frozen, glaring down at her with narrowed eyes. "Careful, Human. Some shit is too far over your head, and you shouldn't get involved in things that don't concern you."
"You concern me."
A look of shock drifted over his face, just for an instant, and then his smirk was back. "You wanna fuck now?"
She made a pissed-off tick sound behind her teeth and started sewing again. She would have to cut these stitches out tomorrow when his skin was cinched, but he needed these for tonight to stop the damn bleeding.
Suddenly Dustin went down hard. His legs just went out from under him, and he went to the floor. Emma tried to soften his fall, but she was scrawny, and Dustin was densely muscled.
Shit!" she yelled as she went down with him. He was white as a sheet, and his breathing came in shallow pants. A thin sheen of sweat broke out on his forehead, and his pupils were blown.
"Dustin?" she said, slapping his cheek gently.
"Don't leave," he slurred.
"I won't. I won't. I'm here. It's okay. I'll take care of you. Go to sleep, and I'll take care of you."
"My brother." He said it so softly she had to read his lips, but his words made no sense.
"What?"
Dustin swallowed hard and raised his voice just enough. "My brother did this." He locked his bleary gaze with hers for just a few moments before his eyes rolled back in his head and he went limp on the tile floor.
Emma rushed to finish stitching him, but it was hard to see through her blurred vision. His brother tried to kill him? Emma couldn't imagine Enrique or Lauren ever trying to hurt her, much less rip her apart like this. She'd been lucky with her adoptive family, but clearly, Dustin wasn't as fortunate.
Emma cut off the extra suture, checked his pulse, which was slow but steady, then grabbed a clean washrag from the towel rack. She warmed the tap water, drenched the rag, and hesitated over his limp body. She'd never seen Dustin without a shirt on. He had angel wings tattooed on his chest. They were done well, too, perfectly symmetrical, and showed good skill from the tattoo artist. His sandy-blond hair was flipped to the side, and even in his sleep, his torso was so muscular his abs flexed with every breath. His jeans were spattered in dark spots, but they rode low on his hips, and a strip of red elastic sat right above the waist of his jeans. He had good taste in underwear, so there was that. She'd always been attracted to dark-headed men with dark eyes, but there was something masculine yet beautiful about Dustin. When he was passed out and near death, that was, because he had a mouth on him she wanted to claw off pretty damn often. And she was eighty-four percent sure he was a pervert.
She knelt beside him and cleaned his skin slowly, gently, so she wouldn't re-open any of the newly healing bite marks on his ribs and chest. Dustin was so confident, so quick-witted, she'd assumed him invincible. Plus, she'd seen him fight in his human form before, the first day of interviews when the mob of shifters had surged toward Dark Kane. He'd gone into that fight beside Logan and Beast and hadn't backed down an inch. She hadn't been able to take her eyes off him. She blamed those pretty bi-colored eyes of his. Or maybe the sexy, long hair or his sense of humor.
When his skin was clean of blood and she'd bandaged his neck, Emma dragged him by the feet to the bed. She huffed and puffed, trying to get him up onto the mattress, but it wasn't happening. She worked out to keep up with her people, but Dustin was much bigger than her, and she didn't want to hurt him even more. So instead she yanked the unmade blankets off his bed and created a pallet on the floor for him. A couple of log rolls later, and Dustin looked comfortable enough.
Emma checked his breathing. It was so shallow she couldn't force herself to leave him here alone.
Plus, he'd asked her not to leave.
It was late, and she was exhausted after the adrenaline crash, but she was terrified he would stop breathing in the night. So she stayed awake, watching his chest rise and fall, straining her ears for the sound of breathing. And when her eyes got too heavy to hold open another minute, she draped her legs across his chest so she could feel his breath and slumped her head back against the side of the bed.
In the final moments before she fell asleep, she thought of Dustin's brother. Dustin drove her nuts most of the time, and if she didn't want to slap him ten times in a twenty-four-hour period, it was a slow day, but he was D-Team. And though she would never admit it, Dustin felt like a friend. The most annoying friend she had, but a friend nonetheless.
Something dark and ugly inside of her hated his brother, whoever he was.
Chapter Three
Emma cracked her eye open. The ache in her neck was ridiculous, and as she took stock of where she was, it made sense. She was lying on Dustin's pallet and someone had stuffed two pillows under her head. Her neck was basically at a ninety-degree angle, and when she moved, her ear hurt. Her hearing aids were small and sleek, but part of them rested behind her ears and she'd slept on one. She groaned as she sat up, but could barely hear her voice. Crap.
She fiddled with the aids, but both were out of batteries thanks to her not charging them long enough last night and leaving them on.
It was early October now in the Smoky Mountains, and cold, but she felt fine thanks to Dustin who had tucked her in like a child. He'd even shoved the edges of the blanket under her like she was a burrito. On a paper towel next to her on the floor, her toothbrush sat beside her half empty tube of toothpaste and a white paper bag that smelled like it harbored a fruit-filled donut. Maybe she was dreaming. Emma rubbed her eyes and blinked hard, but nope, not dreaming. Everything was still there.
When she sat up, the blanket slipped down past her bare boobs. Emma squawked and yanked the covers back up. Dustin was brushing his teeth at the sink and smiled cheerily at her through the mirror.
"Why am I naked?" she asked, but could barely hear herself and grew self-conscious she was speaking too loud and not enunciating enough. She hated when she didn't have her hearing aids.
Dustin frowned and turned. "You don't remember?" he asked, and clear enough she could read his lips.
Clutching the blanket, she shook her head.
"We fooled around. Twice. I was a stud and you were okay, but we'll improve with time. Your hair looks like a bird's nest."
Emma's mouth plopped open in horror. No. No, no, no, she wouldn't have slept with Dustin. Not him.
Dustin did look quite recovered now with color in his cheeks. And apparently he'd taken his first aid into his own hands because he'd cut his own damn stitches out. "You said my dick was huge, and I said thank you, and you said I was the best you'd ever had, and I said thank you, and then you asked me to eat you out, and I said, ‘it's not my favorite, but you saved my life, so okay-'"