Tegan hissed a curse. “What did you do, Rio? Where is Tess now?”
Rio gave a miserable shake of his head and gestured vaguely toward the back wing of the sprawling mansion. Tegan was about to take off in that direction when urgent footsteps sounded on the long corridor that led from the general area of the estate’s indoor pool. The soft smack of a light, barefoot gait drew nearer, followed by a female’s voice raised in concern.
“Rio? Rio, where are y—”
Tess rounded the corner in a squeaking skid, wearing black workout pants over a wet baby-blue tank swimsuit. The look was pure sports therapy business, but any male with eyes in his head and red blood in his veins would be crazy not to notice how beautifully she filled out all that nylon and Lycra. Her honey-brown hair was swept back in a long ponytail, the ends damp and curling from the pool. Peach-polished toenails stopped dead at the edge of the field of broken porcelain in the foyer.
“Oh, my God. Rio…are you all right?”
“He’s okay,” Tegan told her flatly. “What about you?”
Tess’s hand went up reflexively to her neck, but she nodded her head. “I’m fine. Rio, look at me, please. It’s okay. You can see that I’m perfectly fine.”
But something had gone down a few minutes ago; that much was obvious. “What happened?”
“We had some setbacks in today’s session, nothing major.”
“Tell him what I did to you,” Rio muttered. “Tell him how I blacked out in the pool and came to only to find my hands wrapped around your throat.”
“Jesus.” Tegan scowled, and now that Tess moved her fingers away from her neck he could see the fading outline of a bruising grip. “You sure you’re all right?”
She nodded. “He didn’t mean it, and he let go the instant he realized what he was doing. I’m fine, really. He will be too. You know that, right, Rio?”
Tess cautiously stepped forward, avoiding the shards at her feet yet keeping a healthy distance from Tegan like he was more of a threat to her general safety than the feral wreck that was Rio.
Tegan wasn’t offended. He preferred his solitary existence and worked hard to maintain it. He watched Tess move slowly toward Rio’s stiff stance at the sideboard.
She gently placed her hand on the warrior’s scarred shoulder. “Tomorrow will be better, I’m sure. Every day there are small improvements.”
“I’m not getting better,” Rio muttered, in what could have sounded like self-pity but seemed more a bleak understanding. He shook off Tess’s touch with a snarl. “I should be put down. It would be a blessing…to everyone, especially me. I am useless. This body—my mind—it’s all fucking useless!”
Rio slammed his fist down on the sideboard, rattling the broken mirror glass and putting a tremor in the two-hundred-year-old mahogany beneath it.
Tess flinched, but there was an unwavering resolve in her blue-green eyes. “You are not useless. Healing takes time, that’s all. You can’t give up.”
Rio growled something nasty under his breath, his hooded eyes throwing off amber light in warning. But not even a half-mad vampire’s ferocious bluster was going to dissuade Tess from helping him if she could. No doubt she’d seen this sort of snarling behavior before from Rio—and possibly even her own mate—and hadn’t run away in terror.
Tegan watched Tess stand firm, calm, steady, tenacious. It wasn’t hard to imagine why Dante adored her so much. But Tegan could see that Rio was in a particularly unstable, volatile state. He may not mean anyone harm—least of all, Tess, whose extraordinary healing skills had nursed him out of near psychosis—but rage and anguish made for one powerful emotional cocktail. Tegan knew that fact firsthand; he’d lived it once, long ago. Add to that the lingering aftereffects of a traumatic brain injury like Rio had suffered, and the warrior was a lit powder keg just waiting to go off.
“Let me,” Tegan said when Tess started to move toward Rio again. “I’ll take him down to the compound. I’m heading below anyway.”
She gave him a wary smile. “Okay, thanks.”
Tegan approached Rio with deliberate movements and carefully guided him away from the female and out of the field of debris around their feet. The big male’s steps were heavy, lacking the grace that used to come so naturally to him. Rio leaned heavily on Tegan’s shoulder and arm, his bare chest heaving with every deep breath he hauled into his lungs.
“That’s it, nice and easy,” Tegan coached him. “We good now, amigo?”
The dark head bobbed awkwardly.