Doc Jane backed out and muttered, “I’ve got to go get a sedative. Don’t go in there.”
As the doctor took off at a run, Selena stayed in the doorway.
“What are you looking at?” he screamed at her. “What the fuck do you want!”
There was a red stain on the bed. The sheeting, on one side, a little more than halfway down, was stained—he was bleeding. From some kind of wound—
“Your leg,” she breathed, well aware of the infection that had been plaguing him. “Be careful of your leg—”
“I wanted to die!” he spat. “I was trying to die!”
His face was a twisted facsimile of the features she knew well, his too-white skin stretched nearly to the breaking point over a bone structure that had no doubt been enviable before he’d been tortured by the Lessening Society.
“They took my fucking leg to save me!” He pulled the sheets off. “To save me!”
The stump was wrapped carefully in layers of surgical gauze, but underneath wasn’t doing well—blood was seeping out, everywhere.
He started to claw for what was left and that was when she had to get involved.
Marching across the room, she grabbed his flailing hands and pinned them to the bed by his head.
Luchas. Went. Wild.
Screaming, twisting, cursing at her.
All she did was shake her head and let him exhaust himself—which didn’t take long at all.
When he stopped fighting, she said, “You are so lucky. So damned lucky.”
That shut him up. Probably in a way that a direct confrontation wouldn’t have.
“What?” he stammered.
“I’m dying,” she said plainly. “And if someone could take part of my leg to save me? So I could stay here to be with the person I love? I’d do it in a heartbeat. So, yeah, I think you’re very lucky.”
He was still breathing hard, but the tension in his body left him. “Dying?”
“’Fraid so.” She released her hold and stepped back. “Don’t waste this time you have. I know you’re hurting, and I don’t doubt you’re angry at where you are. But personally, I’d trade places with you in a heartbeat.”
Doc Jane came back—and stopped when she saw that the place wasn’t on fire or something.
“I’m going to go get dressed,” Selena said as she headed for the door. “I’m cold in this gown. Do you need help cleaning up?”
Doc Jane looked back and forth between them, clearly wondering what had been said or done to turn things around. “Ah, no, let me take care of it.”
“Okay.” Selena nodded at the doctor, and then glanced back at Luchas. “Take care of yourself.”
She could feel his eyes on her as she stepped out into the corridor. Could feel them still as she went back to change.
When she reentered the tunnel, she began to get paranoid that she’d have an attack halfway back to the main house, and get stuck dying under the fluorescent lights. Or maybe if it happened on the stairwell up to the foyer … or—
Okay, she’d better stop this.
She had enough to worry about without looking for more trouble.
FIFTY-SIX
He couldn’t stop looking at her.
As iAm lay naked in front of the dying fire, his body was entwined with maichen’s, their legs one among another, their hips still locked together, their sexes close, but no longer joined. She had her head on her folded arm; his was propped up.
“I want to see you again,” he whispered.
He wanted to tell her how much he needed more of this special time, this complete break from all the shit he couldn’t shift and couldn’t make a difference with back in Caldwell. In coming here, it was as if he had briefly stepped to the side, changed his track, taken a breather. It wasn’t a permanent relocation, and he didn’t want it to be—there was no way he was abandoning his brother.
But it was enough to give him a second wind.
“It is hard for me to get away.” She kissed his fingertips. “I have only a few more days when it will be this easy. After the mourning, it will be more difficult.”
“Tomorrow night, then. Midnight.”
maichen nodded. “I will be here.”
He glanced around at the decrepit cabin. “No, come to Caldwell. Meet me in town.”
As she hesitated, he said, “I have a place there. It’s private. No one will know—and I can make you more comfortable.”
He wanted her in a bed. In the shower. Maybe on the kitchen counter.
In order to persuade her, iAm dipped down and took her mouth, stroking her lips with his own, licking his way inside. “Follow the signal of my blood and you’ll find me.”