Smoke Bitten (Mercy Thompson, #12)(74)

* * *



? ? ?

Everyone was tucked into bed by the time we got home. Jesse called a good night to us as we passed her room, so they hadn’t been in bed for long.

I found the pajamas that I wore when I was sick—Adam wouldn’t think it strange for me to grab them when I had a broken nose. They were a gift from my mom—nothing I would ever have bought myself. It was ridiculous how much I loved them.

They were mint green and covered with pink ponies with improbable purple manes and tails. My mom had a thing for horses. But the important thing about them tonight was that they covered me from neck to feet.

I showered and dressed and by the time I was through I hurt so badly I wasn’t sure I could sleep. Every muscle in my body was stiff and sore. I crawled into bed and finally just lay facedown with a pillow under my chest and my face turned aside so that my nose didn’t hit the mattress. Nothing else was comfortable, either.

Adam showered and I must have dozed despite the discomfort because the next thing I knew the bed was moving under his weight.

“Mercy,” he told me. “Take off your shirt.”

I lay very still. Maybe he would think I was asleep.

“Your shirt rode up while you were poking your finger at me,” he said. “Threatening me with the dire consequences of dying around a ticked-off daughter of Coyote who can call the dead. You don’t have to hide your injuries from me—that’s our deal, remember?”

“You knew?” I asked.

“I just wanted to see how far you would take it. Strip off your shirt, tough girl, and I’ll see what I can do about making you feel better.”

He didn’t know I’d been hiding my bruises so that he didn’t have one more thing to feel responsible for. One more thing for Elizaveta’s curse to dig into him with. He wasn’t wearing a monster, so apparently I hadn’t needed to try to hide anything from him.

“I can’t move,” I whined, now that I didn’t have to pretend. “It hurts.”

He helped me roll over and gave me a bag of frozen peas, which he must have brought upstairs while I was dozing, for my nose.

“No, don’t press it,” he said. “Just let it rest there.”

And my nose settled down while he lit a vanilla candle I couldn’t smell and turned out the lights.

“I’m not being romantic,” he advised me. “The lights are going to hurt your eyes. The candle is warming the oil I’m going to use to help your poor abused muscles relax.”

I thought that sounded like a pretty romantic thing to do. Romantic didn’t always have to do with sex.

He unbuttoned the shirt of my pajamas and managed to get it off me without hurting me more. I had a bag of peas over my eyes so I couldn’t see what he looked like after getting a fully detailed report on my body.

What he said, after a moment, was “Okay, pants off, too.”

And he lifted and moved my limp body around. At one point he stopped and said, “These are your favorite pajamas.”

“Yes,” I said.

He grunted. “Easier if I could rip them off, but I’ll manage.”

And so he did.

Then he rubbed warmed oil all over my sore muscles. Not a massage, just gentle repetitive motions that took the edge off. I fell asleep with his strong hands rubbing my shoulders. I still hurt, but I didn’t care as much as I had.



* * *



? ? ?

I don’t know what time it was that I woke up to the hairs on the back of my neck crawling.

“Adam?”

A low growl from the far side of the room answered me. It wasn’t Adam’s usual growl, but it was him. I thought about the ugly, ugly monster.

“For Pete’s sake,” I complained after a moment of thought. “Get back to bed. I’m cold.”

Something very, very heavy got into bed beside me. I was worried the bed was going to break. A very big, hot body curled around me and rough skin touched my own. Adam rested his very large chin on the top of my head.

“Better,” I grumped, snuggling into his warmth. “Go to sleep.”



* * *



? ? ?

He was gone when I woke up in the morning—and I woke up early because moving hurt. It didn’t hurt as much as it might have if Adam hadn’t given me a hot oil treatment. Today was Monday, and though I was shutting down the garage until further notice, on Monday I had promised to fix the cars that absolutely only I could do. If I was going to have to go to work this morning, it was probably a good thing that I’d gotten up early.

Hannah was in the kitchen when I finally came down, feeling like I was a hundred and ten years old. She took one look at me and winced.

“Adam said you’d be in rough shape this morning,” she said. Then she walked over and kissed me on the cheek. “I’d hug you if it wouldn’t hurt both of us. Thank you for saving my little girl.”

“You’ve got me mixed up,” I told her. “Auriele saved Makaya. I just hit the bastard with my car.”

“Yes, well, thanks for that, too,” she said. “I hurt too much to sleep in, so I thought I’d come down and make my granny’s secret recipe for all that ails you.”

She brewed it all up in a double boiler, then poured it into two cups, took out a flask that had Granny’s Secret Ingredient engraved on the side, and added generously to the result.