Fatal Strike (McClouds & Friends #10)(49)

She’d always been indifferent about guns, but her eyes followed the weapon longingly. She wanted to snatch it away. Give me that.

“No doctors,” she said. “He would find me, if I went to an emergency room. It’s just scratches and bruises and mud, that’s all.”

“Lara,” Miles said. “Come on. You’ve been locked in a dungeon for six months. They’ve been using you as a lab rat. Who knows what shape you’re in? You should get checked out.”

“Not now,” she said. “Just let me chill, okay? I just need to not be pushed around for a while.”

Miles looked stung. “I never meant to push—”

“You didn’t,” she hastened to say. “Sorry. I didn’t mean that at all. Not toward you. And, ah, by the way. Thank you. All of you.”

The three men looked uncomfortable. “I’ll just go set up guard, outside.” Connor fled, out the door.

“I’ll get the portable surveillance kit,” Sean said, following him.

Miles looked nervous, too, but he didn’t run away from her.

“And you, most of all,” she said quietly. “Thank you, Miles.”

It was the first time she’d spoken his name aloud. It felt good in her mouth.

He winced. “I’m just sorry it took me so long.” He gestured toward the staircase that spiraled up from the kitchen. “Come on upstairs.”

With you, anywhere. She just thought the words. She did not say them or even type them on his mental computer, but she could tell from the way he froze to immobility for a split second that he’d felt her thought. It vibrated in the air between them. Her face went hot.

She launched herself, unsteadily, toward the stairs. Miles lay a hand on the small of her back, as if she might topple backward.

Her knees felt weak. Her joints were soft, squishy. The polite pressure of his hand burned through the sweatshirt like a brand, but not a painful one. The heat felt shivery sweet. Glowing.

Miles opened doors upstairs, peering into the rooms. He found one he liked, and flung the door wide, gesturing her in.

It was the master bedroom. Huge, with floor-to-ceiling windows, and sliding doors that led out onto a big deck. Her eyes were still watering from the light. A bathroom door stood open. A king-sized bed had a pile of towels, a fluffy, folded-up white comforter.

She stared around. Vaulted space. Real air, freshly laundered sheets. Too much. She squinted through her fingers.

He saw the gesture, and moved to the window. “I can close the hanging blinds if it’s too much light. You’ll want to rest.”

“I don’t want it completely dark.” Her voice shook.

“Of course not,” he said.

The pulled cord made the hanging vertical blinds slide to close, but he left them at a slight angle, so that narrow stripes of light slanted through the slats across his muscular torso, the floor, the wall. She longed to capture the image, sculpt him that way, painted with light.

It was the first moment in months that she had longed for her art. She’d been wondering if that instinct had been crushed by darkness.

The room felt smaller. She felt stupidly shy. Empty-headed. Staring, speechless, starstruck.

“I could open them more,” he ventured, his voice uncertain, “if it’s too dark.”

“It’s fine,” she said. “Leave it. The light’s too much for my eyes.”

“Yeah. I’ll, uh, just get out of your way, then.”

Don’t. She screamed the words, inwardly, but would not let them come out of her mouth. He seemed to hear them anyway. He stood by the door like a statue. Their eyes were locked. A breathless pressure built up. She trembled. Air was trapped in her chest. Frozen, there.

All those heated encounters with him in the Citadel swirled through her mind. She wondered if he had experienced them, too. But she would die of embarrassment before she could ask him.

He turned away. “I’m getting a shower. Later.”

She sagged onto the bed when the door clicked shut, face on her knees. Oh, man, she did not need this. Why crush out now? She’d never been so vulnerable, so f*cked up. God. Please. Have mercy.

She managed to peel off the blood, dirt and sweat-stiffened clothing, and get herself into the shower. The image in the mirror jarred her. Being so thin and pale and bruised hadn’t been as incongruous, reflected in the distorted stainless steel soap dispenser and shower fixture in the rat hole. But here, in a luxury bathroom with gleaming gold-toned fixtures and expanses of black marble, she looked insubstantial, wispy. Hardly there at all.

The huge shower was big enough for two, and there was a full-length mirror situated right outside the transparent glass door. A bathroom for honeymooners. The shower was planned with sex in mind.

She squeezed her eyes shut against the images that unleashed. Hot water pounded down her face. So odd, to feel light press against her eyelids as she showered. To not be in that contorted position. Soap stung in all her cuts and scrapes. Dirt sluiced off, swirling around her feet. The shampoo was thick and foamy, and it smelled of honeysuckle. The utilitarian stuff in the rat hole soap dispenser had stunk like disinfectant hospital surgical foam. It took three sudsing passes before her hair rinsed clean of grit.

She toweled off, stepping in distaste over the limp, filthy rags snarled on the bathroom floor. She did not want to put them next to her skin again, particularly not the rat hole pants. She could reconcile herself to Miles’ sweatshirt, maybe. But she wasn’t giving it back to him. Not ever. She was bronzing the thing. Personally.