The Wolf (Black Dagger Brotherhood: Prison Camp #2)(62)

“Okay. Thanks.”

She folded the sweatshirt, turning the soft cotton over in her hands . . . and then she dried off her wet hair with it. For some reason, as her breasts swayed, they felt heavier—and hey, she wasn’t thinking about the cold anymore, was she. Suddenly, she was as hot as the tropics.

Before she got way ahead of herself—too late—she set her makeshift towel on the side of the sink and put her clothes back on. As she drew her pants up her legs, she remembered when she had put them on.

A lifetime ago.

Meanwhile, Luke was still facing away from her, but had changed his position. His elbow was now plugged into his knee, his chin on his fist, that muscular back of his curved thanks to his height. His pose made her remember a picture she had seen in an art history book of that old sculpture, The Thinker.

And then she didn’t really think of anything.

She had known he was big and strong. She had felt that when she’d been carried by him. But she hadn’t expected him to be so—

“Here’s your sweatshirt back,” she said as she picked it up again.

Put it on, she thought. Please.

And not because he was ugly. Because he was so much the opposite of ugly.

“Don’t worry, I’m decent,” she muttered.

As he turned to her, his eyes stayed on her face. Like she was still naked.

“Thanks.” He took the damp fold. “You ready to go back?”

She should have glanced away as he dressed—what was good for the goose and the gander, or . . . how did that saying go?—but she didn’t. She watched as he straightened on the toilet seat and pulled on what she had just had all over her naked body.

And when he couldn’t see her for that brief moment, she reeaaaaally watched him. His pecs and abs were worth the look, flexing as he went through the bog-standard movements of putting on clothes, turning the simple work into something . . . spectacular.

Smoke show, she thought stupidly. That was the vernacular, wasn’t it?

Luke got up on his feet. “Feel better?”

Well, she was not cold in the slightest anymore. And she wasn’t thinking about all her aches and pains, either.

“Yes, I am. Feeling better, that is.”

“I can’t get you food quite yet. I thought I could, but it’s too dangerous. Everything’s shut down here until just after dark, so there are restricted areas I can’t get near without causing a problem.” He shrugged. “But as soon as the light is gone in the sky, I’ll take you back to Caldwell, and we can stop somewhere on the way.”

So they were out of town. “We don’t have to rush. Remember the situation you found me in? I need a little time to figure out where I can go that is safe. Who I can talk to. What . . . I’m going to do. How long can I stay here?”

Luke crossed his arms over his chest. “You can’t stay here, but there’s another place we can go. For a limited period of time.”

Rio frowned. “Where I was when the nurse first came to me. In that basement with the fabric.”

“Yeah, you’ll be safe there. For one night. Maybe two—but it’s not a permanent solution.”

“It doesn’t have to be. And thanks . . . I owe you.”

There was a moment of silence—and in her head, for some insane reason, she saw herself hugging him; pictured the embrace so clearly, she could almost feel the warmth of his body against her own.

“Come on, back to bed,” he said in a low, resonant voice.

Like maybe he had gone there in his head, too.

In response, all she could do was nod—and follow him out into the corridor. As she was behind him, she felt free to look around, but she didn’t learn anything new. Still just a long, rough hallway with bulbs hanging from wires. No one around, no sounds that she could hear other than their footfalls.

When they were back inside the clinic area, she whispered, “Who is that patient?”

Her question was ignored as they passed by the hanging sheets, and then they were over to the bed she’d been in and he was offering her an arm to steady her balance as she lowered herself down. The incense had burned out, and he got some more from a drawer and lit it.

Pulling the blankets around her, she remembered back in the days when she was little and she’d had a cold. Her mother had been so good at taking care of her: Unlimited TV, bowls of ice cream to soothe a burning throat, anything she wanted to eat at any moment, cold compresses for a hot forehead. Under normal circumstances, things had been totally regimented in the household, all kinds of schedules of chores and homework, all expectations to be exceeded, or at worst merely met, failure never an option.

Her mom had been a whip-and-a-chair kind of parent, taming her two kids into virtuous human beings who went to church, did the rosary on the regular, and never talked back.

It had not been easy growing up in such an unforgiving way.

But one set of the sniffles and a slightly elevated temperature? The whole house of demanding cards went into a free fall.

Total pampering.

Sometimes, usually after grades came out and Rio got a shellacking and a half for the two Bs she always got (math and Spanish), she would deliberately go out and get a chill or head over to a friend’s house if they’d missed some school in the previous week because of a flu.

She had needed the reassurance, the comfort, even if it had been unconnected to the offense of her not being perfect.