Page 15 of Kingpin's Secret Baby

I want to tell him not to bother, but he bound my wound so neatly. And I can’t say I enjoy bleeding all over myself even under the most normal circumstances. After a reluctant moment, I nod for him to continue.

Piers tucks his hands beneath my knees and back and picks me up with ease. Ithurts, but not nearly as much as it would have if I’d levered myself up alone. He leans me up against the counter, and even after releasing me he keeps a hand on the uninjured side of my waist. The heat of his palm goes straight through my gauze, drawing my attention almost entirely away from remaining upright.

“Can I leave you for a second?” he asks. “You aren’t feeling faint? Dizzy?”

“I feel fine,” I say hoarsely.

Piers snorts. “Fine. You’ve just got blood soaking through your clothes. And bruises all around your neck and face. And a gash in your side that I just stitched up-”

“Yes, allright,” I say, already tired of this fight. “You can leave. I feel fairly steady.”

Piers’s eyes narrow on me, but he nods and retreats from the bathroom. I lean back against the edge of the counter, testing where exactly I can place my weight to feel the least amount of pain. Once I’ve got that sorted, I fuck up my equilibrium completely by turning myself around so I can face the mirror.

I look… awful.

My hair, which had been put up in a bun during the flight, is completely loose around my face, bedraggled and half plastered with my own blood. There’s a horrible blotchy bruise spreading over my jaw and cheekbone from when Barnes punched me. I’m shocked now that I didn’t lose a tooth.

But the worst thing, aside from the gash in my side of course, is the ring of awful marks around my throat. It hurts to speak. It hurts to swallow. It even hurts to tilt my head from side to side. Again, I’m lucky he didn’t crush my windpipe, but aside from this awful ache and all the bruises, I don’t think Barnes did any permanent damage.

I’m alive. I survived.

Why does that almost feel anticlimactic?

I see Piers return through the reflection in the mirror with a glass of water in his hand. He places it in front of me, then begins soaking yet another washcloth under the faucet. It feels astronomically difficult to lift the glass to my lips- and swallowing the water is absolute agony- but it also makes me feel slightly more conscious.

The glass almost slips out of my hand when the washcloth swipes across my back. I jerk, but the pain that immediately explodes in my stitched up wound stops me. It’s only then that I realize that, of course, Piers tore my ruined shirt off of me, and now I’m left in my silk pants, also ruined… and my lacy purple bra.

“Sorry, I should’ve warned you,” Piers says, and to his credit he does look sheepish. “There’s blood all over you. I’ll be done in a minute.”

There’s a blush spreading under my bruises, but I ignore it. Piers sponges off my back, raising goosebumps in his wake. While he works on that, I start cupping water into my palms and running it through my bloody hair, careful not to let too much drip onto the counter. It isn’t perfect, but I’m fairly sure I can’t hop in the shower with a freshly stitched and bandaged wound.

Besides, finger combing my hair and watching the water slowly run clearer and clearer is… strangely therapeutic.

The reflection of Piers’s mouth begins to move while he carefully wipes clean any stray splashes of blood he finds on my back, on my arms, on my neck. All I can do is watch and remember how that mouth felt on mine. At least until his lips stop moving, and his eyes meet mine in the mirror.

“Are you feeling dizzy?” he asks me again.

I blink back to myself and frown at his reflection. “No. Why?”

“Because I don’t think you actually heard anything I just said.”

He comes around to stand beside me, and very carefully lifts my chin so the bathroom lights illuminate the size of my pupils. His mouth presses into a thin line, but after a moment, he shakes his head. “I don’t think you’re concussed.”

“Of course I’m not concussed,” I snap.

“Then tell me what I was saying a minute ago.”

I can’t, of course. After a moment of helpless silence, I just repeat, “I’m not concussed.”

Piers nods, sighing. “We need to leave. As soon as you’re feeling up to it, we need to grab a hotel room.”

“We?!” I demand. “Why should I go anywhere, much less with you?”

“Because if good old Harry Ashwood is trying to kill you, then I’m sure he’ll be waiting for an update from the two dead goons in the other room,” Piers says impatiently. “This is the second assassination attempt on your life today. We need to get you somewhere no one will expect to find you, and away from any tracking devices they might’ve put in your luggage.”

“There is nowe,” I remind him sharply. “None of this is any of your business.”

Piers’s eyes sharpen on me. “If I weren’t here, you wouldn’t be either. So how far do you think you’ll get without me now that you have fifteen stitches in your side?”

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