Page 162 of Renard's Deliverance

He frowned. “You need more, baby. It will help with your recovery.”

Right. Her recovery. God, she must look like hell.

She hadn’t had a chance to look at herself in the mirror, yet. And suddenly, it became imperative that she did that.

“I don’t have any of my stuff here. I need to get my clothes.” She stared down at herself. “What am I dressed in?”

He studied her for a moment. “One of my T-shirts. Lilac and Ryleigh brought you some things, though.”

Relief filled her. She remembered them visiting her in the hospital after she’d given her statement to Jake. But by that stage, she’d been kind of out of it.

“They did? Can I have it? I need a mirror,” she told him. “And my makeup. Did Ryleigh and Lilac bring my makeup?”

There waspanic in her voice that he didn’t understand. How could she think about makeup right now?

She had just gotten out of the fucking hospital. They’d kept her in a couple of nights, but she’d begged them to let her go home and they hadn’t had a real reason to keep her. Not a physical reason, anyway.

Not when he planned to give her round-the-clock care.

Understandably, she’d been sleeping a lot and not in any state to make good decisions about her care. So he’d brought her back to his place.

He looked her over. One eye was swollen shut and the other wasn’t much better. Her lip was busted and if she wasn’t careful it kept cracking open and bleeding. There were bruises down her back and hips from where that bastard had kicked her and shoved her into a wall.

Fucking kicked her!

Both of her wrists were bandaged, they’d been rubbed raw from the rope and she had two badly broken fingers on her left hand. She was lucky he hadn’t broken her hand, but the entire thing was swollen and bandaged. And she had more marks around her throat from where he’d shoved her against a wall and choked her.

And she was worried about makeup? That was something he did not understand.

“Baby, you are not putting makeup on,” he told her gently. “You can’t. You’ll hurt yourself.”

“I need it.”

“You don’t need it.”

“You don’t understand. I do,” she cried.

“Why?” he asked, walking over to the bed. “Why would you want to put makeup on?”

She shuffled around as though trying to get comfortable. But all she did was wince in pain. God, he hated that so much.

“Gem, stop. You’re hurting yourself.” And Renard would do anything to make sure she never hurt again. It was a burning need inside his gut.

“I need a mirror. Do you have one or do I need to go to the bathroom?”

“You don’t need a mirror.”

“I do,” she insisted.

“You should be resting and healing. Not worrying about this.”

“You don’t get it,” she cried, sounding distressed.

Shit. Should he just give her what she wanted? The last thing he wanted was to make her feel worse. All he wanted right now was to take care of her.

But surely it was crazy to put makeup on right now?

“Then tell me. Tell me how you’re feeling. Tell me what’s going on in that head of yours.”

---