Page 15 of Nine-Tenths

"Oh." He freezes. "Dav, I suppose."

"You suppose?" I slouch, trying to find a position where my arm doesn't throb. I’m not having any luck.

"Alva-draig Tudor." This is the first time I've heard him actually sound miffed.

He looks out of sorts for the first time, too. His pants are creased and smeared with ash, and his waistcoat is hanging open like a regency rake. His hair, normally straight out of an Errol Flynn flick, with a severe 1940s part and careful swoops on top, is a sort of frizzy orange flop across his forehead. He pushes it back irritably. He's rolled up the ragged ends of his sleeves so his shirt looks less like he stuck his hands in fire—which he absolutely did—and more like it's a sartorial choice. And wow,forearms. Trim, and muscley, and flecked with more of those intriguing gold-dust freckles and spun-copper hair and,yes please and thank you.

It makes something in my middle flippy. Or maybe that’s the pain meds? One or the other. I’m too hot, and too cold, and sticky with pain-sweat, and kind of nauseous, and I want to close my eyes and lean against his shoulder andsleeeep.Ugh.

"Dav it is," I concede. "Middle name for a middle name, then. Colin Fergus Levesque."

I squirm around until I can get my free hand aimed in his general direction and he shakes it awkwardly.I'm blinking dumbly, I know I am, my eyelid s heavy in a way that sucks because there's no way I a) could actually fall asleep here, and b)shouldfall asleep here, and c) will probably not be able to sleep later when the shock of being lightly-stabbed in the middle of my first (and hopefully last) industrial fire has worn off.

"A pleasure," Dav says as he sits. His whole face twists up when he realizes what he's said. "Well, not the part where I hurt you—and set fire to the—it's notactuallybeen a pleasure—"

"No, I get what you mean," I say, cutting off his increasingly-desperate word-deluge.

I shimmy, looking for some moment ofreliefbecause this is awful. I just want tocryand I’m not going to, I’mnot.The fingers of my right hand have started to tingle. Maybe something’s wrong with my arm. I could be paralyzed, or disfigured for life.

Shit.

"Though,draigis not my middle name," he adds softly. His voice sounds like it's coming through a tunnel. "It simply meansdragon. We often append that to our given names. Rather like saying, ah, Joe and Not-Human Joe."

"Huh?"

"Dear lord." His voice is now deep in the cave, his face suddenly blocking my eye-line to the scuffed linoleum floor. One slender hand cradles first the back of my neck, then my cheek, then is laid against my forehead, then is gone. Gosh, he's warm. A miserable full-body shiver crawls over me. I wish he'd put his hand back on my nape. "You've gone dead pale. Colin?"

I wiggle my fingers, to prove to myself that I can, and the pain it stirs up is excruciating.

Am I about to vomit?

I might be about to vomit.

That wouldn't be even remotely cool and sexy.

"Stay here," he says, and then he's gone.

Ha, like I have anywhere to go. Or the ability to get there.

The flip in my stomach is starting to feel more like a flop.

"He's coming out of shock," a new voice says over my head. A blanket whumps onto my lap. "Keep him warm. The painkillers have started to wear off."

"Then give him more," Dav says, and this is the first time I've heard him sound confident and leader-ly. "He should be lying down."

I bet he's a duke. Maybe a baron. Do I address him as' Lord' or…? Boy, he sounds authoritative. Why is he never bossy around me? It’s sexy.

"There's no beds," the nurse (the voice must be a nurse) says. "We'll push him up the queue."

"I'll get you some water," Dav says, and the nurse tells him not to. No food, either. He tucks the blanket around me, aggravated, and I swat him away.

"Hurts," I tell him when he yanks. "Knock it off." He steps back, lets out a frustrated sort of hissing noise that I had no idea dragons made, and is absolutely not adorable. "Go for a walk or something."

"I don't—"

"There's a Timmie's in the lobby."

"Their coffee is wretched."

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