Page 46 of Too Cursed To Kiss
With my crushed chest on fire, the yelling hurt almost as much as the glass extraction. I couldn’t bring myself to look at the mess in my side. “Call an ambulance,” I managed to squeak out and shot a glance at his face through tear-soaked and blood-matted hair.
His tongue was hanging out, in all its inches-long pink glory. He licked my wound and then licked it again. Thestrokes long and languorous. Every lap tingled through me on counterpoint to the agony. Waves on a beach.
It might have been erotic if I hadn’t been in so much goddamned pain. Well no, it wouldn’t have—oh, you know what I mean. My blood coated his tongue red, but my side hurt less. He grabbed his jacket and pulled out a green bandage made of leafy stuff, then stuck it on the wound. Smoothing the green down and re-lacing the corset strings loosely, he rolled me back over.
“That should work. I think there’s no internal damage,” he panted. My fingers tentatively touched the bandaged spot on my side. It was tender but not nearly as bad as I’d expected. I couldn’t really see it easily, but the gaping hole was covered with the sticky green thing. I glanced over where Britannia had been, but she was gone.
“Where’s Britannia?” I asked, regretting it as I sucked in a breath that hurt like hell. Realizing the glass ball was still in my hand, I opened it and held it out to Wald, marveling at the stupidity of showing him a clear marble like you get from one of those craft stores to arrange flowers.
“Where did you get that?” Wald breathed, his pupils dilating as he took the orb from me.
“Uh, it was under the couch?”
He looked at me wide-eyed. “It’s my mother’s.”
Ah ha, a question I could answer. “Victoria gave me the box, this must have been inside.”
“What I’m more curious about is how you are holding it,” he asked, his yellow eyes locked on mine. I sucked in a breath and groaned, my hand flying to my injured side.
“We need to get you out of here. Can you walk?” he asked, picking his shirt off the dead Agatha. I averted my eyes as he put it on. My clothing was shredded and blood soaked. With a loud exhale, I attempted to sit up and failed.Blinding pain resulted in an otherworldly screech. I lay back panting in short breaths to avoid tweaking my side again.
“You need to be quiet. I’ll carry you,” he said, not giving me a choice. He scooped me up like I was two pounds, and I’m not two pounds. I’m a healthy one seventy-five if you ask me, one eighty-five if you weigh me. Why do I lie? Because it’s none of your fricking business how much I weigh. I chuckled at the thought, and it turned into a gasp. The pain in my chest was brutal for anything more than normal breathing. Somehow, we made it to the door without me passing out.
The door banged under a fist. “Police. Open Up.”
Wald stopped and then retreated back into the hall that led to the time-is-dead room. What was he thinking? We could hang out there until the police left? The thoughts blurred as he moved with a speed I couldn’t track. He turned left and walked into a bedroom I hadn’t seen.
“I have to put you down,” he said, laying me on a bed. He pulled out a phone as I gripped the night table to keep the room from spinning. It didn’t work. The room smelled of stale incense and red wine. The coverlet on the bed was leopard, and the curtains on the window Wald was opening were shocking pink with feathers on the edges. I was going to guess Agatha’s bedroom. The walls were covered in mirrors too but in front were sheer panels of pink silk. He had the window open and had re-pocketed the phone.
“Come here,” he said, sticking a leg over the window sill so he could straddle the frame.
I half fell against the wall choking back a scream as I staggered toward him. The room was sparkly, dimmer, and glassier than it should be. He already had both feet outside the window by the time I got there. Thumps and shoutsfrom the front room said the police were likely battering down the door.
“Do you have the marble?” he asked, and I held it out to him. He turned my palm and then pressed my hand against my side where blood was weeping through the bandage. The clear marble turned red.
I whimpered from the ick and the throbbing pain.
Wald folded my fingers over the marble. “Don’t let go of this or me. Can you trust me?”
I paused, considering in a blur of mental images all the reasons I probably could trust him, then nodded.
He pulled me to the window. “You okay with me licking you?” His gaze flicked to the door.
“Yeah, I’m okay with it.”
His tongue darted out like a snake strike, and before I could focus, my cheek was wet.
“I got you,” he said as he slid an arm around my waist, scooped me up like I was a kitten, then jumped out the window.
CHAPTER TWENTY
We fell two stories straight down. Even if I could have, I didn’t have time to yell before I landed on his chest. The impact rattled my teeth and every bone.
I rolled off Wald, expecting the worst. He’d landed flat on his back supporting my weight on top of him. He should have been dead. At best, paralyzed for life. He looked up at me, his golden eyes searching my face. “You okay?” he asked, and I dumbly nodded. Then he sprung up, I kid you not, picked his sunglasses up, which had flown off on impact, and hauled my ass to the street as if nothing had happened.
I stumbled to keep up, breathlessly wondering how he had survived that. Or me. What I managed to spit out was, “Where the hell are we going?”
“After Britannia,” he replied, waving at a car which pulled up to the curb.
