Page 88 of Savage Hearts
“Take a few deep breaths,” he says calmly, stirring a spoon around in the bowl. He knows my brain is malfunctioning.
“I wonder how many times you’ll have to tell me that by the end of this week,” I say weakly, wanting to fan my burning face.
He holds the spoon to my lips and waits for me to piece myself back together. When I finally do, I manage to swallow a delicious spoonful of soup.
My assassin kidnapper’s homemade soup that he’s feeding to me like a baby.
I’ve lost my mind. That’s the only explanation.
“Were you able to rest while I was gone?”
“Some.”
He feeds me another spoonful of soup. “How’s your pain level?”
“Splendiferous.”
“Try again without the sarcasm.”
“On a scale of one to ten, it’s a forty-seven.”
“Without exaggeration, too. If you can manage it.”
I accept another spoonful, trying to look anywhere but at his chest.
Dear god, his chest. His breasts are beautiful. Pecs, I mean. Is that what they’re called?
I’ve lost half my vocabulary in the past sixty seconds.
“Riley. Your pain. How is it?”
“Right, sorry. Um… painful.”
He gives me a stern look, but I’m too distracted to find it scary.
“Why do you have blood on you?”
“Work. How’s your pain?”
“A little better. Or at least not worse.”
He seems satisfied by that, nodding and holding out another spoonful of soup. We’re both quiet as I finish the bowl, staring alternately at the blankets, the wall, the ceiling, and the terrifying moose, anywhere but at him and his devastating beauty.
Then he sets the spoon and bowl aside and announces he’s going to take a shower.
He stands and heads to the bathroom, leaving me flattened on the bed, drained of energy by the sight of his body and the single word he used to explain the blood.
Work.
He was working today. Doing assassin stuff.
Killing people.
My brain refuses to get a handle on it. I simply can’t reconcile the idea of Mal the gentle, attentive caretaker who cleans my wounds and feeds me soup with Mal the guy who blows people away for a living. Who came to Bermuda to kill Declan.
Who may or may not have wanted to kill me.
I’m thousands of miles from home, injured, in horrible pain, in a foreign country I was brought to while unconscious, where I might die of complications from the gunshot my bodyguard gave me or the bootleg surgery I underwent to repair it.
