Page 3 of Violent Things
She looks like she’s ready to pass the fuck out. I think I’m gonna have to catch her when she collapses against me, face pressed into my chest, but I don’t. She’s just tired and leaning on me. I fold my arms around her and hold her up anyway, because that’s what I’m here for. Always. Being there for her to lean on will be my primary job from now and until the day I die, and boy do I have a serious case of job satisfaction.
“You okay?” I breathe into her hair.
She nods, grunting something inaudible into my leather jacket. I kiss her on the top of her head, smoothing down the strands that have escaped her ponytail.
“I’m taking you home now, angry girl. You got anything to say about that?”
She looks up at me, eyes already drooping, and gives me a lazy smile. “I say thank god for that.”
She falls asleep in the car, forehead pressed up against the cold glass of the passenger window, and I can’t fucking help myself. At every available opportunity, I find myself looking at her out of the corner of my eye. I need to make sure this miraculous woman is real.
I saw it the first time at Julio’s compound when Carnie brought Alexis in and laid her out on the table. Sloane was a force of nature, unstoppable and single-minded as she worked over her sister’s broken body. She’d saved Alexis’s life when she would have died otherwise, no two ways about it. Watching her then had taken my breath away. The same thing happened tonight, watching her work over the guy on the table in that operating room. She didn’t hesitate. She didn’t stop and she did not once give up. Not even when the chief of medicine, sitting next to me, had started swearing like a marine when the guy had coded not once but twice.
My angry girl is a fucking hero.
The ugly ass Hummer Rebel left behind with us in Seattle struggles to make it up the narrow, winding road to our house as we leave the city. Snow coats everything—the road, the trees, the mountains in the distance. The whole world is white under the headlights of the car as I drive us back to the warmth of home.
She’s still sleeping when I pull up outside. I don’t have the heart to wake her, so I take off my jacket and put it over her as I lift her out of the car and carry her carefully inside.
The fire’s gone out, but Ernie’s still coiled up in a ball in front of the embers. He lifts his head when we come inside, but he doesn’t bark. Terrible fucking guard dog he’d make. I think we’ve accepted the fact that Ernie’s more likely to studiously ignore an intruder than attack them.
I carry Sloane past the long-forgotten arrangements I’d made to surprise her when she came home, straight up the stairs and into the bedroom. I strip her of her clothes as carefully as I can, fingertips grazing the rise and swell of her breasts as I do—sue me, I’m not a fucking saint—and then I tuck her up under the sheets, warring with myself. I want to wake her up and fuck her. I also want her to be fully compos mentis the next time I screw her, so I manage to keep my dick in my pants. Fucking St. Peter’s Hospital. The place is determined to ruin my sex life.
Instead of accosting her in her sleep, I leave Sloane to her dreams and head back downstairs. The table is exactly how I left it, except now the food is stone cold and the candles have all guttered out. Did I cook for her? Hell fucking no. But you’d better believe I tried, and when that failed, ordered in her favorite Thai food. The Pad Thai looks like a congealed mess on the plate now. I collect everything up and toss it into the trash, kind of glad she didn’t make it back in time.
I’d been impulsive. I was going to do something rash, and now I’m a little fucking relieved things didn’t work out the way I was planning. After seeing Sloane at the hospital tonight, the last thing she needs is me acting like a lovesick teenager, making rash calls and disrupting her shit. She needs to focus. She needs to concentrate on being the best she can be at her job. I won’t stand in the way of that. Not again.
I hang up my leather jacket, removing the gift I’d planned on giving her tonight from the pocket. I close my fist around it, shaking my head, wondering what the hell I was thinking. The gift goes into the back of a drawer behind a stack of papers, and I put it out of my mind.
I tell myself that I do.
But when I go to sleep, hand lying heavy on Sloane’s hip, I have a dream. It’s not a dream about fighting in the dark, and it’s not a dream about my mother crying in the front seat of a car. It’s a dream of something much sweeter.
Chapter Two
Sloane
There used to be a time when my boyfriend wouldn’t sleep in the same bed as me. There are still nights when he’s particularly restless and I’ll wake to find him gone, but this morning I know he’s still with me. I know because the heavy weight of his arm is over me and I feel like I’m being pinned to the mattress.
I don’t even attempt to move. It’s not as though I feel trapped. Rather, I feel safe, so why would I want to escape? I close my eyes and allow myself to drift, listening to the muffled sounds of snow sliding off the roof mixed in with Zeth’s even, steady breathing.
This is what heaven feels like. By the time dawn breaks properly, I can sense that he’s waking up. He doesn’t shift or tighten his grip around me. The rhythm of his breathing remains the same. I’m just suddenly aware that he isthere, his consciousness present alongside mine, whereas before it wasn’t.
After a long time, he rolls his head across his pillow so he can lay a kiss on my shoulder. “Merry Christmas, Dr. Romera,” he tells me, his voice husky from sleep.
“Merry Christmas to you, too.” I wriggle backward, butt first, nestling into the curve of his body, and he lets out a sleep-filled groan.
“You keep doing that and you’ll be having problems walking for the rest of the holidays.”
“I have a few days off.” I bite my lip, trying to hide the smile from my voice. “Walking’s overrated anyway.”
“Is that so?” He leans down and kisses me on my shoulder again, but this time he teases his teeth across my skin, biting me lightly. His arm snakes around my waist, taking hold of me. “Michael’s coming over this morning. I’m gonna call and tell him not to bother.”
“Don’t you dare. It’s Christmas day and he stayed back in Seattle to help you with the gym. We’re his family here. He’s spending Christmas day with us.”
Zeth grumbles inarticulate things into my neck. I think some of it might have something to do with Rebel being an asshole and not looking after his family. As Zeth’s hot breath skims over my skin, his hands are skimming other parts of my body. Quick, sure fingers travel down my stomach, over my hip, where he lightly teases them over my thigh and up in between my legs.
“Spread them for me,” he growls, deep and low into my ear. I have no problem hearing him this time. I open my legs at his first request, not needing to be told more than once. Zeth makes a pleased sound of approval at the back of his throat. His hands continue on their journey around my body, this time taking a detour in between my thighs, upward, so his fingertips graze against the fine material of my panties. “Are you ready for your Christmas present, Sloane?”
