Omega's Run (15 page)

“You didn’t put a new bandage on your wound, did you?” she snapped and I shook my head.

“I didn’t find any bandages in the bathroom so I just left it as is.”

She let out an explosive sigh and set aside her own plate before she stood and disappeared quickly down the stairs. She was back within moments with a plastic bag from which she pulled sterile bandages, rolls of gauze, and tubes of a disgusting smelling antibacterial ointment, so vile, I could smell it through the tube and the intact safety seal.

“Roll over,” she ordered, “Pants down.” I arched an eyebrow at her again and her cheeks colored just a touch. “Your wound is too high up on your leg, you can’t pull the leg up enough to let me get at it.”

I nodded, slowly, a small smirk firmly in place but I didn’t say anything. It wouldn’t do to piss off my nurse, now would it? I tossed the blankets aside and pulled my sweats down, wincing several times before I had ‘em low enough. She carefully stared at the ceiling until I rolled over onto my stomach.

The bed dipped slightly as she knelt on it, hovering over me. Her hands were cool against my heated skin, and I did my best to ignore the sensation. Chin resting on my crossed forearms, I kept my eyes firmly fixed on the wall in front of me and concentrated on not getting an erection. One thing most males would know is that if you’re straight, and an attractive woman has her hands on you, your body is very likely to react no matter what your brain is telling you.

I closed my eyes; teeth gritted almost painfully, while she gently rubbed the ointment into my leg and pressed a bandage against the wound. She was in the process of reaching under my leg to pull the gauze around when her fingers briefly found the physical reaction I had been trying so desperately to hide from her.

She paused for the briefest of moments, her fingers exploring curiously for a moment before she realized what it was she was touching. I could tell when she figured it out because she yelped and jerked her hand back like she’d been burned and jumped to her feet.

“Alright,” she said, speaking a bit louder than was really necessary. “Ummm... ok, you can finish with the bandage right? It’s just wrapping and securing it in place. That should be easy enough.”

She grabbed the trash from the medical supplies, stuffing everything back into the grocery bag it had come from. Then she grabbed the plates, and without looking at me, practically sprinted for the stairs.

“We’ll talk later,” she muttered and disappeared before I even had a chance to roll over. I stared at the stairs, and the empty space where she had been, then looked down at the offending erection that had sent her fleeing, red faced, from the room.

“Well, what am I supposed to do about you?” I muttered. With no answer forthcoming, I finished wrapping the bandage, pulled the blankets back over me and tried to settle down to get some sleep.

Chapter 14

Ava

I cleaned up a little downstairs and resigned myself to another night freezing my ass off on the couch. I flopped onto the leather and huddled, fully clothed, on my side beneath the thin throw blanket. With Remus at the height of his fever, I had piled the blankets on him so he could sweat the sickness out of his system. The generator would be shutting off shortly to conserve fuel, and James had never gotten to finish the cabin. The potbellied stove sat in the corner but the stovepipe hadn’t been hooked up to the outside to vent properly yet.

I lay staring vacantly at the defunct stove, my cheeks stinging with the heat of my embarrassment. I couldn’t believe I’d felt him up like that. I sighed out and closed my eyes. I can’t even claim ‘mystery solved’ on what he was packing either. I’d seen for myself it was an impressive specimen of the male figure when Helen had him hooked up to that… that thing. My face flamed all over again, for a very different reason, as the white noise of the generator outside ceased.

I lay, breathing even and slow, hoping I would fall asleep before the chill seeped in and overtook me, but fuck my luck, it wasn’t in the cards. I could feel the cold seeping in, and my mind wouldn’t shut off for shit. All I could keep thinking about now was Helen, and what fuckery Mathias had her up to.

She’d never struck me as being, well,
insane.
I mean, she’d always been normal to me; to my team. I closed my eyes as if it would help banish the awful memory of the sheer glee on her face as she’d spun the dial on that switch and sent Remus shrieking. I’d seen a lot of shit. Put down a lot of animals in my time, in more than a few heinous ways, but I’d never seen anything like that and it was going to haunt me. I hugged myself and shivered for two fold reasons.

“Ava!” Remus’ deep baritone called from upstairs.

“What?”

“Come up here,” he ordered.

“Why?”

“Just come up here.”

“Why, so I can make an ass out of myself again, or just so you can rub it in?” I muttered quietly under my breath.

“Wasn’t planning on bringing it up at all, actually, but now that you mention it…”

I froze. I had muttered, below a fucking whisper, and there he was responding to what I’d said like I’d been speaking clear as day. I swallowed hard. The more time I’d spent with him, unconscious or no, the more… human, he seemed to me. It was becoming easier and easier to forget just what exactly he was.

“Ava,”

I cut him off, “What do you need?” I called out in a normal speaking voice.

“Just come up here… please.”

I wasn’t going to go, but the please caught me off guard and sort of suckered me into it. I sighed with mock harshness I didn’t really feel. I was honestly tired. I’d been up, pretty much watching him, trying to help him get through the blood poisoning I’d inflicted on him with that shot, nonstop. I hadn’t had more than a couple of hours of sleep at a time in days. It took a toll.

I dragged myself to my feet and up the stairs, stopping at the top.

“What?” I asked.

“Can you come here? I think this bandage has come loose and I can’t quite get it.”

“Really?” I asked plaintively in a sardonic tone of voice.

He looked right back at me, dark eyes neutral, giving nothing away before finally rolling them. I relaxed, marginally, and stepped to the bed.

He threw back the blankets and I reached out. Big mistake. I shouldn’t have let my fucking guard down. He snagged me by the arm, lightning fast, and before I knew what was happening I was airborne and falling, swallowed by his massive arms as he tucked my back against his chest, the blankets falling in a heap over the both of us.

“What in the absolute fuck!?” I cried indignant.

“I’m never going to be able to crash listening to you shiver all night. Now shut up and go to sleep.”

I struggled but he held me fast and I really didn’t need to set him back on his healing time.

“Shh, relax Babycakes, you’re safe. What’s more, despite what my cock says, I’m not going to hump your leg or anything.”

I choked, incredulous and started laughing as the image overtook me. A deep resounding chuckle reverberated through my back and chest.

I held still so I wouldn’t hurt myself, or him, and waited patiently for him to fall asleep so I could slip away.

“It’s not going to happen. You being all tense like that only serves to put my baser instincts on edge. You might as well relax and soak up some heat. It’d be nice if you kicked off the boots though. They’re kind of digging into my shin the way I’ve got you.”

“I always sleep in my boots,” I said, and immediately wished I could take it back.

He stilled his slight shifting to get comfortable behind me and drew me back further into him. There went my hope that my dumb assed admission would get him to loosen up enough I could Houdini out of his grip. I know, I know. Wishful thinking with his speed and strength.

“Why do you always sleep with your boots on, Ava?” he asked me.

“I’d rather not talk about it,” I snapped.

“You opened the door, Babycakes. Excuse the fuck out of me for walking through it. Might be a boon knowing a thing or two about each other in the long run though, don’t you think?”

I scoffed and he pressed his nose into the side of my neck and breathed deeply. I froze.

“What are you doing?”

“You smell good. Like jasmine and gun oil. It’s nice on you. Uniquely you.”

I made an incredulous noise. Did he seriously just compliment me on my
smell
?

“God, could this be anymore fucked up?” I uttered to myself.

“Yep. You know, this is the first time I’ve even remotely had the upper hand in this little arrangement of ours. It’s kind of nice. Gotta take the perks when they show up. I am now a firm believer in you might not get a second chance. You gonna tell me about the boots or not?”

I thrashed and he chuckled, I wasn’t going anywhere and he knew it. I felt a hot flood of tears, an incandescent rage at myself for allowing it to happen. For being caught. I mean, I was sure he wasn’t going to do anything per se, but it didn’t matter. I didn’t do helpless.

“Hey, easy. Breathe, Ava. Deep breaths. Nothing’s going to happen here. I need the information you got and you need the information I got. It’s as simple as that.”

“Why you being nice all of a sudden?” I demanded acidly.

“I can taste the salt of your tears on the air. I can smell ‘em. You don’t cry. Something about this has set you off.”

“Aren’t you just so fucking perceptive?”

He snorted, “Wish I’d been a fuck of a lot more perceptive. I might still have a pack. I might still have my b–” he snarled and snapped his mouth shut, with a dull, audible click.

“Can I ask you something?” after we were silent for a time.

“What?” he snapped.

“Fine. I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours.”

He was silent for a time before grudgingly, “Deal.”

“James and I came up in foster care until we were both eight and the crusade found us. Some of the foster parents… You kept your shoes on in case you had to bolt from a perv, okay?”

“Ah, so that’s it,” he stated flatly. I frowned. I wanted to ask what the fuck he meant by that, but I was born at night. It didn’t mean I was born
last
night. Yeah, him holding me against my will, in a bed no less, echoed back to some really bad shit. My brother and I had been lucky that they kept us together, but there was really only so much James and I could do both being fucking four, six and eight in the respective homes where we’d been saddled with pervy fuckin’ foster parents.

“Ask your question, Ava.”

“Do you miss him?”

He was silent and his grip on me relaxed, but I knew better than to test my limits. He was fast, even laid up.

“He was my twin. Of course, I miss him. I don’t miss the fucked up shit he’d get us into. Rom was like a fuckin’ mad bull in a China shop for the most part. He was real ‘Hulk smash!’ always doing shit without any forethought. Still, he was my brother, he was my twin, and when he died it’s like I lost the other half of me.”

We lapsed into a weighted silence.

“James was my twin,” I finally confessed.

“You guys were twins?”

“He was older by nine minutes, but yeah.”

More silence, and finally, he sighed out.

“Can we declare a truce?” he rumbled and I closed my eyes. It felt incredibly good to be warm again and my tiredness was breaking down my resolve to remain a bitch.

“You going to let me go?” I asked.

“Not tonight, Babycackes. It’s cold, you’re tired, and I really wouldn’t be able to sleep with you shivering.”

I sighed, and grated, “Yeah, okay, sure. Truce.”

“What was that?”

“Don’t pretend like you didn’t fucking hear me when you fucking heard me whisper from an entire floor away, smart ass.”

I could hear him smile, “Yeah, okay, fair enough. Truce tonight, but would you be willing to lose the boots if I solemnly pledge to defend your honor?”

“Don’t push it.”

He laughed, a booming shock of sound that suffused me with a different sort of warmth. I felt myself blush, was glad he couldn’t see it, and I sighed out, closing my eyes and bedding down.

Probably only took a couple of minutes before I was out.

Chapter 15

Remus

Someone was going to die
and it bothered me that I felt that desire. Seriously. She was a Hunter. I’d been over this a dozen times already. Not getting attached to the woman that tried to kill you just seemed like a rational and level headed rule to live by to me. But the story she told; the fear that obviously still clung to her… If she was as over it as she wanted to think she was, then she wouldn’t still sleep in her boots.

So it’d left a scar. An invisible one, to be sure. But indelibly, there was a scar that her experiences had left on her person. And just the fact that she was afraid, the fear residing inside a person I had seen to be fearless, had me wanting to tear somebody’s arm off so I could beat them to death with it.

For all her talk about not trusting me and thinking of me and my kind as nothing but animals, she’d fallen asleep pretty damned quick. So did she suddenly decide she trusted me? Or was it that she did, and she was just in denial? I sighed and would have raked my hands back through my hair but I didn’t want to move for fear of waking her. Instead I tried to settle myself more comfortably on the bed and pulled her carefully until she was settled firmly against my chest and my arm was wrapped around her waist.

As much as I hated to admit it, it felt nice holding her so close to me. I felt protective of her for reasons I still couldn’t wrap my brain around. Maybe because she’d taken care of me?

“You know, it’s pretty much impossible for me to get any sleep at all with you doing that.” I blinked, staring at the wall on the other side of the room for a moment before it sank in that Ava had spoken. I hadn’t even noticed that she’d woken up. Or, had she ever truly been asleep?

“I’m not doing anything but breathing,” I blurted out, slightly confused and more than a little offended as well. What, I couldn’t even go to sleep correctly to her?

“Quit jabbing me,” she grumbled and shifted her weight on the bed, grinding her ass back against me and the raging hard on that I hadn’t even noticed, so distracted had I been with my thoughts. A low groan slipped from my throat before I was able to clamp down on it and I turned it into a low growl.