Sacrifice the Wicked (15 page)

His shoulders straightened. His jaw, shadowed by dark stubble and still too pale where it didn’t burn red, set.

He pushed away from the wall—from her—and strode out of the open elevator doors on his own feet.

Parker winced as he stumbled, slamming a hand against the wall for balance. A large painting rattled dangerously.

Hurrying after him, she touched his arm. “Let me help you.”

“I can walk,” he replied curtly.

“Simon—”

“I’m not dead yet,” he snarled, but he didn’t slow. Didn’t look at her. Crossing through what Parker could only call the parlor, he clung to the back of an armchair as he passed it, braced himself against a small hip-high wall and vanished into the interior of the safe house.

Parker let him go.

C
HAPTER
E
LEVEN

H
e was an idiot.

Simon perched on the edge of the bed in the master bedroom he’d never seen, heedless of the expensive bedclothes under him. The safe house was one of three he’d managed to install topside, but even this place wouldn’t stay safe for long. Not once they really started looking. He needed a plan.

And instead, he hid.

He clutched his thermal shirt in both hands, the waffle weave rough in his palms, and stared sightlessly at the damp, sweat-stained fabric. Maybe it was the pounding in his head, settled now to a dull throb in the back of his skull. That headache. That same symptom promising a messy, bloody end, and soon.

Maybe it was the vertigo that pulled the world out from under him as he’d tried to focus on not throwing up.

Or it was Parker herself. All that fire-red hair tangled around her face. The concern in her mysterious blue eyes.

The way her mouth pressed together when she actively kept herself from saying what she wanted to say.

No. No, he was just an idiot.

Because Simon was pretty fucking sure that love wasn’t a part of this equation. He killed people, absolutely. Murdered the witches well on the way to degeneration, watched the woman who’d made him die in his arms. But he wasn’t cruel. Not enough to put her—to put himself—through that kind of hell.

That talk of a syringe didn’t matter.

They didn’t have a lab, and they didn’t have the damn thing to test. It could have been a tube filled with water, for all she knew. Nothing changed for him.

The only thing that meant was that he now had a compelling motive for Sector Three’s action against her.

If they even suspected she’d seen anything from Matilda, Sector Three wouldn’t hesitate to pull the trigger. The Church didn’t like loose ends, and she was a tangled one.

“Still sulking, Mr. Wells?”

Simon stiffened, pain streaking through the raw flesh at his side. It was too late to pretend he hadn’t just been sitting there. Staring at nothing. The way she leaned against the doorjamb, her arms folded under her breasts, a roll of bandages held loosely in one hand, told him she’d been there long enough to get the picture.

He didn’t bother to try. “You need to get some rest,” he said curtly. This time, when he rose to his feet, the floor stayed nice and firm beneath him.

A corner of her mouth angled downward. “
You
need a keeper,” she said, as if he hadn’t just dismissed her.

Anger curled in his chest. And more. “Go away,
Director.
”

He knew how much the way he said her title annoyed her. Had since the day she’d corrected his blatantly disrespectful use of
Miss
in her name. Tweaking her temper usually amused him.

Right now, he wasn’t after amusement. He felt savage. Like an injured animal.

Like a rutting beast.

Biological clock? Awareness of his own death weighing on him? Maybe.

Or maybe Parker Adams had buried herself so far under his skin that he didn’t know how to get her out.

His radar had shut down. Simon was blind in the one way he knew to keep her safe, and the message his eyes conveyed to his brain wasn’t helping.

Because as she strode across the large room—her bare feet sinking into the pale gray plush carpet, her newly braided hair pulled back sharply from her set features—all Simon saw was a woman he desperately wanted to fuck.

He wasn’t any better than that.

He
couldn’t be
any better than that.

“I came to help you with your wound,” she said, her tone glacially even. “And to check on your temperature. You were burning up twenty minutes ago.”

He still was. Only not in the way she meant. At least, not that he could tell anymore. “I don’t need your help. Not now, not ever.”

There.
Something about the glint of temper in her beautiful eyes sent a jet of need straight to his dick. Any blood he had left pooled in his jeans.

Hers went right to her cheeks. Ice bitch, nothing. Parker didn’t throw the bandage roll at him, but he could read the desire in every taut line of her body as she brandished it. “You need somebody’s. And maybe I need your help.”

“Yeah, you do.”

She had the grace to flush, but her gaze pinned his. Her chin lifted. “At least I can admit it.”

“I don’t—”

“You’ve spent our entire relationship behaving as if I’m stupid, Simon.” Her words sliced through his temper. His pride. “I don’t know how you think I made it to Mission director, but I promise you it’s not because I break. Take your damned shirt off and let me bandage your knife wound, you idiot.”

He blinked. Fought back a smile.

Touching. And because it hit a low, warm note somewhere in his heart, he quashed it. “You can’t help me,” he growled.

She flattened a hand on his shoulder, pushed hard enough that his knees buckled. “Want to bet?”

He sat before his balance gave out. Touch him? Touch his wound?

He studied the obstinate angle of her chin. “You can’t be serious.”

“Try me.”

Parker Adams didn’t like blood. He’d figured that out already—her skin turned green when she saw the stuff. Her forehead and hands went clammy. Classic signs. How she managed to function in a society that demanded blood on a daily basis intrigued him.

One more fact he found captivating about the strangely compelling director.

The day she’d tended to his wounds, he’d known. And the fact she offered now only ratcheted up the tension, the clash of needs and wants and questions scrabbling for dominance inside him.

He wanted her. He didn’t want her to want
him
.

Didn’t want to keep her. Didn’t want to leave her.

What the fuck was wrong with him?

“Fine,” he said evenly, conceding a battle he already realized he’d lost. “You can help me with that.”

Just her and his blood.

An object lesson involving her own limitations.

Simon dropped his hands to the thick bandages wrapped around his stomach and sides. Finding the edge, he jerked it loose, ignored the stretching, shifting burn as every move pulled his torn flesh.

Her gaze dropped to the unraveling cloth.

Widened as it revealed the first blotches of brown. It’d get redder as the layers peeled away. Bloodier. Messier.

The color in her cheeks faded, but she took a deep breath.

Go away.
Why did she have to be so stubborn?

She didn’t leave him. Didn’t faint, didn’t even take a step back. Despite everything he knew, everything he’d hoped—even as her lips flattened into a white line and that bloom of sweat appeared on her forehead—she stepped closer. Reached out.

His breath locked in his chest as she caught his hands in hers, stilling his rapid, wrenching efforts with only a touch. A gentle grip, so at odds with the cold sweat gathered in her palms.

She met his gaze. Her own all but screamed her revulsion.

And her resolve.

“Let me,” she said, her husky voice strained.

Simon couldn’t bring himself to make this worse.

Couldn’t bring himself to admit that he wanted her hands on him, no matter how he got it.

He let her take the bandage end. Held his arms away from his sides and watched her face as she unwound yards of stained bandages. Every layer revealed another swath of blood. Another vibrant stain where he’d left the old bandages in place to soak into the new.

Silence settled into the bedroom. Broken only by the rustle of fabric, by the hammering pulse in his ears and his determinedly aroused erection.

By her breath, a little too fast.

And by her sympathy as the no-longer-white material peeled away. “Oh, Simon,” she whispered. Did she know what she did to him as she curved one hand over his ribs? Did she feel the way his heart thudded within the cage of his chest?

He stared down at the crown of her head, the lamplight picking out glints of gold in her copper hair, and he wanted to tear that fucking rubber band from the end of her braid. To sink his fingers into that cool mass of silk and flame and bury himself in everything that she was.

Her taste, her texture. The sound she’d make when he filled her.

The way she’d gasp his name.

He flinched as Parker gingerly grasped the corner of a blood-soaked square. “Just pull it,” he said, gritting his teeth.

“Are you sure?”

“It’s kinder.”

“Oh, Jesus.” Bracing her hand against his shoulder, she peeled the crusted pad from his side. Pins and fire radiated through his hip. Up into his ribs.

Simon hissed out a curse, stiffening. His hands fisted behind his back.

“I’m so sorry,” she whispered. She dropped the bloody square like it burned.

But even as her throat worked, as he heard her swallow hard enough to hurt, she flattened both hands on either side of his shoulder, just over his seal and the bar code beneath it. Steadying him. Reassurance?

He didn’t need her support.
Yeah, he did.
“Don’t move. I’m going to get some water to clean this up.”

She flitted away like a creature made of fire and light—too fast for him to stop. Too bright for Simon to do anything but stare, bemused at her contrariness. At her stubborn refusal to give in to her own phobia and make
something
in this whole thing go right for him.

It was that same core of tenacity that had her angling to get back to the Mission. Right the wrongs being done to her crew, no matter his certainty that she’d already lost them all.

Did she even consider the dangers to herself?

He breathed through the pain, his mind cataloging it, storing it away where it wouldn’t impede his ability to function. He’d always been good at that. Good at compartmentalizing all the things that weighed on his shoulders—the labs, the witches he killed. And Mattie, whose last act still haunted him.

Now Parker. What was it about her? Why did he feel so . . . so fucking
at peace
around her?

Why did he let her tend him?

Because it pleased her?

Because it pleased
him.

Motherfucker.

She returned quickly, carrying a bowl of water and towels from somewhere in the apartment. Tendrils of hair around her ears clung damply to her cheeks, as if she’d splashed water on her face, but her eyes remained steady, her hands sure as she dipped a cloth into the water. “Bear with me,” she said, professional briskness so out of place in this bedroom. “This might hurt.”

Not any worse than anything else Simon had handled lately.

He forced himself to be still. To lock every muscle down, clamp down on every urge to touch her as she dragged the soft towel over his skin.

“The edges are too ragged,” Parker said, copper eyebrows knitting as she cleaned the blood away. Her voice, unlike her hands, wasn’t steady. “You’ll need stitches.”

“Hell, no.”

“It’ll scar.”

Simon gritted his teeth. Scars didn’t bother him. Not nearly as much as the feel of her soft hands on him.

The wound had stopped seeping, anyway.

She dropped the soiled cloth, picked up another, and renewed her efforts until the second cloth turned pink. The cold cloth skimmed over his side, around his back, wiping away the blood smear.

Sending shock waves of ice and fire through his body.

“Your bullet wound looks like it healed okay,” she said. As the cold cloth skimmed over his lower back, as she braced one hand between his shoulder blades, Simon’s fingers curled into fists. “Was that from Parrish?”

He jerked. Her hand fell from his back as he rose from the edge of the bed, stepped away from her. All but ran. “It was just a witch,” he said flatly.

Another towel hit the floor. “Simon.”

“Leave it alone, Parker.” He didn’t dare turn.

Couldn’t stop himself as she laughed, a husky sound that stroked a velvet line over his senses. “Every time you tell me to leave it alone,” she said, amusement warring with the strained remnants of fear in her voice, “it always comes back to bite me.”

He frowned at her, all too aware of the cool air against his damp skin. Of his shirt discarded on the floor by pink- and red-stained towels.

Of her stare. Forthright. Challenging.

“This one won’t.” And because he wanted her on the defensive, he smiled. A curve, a flash of teeth that had nothing to do with humor, and he knew it. “It’s a last-ditch effort from a dead woman.”

Parker’s amusement drained, as clear as if he’d pulled a plug. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m not.”

Her mouth twisted. “You really aren’t, are you?”

Just one more lie he’d fed her.

He was sorry as fuck.

Sorry that Mattie hadn’t lived to see her plans—whatever they’d been—come to fruition. Sorry that she’d never see what became of her machinations.

Sorry as hell he’d been the one to find her, to watch her die from the poison she’d drunk so he wouldn’t have to go back to Lauderdale and get caught in a lie.

Simon looked up at the ceiling. The elegantly wrought light fixture flickered faintly, a subtle glimmer.

No answers there. Only the insistent pressure locked up in his gut. The faint headache he couldn’t shake and the awareness of her. In the same room.

In reach. It’d be so goddamned easy.

When his gaze met hers, he didn’t even try to hide the animal need riding him. He stripped away the thin veneer of propriety, let her see exactly how much torture it was to stand here and let her touch him.

To let her think she had
any
say at all in what he did.

“Go away, Director,” he warned softly.

Parker took a step back. Her red toenails gleamed in the golden lamplight; just one more shaft of heat spiraling in his gut. Lust red. Blood red.

Her cheeks flushed. “I’m not some kid—”

“Stop.” Her mouth closed under his low, forceful command. “Don’t . . . do that. None of that. Don’t come in here and be brave for me, don’t try to sympathize.”

She licked her lips, and his eyes dropped to the motion.

His dick hardened to near pain.