Page 60 of The Associate
The thought was nonsensical. A fragment of delirium. It couldn’t be. It was a hallucination born of shock and guilt, a final, cruel trick played by his own fevered mind.
Was this part of the punishment?
A divine tableau: struck down for his sin, and here was the instrument of his temptation, appearing as his would-be savior.
Is this the end?
Is this how I repent?
The questions fluttered, moth-like.
Then strong hands were on him. They touched his neck, fingers pressing gently against his pulse. They moved to his ribs, probing the epicenter of the white-hot pain. A voice cut through the high-pitched ringing in his ears, low, urgent, woven from a timbre he knew in his bones.
“Don’t move. Just breathe.”
Samuel tried to obey, dragging in a thin, wheezing breath that sparked fresh fire in his side.
Then he was being lifted. The cold, filthy concrete fell away. He was gathered up, and the solid wall of a chest replaced the hard ground. His face was pressed against fine wool, soft against his cheek.
He inhaled, and the scent flooded him; sandalwood, clean linen, and beneath it, the faint, sharp, metallic trace of cold air. It was a scent that lived in the space behind his sternum.
It smells familiar.
The thought moved through his mind slowly, thick as syrup.
Where do I know that smell from?
A deep rumble vibrated through the chest he was held against, traveling into his own bones. “Hold on.”
The headlights swung, painting the alley walls in a dizzying carousel of light and elongated shadow. The world became a swirl of dark brick and blurred light.
He felt himself lowered, the world settling into the embrace of cool, butter-soft leather.
The last thing he registered, as the pain and the shock finally overrode the last strings of consciousness, was the sound of car turning on.
Chapter 16
Samuel
Awareness trickled in, a bitter brew of sensations. First, the deep, resonant ache in his ribs, a throbbing counterpoint to the sharper, insistent sting in his temple. Then, the low, purring vibration humming through the seat beneath him. And the scent; rich, supple leather and, woven through it, the clean, spicy note of sandalwood.
He groaned, the sound raw in his own ears. He tried to shift, to find a position where his body didn’t feel like a single, massive bruise.
“Don’t.”
The voice was low, firm, cutting through the cottony fog in his skull.
“Just stay still. You are hurt.”
Samuel froze. Slowly, carefully, he turned his head on the headrest. A hot lance of pain shot through his side, stealing his breath. His eyes, blurred and struggling to focus, found the source.
The profile was etched in the soft, ambient glow of the dashboard lights. The sharp line of a nose, the strong set of a jaw shadowed with evening stubble, the dark sweep of hair.
Gael.
“What…” The word was a dry rasp, scraping its way out of a parched throat.
Gael’s head turned slightly. The dashboard lights painted his face in planes of soft light and deep shadow, turning his expression into a stark, unreadable mask. His eyes, dark and assessing, flicked over Samuel for a fraction of a second before returning to the road ahead.
