Page 42 of Wraith

“You okay?” he asks.

“I’m fine.” I look down at the whip in my hand. At the two unconscious men on my floor. At Wraith standing there, battered and bloody and half-naked. “Are you okay?”

“I’ve been better.” He touches his ribs gingerly, winces. “But I’ve been worse.”

“Thank you,” I say. The words come out quieter than I intend. “For... that.”

“Yeah, well.” He looks away. “I told you. I’m trying to keep you alive.”

Something warm moves through my chest. Something that has no business being there but is there anyway, stubborn and insistent.

I notice, in a peripheral, subconscious way, that he’s still hard. That even after all of that — the violence, the pain, the genuine possibility of death — his body is still responding to me. To my presence. To the fact that I’m standing here in my underwear holding a dominatrix whip.

It shouldn’t flatter me.

But it does.

Just a little.

Wraith looks at the broken door. At the two unconscious Sons on the floor. At the scattered bondage gear and the empty wine bottles and the general apocalyptic state of my studio apartment.

“Grab your clothes,” he says. “And the wine. And get ready.”

“Get ready for what?”

“We’ve got to get out of here before the Sons send others.”

Chapter Seventeen

Wraith

The apartment looks like someone tried to redecorate using only violence and bad decisions. Broken door hanging off its hinges. Two unconscious Sons on the floor, breathing but not moving. Blood—some of it mine, most of it theirs—smeared across the linoleum in abstract patterns that would probably sell for money in the right gallery. The shattered toilet tank lid. The scattered bondage gear. The empty wine bottles. And June, standing in the middle of it all in her underwear, holding a dominatrix whip like she was born to it.

The safe house is blown.

I press my hand against my right side and it comes away wet.

Shit.

I don’t remember getting cut. The fight was a blur of fists and elbows and that fucking knife Hawk was waving around, and somewhere in the middle of it the blade must have found me. Not deep, but deep enough.

“We need to leave,” I say. My voice sounds steady, which is good, because the rest of me is feeling less steady by the second.

June‘s eyes drop to my hand, to the blood seeping between my fingers. Her face does something complicated with surprise and care.

“You’re bleeding.”

“I noticed.”

“How bad?”

“Not great. Not terrible.” I press harder against the wound. The pressure helps. “But we need to move. Now.”

She’s already setting the whip down, already moving toward me with her hands reaching out like she’s going to touch the wound, examine it, do something maternal and competent that I absolutely cannot handle right now because if she touches me with that expression on her face I might do something stupid like admit how much this hurts.

“We should call Evan,” she says. “Or the Devils. They have resources. They have a doctor. Bishop. He’s actually really nice, even though he pretends to be an asshole. He could fix you.”

“No.”