“Sometimes your smart mouth is not appreciated.”
Me? A smart mouth?
He must have sensed my surprise, because he said, “Remember that little remark you made about me being a bad lover?”
Oh yeah. I almost grinned. Go me!
“Not funny,” he said.
“It kind of was.”
His lips were twitching as he ushered me to the front door. Because the neighborhood was so poor, I expected him to use an old-fashioned key to unlock the entrance. Instead, he had a more expensive ID box and placed his hand in the center.
Instantly a bright blue light surrounded his fingers and palm, scanning the prints.
“Welcome, Erik,” a computerized voice said as the front door slid open.
Once we passed the threshold, the door closed automatically and the house lights came on. My knees knocked together and a wave of dizziness assaulted me. I swayed. Standing had been a mistake. Walking had been an even bigger mistake.
My eyelids felt as heavy as boulders and began to close on their own. Darkness winked in and out of my mind. I tipped forward.
Fall, I wanted to say. I’m going to fall. My mouth refused to obey.
Erik held tight, keeping me upright. “Just a little farther,” he said, and I was surprised by the gentleness of his tone.
A second later, my toes hit the edge of something. The couch, I realized, when I pried my eyelids apart. It was big, brown, and soft, beckoning me to collapse.
Erik slowly spun me around and gave a gentle push to my shoulders. I couldn’t do it with ease as he intended and ended up plopping down ungracefully. Plush cushions plumped around me.
“Stay here,” he said.
As if I could have moved.
Finally comfortable, I fought against sleep—how good it would feel to simply doze off, to forget, to dream—and scanned the room in which I now found myself, curious to see how Erik lived.
Nothing about him had been as I expected, so why should this? Despite the outside appearance, the inside was very nice. Vaulted ceiling, painted cement floor, gray brick walls, and clean, comfy furniture: couch (brown), love seat (brown), glass coffee table. There was even a holoscreen television.
Still, he must not sell a lot of Onadyn. Otherwise he would be living in a better neighborhood, have real wood floors, and permascented rugs. Right?
“I’m back,” Erik said, at my side again. He was wearing a new shirt, I saw with disappointment—those muscles and smooth skin all covered up. In his hands he’d piled vials and bandages.
“Is this going to hurt?”
“Oh yeah.”
I frowned and would have moved away if I’d had the energy. “Why’d you tell me that? You should have lied. Now I’m going to jump every time you reach for me.”
He rolled his eyes. “Sit up.”
I tried, I really did. But I hadn’t had the strength to move from where I’d fallen, which meant I didn’t have the strength to lean. Erik slid his hands behind my shoulders and urged me forward. Even my head was becoming too heavy to hold up and lolled forward.
“You falling asleep on me?” he asked.
“No,” I said, closing my eyes. Why was I fighting sleep anyway? No reason to stay wake when a black chasm waited for me, begging me to fall into it. There, I could pretend this night had never happened.
“Sure?”
The single word cut through my thoughts and chased away the chasm, leaving only wakefulness and reality. No sleep for me, no reprieve. “Just bandage me up already,” I muttered.
He barked out a laugh. “What I’m about to do will wake you up, don’t worry.”
A shiver stole through me upon hearing that uninhibited and carefree laugh. Still. I felt the color drain from my cheeks. Suffering and I were to become good friends, I guess, and were going to tango a little more tonight. “Thanks. I really needed to hear that.”
“Not good with pain, I take it.”
“Is anyone?”
As he unwound the shirt from my arm, I cringed and bit my lip to keep from crying. The material, soft though it was, scraped against the jagged, torn flesh. Erik said, “Some people have to be good with pain.”
There was a strange inflection in his tone—sad, vulnerable. “You’ve been hurt a lot, huh?”
His gaze met mine for the briefest of seconds, but he ignored my statement. His lips pursed and he began to pinch and prod at the wound. Ow, ow, ow. I tried to pull from his grip.
“What are you doing? That’s making it worse.”
“I’m cataloguing the damage. Stay still.”
Yeah, sure. “It’d probably be easier for me to wave my magic wand and produce the entire cast of Alien Nights.”
“You actually watch that garbage?” he said, continuing the torture.
“No,” I replied, cheeks flushing. Okay, maybe I’d caught an episode or two. In my defense, the other-worldly soap opera had an excellent plot. Carmine had tried to kill Sasha, who wanted to return to her home planet of Jen Jen Bi to finally have revenge on her estranged father, Escar, who had sold her to the earthling, Rocky, who hoped to produce a race of alien-human hybrids.
“You’ve got tissue damage.” Erik straightened. “A vessel was sliced. The muscle is torn. If you hadn’t ducked when you did…”
You could have lost the arm, I finished for him. I almost threw up. Felt bile rising, but managed to hold it back.
“This will help.” He applied a thick paste to the center of the cut. A floral scent wafted to my nose. “You’re lucky. Only one star hit you, and it just grazed the top layers, rather than slicing all the way through the bone.”
“Feels like it’s still embedded in there.”
“That’s because it is. Well, pieces of it.” He spread a—ugh! I wrinkled my nose. He spread a foul-smelling cream over the paste. “What most people don’t know is that the tips of the stars release at the moment of impact, lodging into whatever they first touch. Fortunately for you, the paste will numb everything and the cream will dissolve the metal and not the flesh, as well as cauterize the actual wound. You’ll be as good as new in a few days.”
I wanted to be as good as new now. “I’ve never heard of that kind of paste or cream before.”
“Just because you haven’t heard of them doesn’t mean they don’t exist. Feeling better?” he added with barely a breath.
I blinked in astonishment. Yes. I did. Truly, I’d never heard of such a fast-working medication, but I was grateful for it. The pain was already easing.