“Clean up, get your face cared for, then call me up here and I'll wrap your ribs.”
“It's fine. I can...”
“Sure you can,” he agreed, but his lips were twitching, like he found my inability to accept help amusing. “But I can do it without hurting you and I can do it tighter so you don't wince every time you take a step. So call me or I'll just let myself in in ten minutes.”
“Fine,” I grumbled, avoiding my reflection in the mirror above his sink.
“Get your scrub on. I'll go wait for the food.”
With that, he was gone and I went through the process of stripping off my clothes and unwrapping my bandages. I slipped out of my panties, turned the tap on hot, and poured hand soap on them. I wasn't a particularly high maintenance woman, but I absolutely refused to wear panties two days in a row without a wash. I went into the linen closet and found a blow dryer buried in the back and placed it on the counter. It would work for a makeshift clothes dryer.
I kept my face out of the water as I showered, slathering on soap and shampoo that smelled just like Cash and liking it a little too much. I dried, I dabbed antibiotic on my face, brushed my hair, blasted my panties with the blow dryer then slipped into them and got the tee over my head.
“Alright,” I yelled as I scrubbed my teeth real quick.
Cash came in a minute later, going into the linen cabinet and getting fresh elastic bandages, leaving me to wonder how often he needed them. Normal people didn't keep a big supply of elastic bandages in their supply cabinets. I knew this because I had never even seen an elastic bandage until I needed one. But every bathroom closet at Hailstorm was stacked to the gills with them.
“Tee up,” he said casually, pulling the paper wrapping off the bandages.
I took a shaky breath, trying to stifle the surge of insecurity I felt at that demand. It wasn't that I was insecure. Far from. I kept my body fit because my lifestyle and job demanded it, but that being said, I knew that keeping it fit kept it aesthetically appealing. I had toned legs with just enough of a womanly plump to them, same could be said for my ass. My stomach was flat, the slightest outline of abs could be seen on some days. My boobs had remained high and perky despite getting closer to forty than thirty and them being large to begin with. I had a good body.
But Cash seeing it... hell, that was enough to make a woman who never blushed, blush.
I grabbed the hem of my shirt and slowly pulled it up, unable to help myself from watching Cash for some kind of reaction. He kept his head lowered as he pulled off the little metal doohickey and started to unravel the bandage. His eyes rose slowly, landing on my hips and moving upward over my belly and stopping where my hands were holding the tee just under my breasts. His air rushed out of his chest, but he made no comment. He didn't ogle, he just slowly went to work.
“Okay,” he said a while later, his hands moving to cover mine as he pulled the material of his tee down my body, covering me. “Did I hurt you?” he asked, finally looking me in the eye.
“No,” my lips mumbled, my brain in no way part of the equation because suddenly, all I could think about was him lifting me up onto the counter, ripping off my panties, and burying inside me. Maybe it was because he had been so gentle with me, so careful. Or maybe it was because he had the respect for me to not make sexual comments when I was mostly naked in front of him as he wrapped me. Whatever it was, all I could think from the second he pressed the first inch of bandage to my skin, was how good his touch felt, how much better it would feel touching me places right above and right below where he was actually touching me.
“Good. Then lets feed you.”
So then... he fed me.NineCashTwo of those pills knocked me on my ass for eight hours straight back when I took them. I figured that gave me just enough time to get to the clubhouse, grab Repo, see the Mallicks, then get back home and order food before she woke up. So I jotted down a note just in case she woke up and put it on the nightstand next to a spare gun, just in case trouble managed to find her, though there had been no tail the whole way to my place.
“What the fuck?” Repo asked when I pulled up to the compound, raising a brow at Lo's car. “Dude, I know you're like my superior and all that shit... but I ain't fucking going anywhere in that car.”
I laughed, slamming the door and locking it. “We can take one of your projects then but I'm driving.”
Repo gave me a grin then ran off toward the back of the property where he kept his half a dozen cars in various stages of repair and rebuild. That was how Repo blew off steam. That was how he channeled his dark moods when they came over him. The kicker was, he never wanted them when they were done. The second they were restored and running, he wanted them gone. He ended up making bank selling his finished projects.
I waited at the gates as he rumbled up in what looked like a '82 Firebird in a faded, god-awful yellow color. It was making a clanging sound that I knew was probably not a good sign, but Repo seemed completely unconcerned by. He pulled out the gates, leaving the engine running, and hopped out to run to the passenger side.
“Is this thing going to make it?” I asked as I sat down in the driver's side.