“Let me see the wound, Sunny. I brought something that might help.”
“How canyouknow what will help her?” Caleb spat. “Even Blackthorne blood hasn’t fully healed her.”
“The blade.”
“Yes?”
My knees buckled, and Alek scooped me into his arms like I weighed nothing. “Thanks, big boy. I used to say I didn’t like a man with too many muscles, but you just changed my mind.”
A deep rumble rolled from his chest. “I’ll hold you in my arms whenever you wish.”
“You make me feel... delicate.”
“You are.”
I shook my head, loving the scent of him even as I knew this could all be fever delirium talking. He settled me on the hard leather couch near the fireplace and carefully lifted the shirt Caleb had given me. The worry lines etched across his forehead had my heart racing. So it was as bad as I thought. I wasn’t hallucinating.
“The blade was laced with wolfsbane. I analyzed it after you took her.” Alek spoke to Caleb but stared hard at me while doing so.
“Wolfsbane?” I whispered.
I’d seen a wolf die from a wound like this. Hunters were ruthless, out to end all of us, but wolfsbane was hard to come by, and even harder to make into a potent, concentrated form. They’d really wanted me dead.
“I have a cure. If you’ll allow it.”
“Yes,” Caleb said before I could speak.
“I’m not asking you, Father Gallagher.” Alek turned a tight gaze to me.
“I trust you.”
He nodded, jaw clenched, before he gripped the T-shirt at the hem and tore it completely in two, baring my body to him and Caleb both. I’d never been more thankful that I’d chosen to wear panties. But that dress I’d worn to the club? That was a no-bra situation, so now, my tits were right there, literally in his face.
He swallowed hard but didn’t stare down at my breasts. “I have to touch you.”
“Okay.”
His warm palm pressed gently to my belly, just below my sternum, before he slid it up to my chest, right between my breasts. The other hovered directly over the wound on my side.
“Your heart is hammering like a frightened bird’s.”
“Well, Ihavebeen poisoned.”
A slight smirk turned up his lips. “We’ll see to that. Close your eyes.”
I did as he asked and instantly felt him inside me. His essence flowed from his palm and outward, racing through every cell and nerve ending. The pain in my body built and reached an unbearable peak, the overwhelming sensation making me whimper, but he whispered soft, comforting words in a language I couldn’t understand.
“What are you doing to her?” Caleb asked. His voice was rough and breathless, and when I risked a glance at him, there was a feral hunger in his eyes.
“Healing her.”
The pain crested again, a burning heat centering in my wound, causing tears to leak from my eyes before turning to warmth, then pleasure. Pleasure I shouldn’t have been feeling butdefinitelywas. I moaned, my nipples tightening to desperate peaks, begging for attention.
“Alek, oh, my God. What are you doing to me?”
My eyes fluttered open again and locked with his. The same pleasure radiated from him, uncertainty flickering in the depths of his ice-blue irises.
“I don’t know. Fuck, Sunday.”