The last wave of pain cut through me, and then died down.
The green eyes vanished as the man closed them, and fell back to the ground.
Only now that he was draped half-across me, my lap was the ground.
My naked lap.
If he wasn’t so relaxed, or breathing so evenly, I would’ve thought he was just being a pervert. But I’d been watching, and he’d clearly fallen back asleep before he even crashed to my lap.
So he wasn’t a perv. At least, I didn’t have any evidence that he was one yet. Though logic told me I’d probably find evidence of it at some point.
I was sitting up, not very steadily, and yeah, completely naked.
Great.
“Here.” Someone slid a sweatshirt over my head, and I pushed my shaking arms through it, wobbling a bit.
I had never been so hungry in my life.
My stomach growled, as if to emphasize that point.
I started to shake harder.
The microwave opened and closed, and then the scent of cooking food filled the air.
A blanket was draped over my lap—and Zed’s head in the process—but I was too hungry and shaky to pay attention to how inappropriate the situation looked, with his head on my crotch and a blanket over both crotch and head.
A warm plate landed on Zed’s head, as if it was a table. Elliot crouched next to me, his expression still serious. “You’ve got to eat, or you’re going to die,” he told me. “Maybe not right now, but soon. And it’s going to be a really damn painful death.”
I grabbed the fork, and struggled to lift it to my mouth. When I couldn’t get it there, Elliot took it from me, and stabbed a piece of meat before handing it back.
My hand shook hard, but I managed to get it into my mouth. Chewing was a beast, but I got the food down after a while.
“We need to take her to the hospital,” another serious male voice said. “She probably needs a feeding tube.”
“No.” My voice shook, but I managed to get the word out.
I’d never recover financially from a bill like that, considering I hadn’t had insurance since… well, probably since my dad ditched my mom and I in the trailer park. Definitely not since she’d OD’d, leaving me alone at seventeen.
At least her debt had died with her, and his had left with him. With that hanging over my head, I’d never have been able to do anything or go anywhere.
“Do you have any protein shakes?” Elliot asked the guy behind me. I didn’t know his name, or what he looked like.
“One or two.”
Elliot’s head dipped. “Go grab them. We’ll work on this.”
The other guy slipped out the back door, and I heard it close behind him as Elliot scooped a dollop of what looked like mashed potatoes onto the fork and lifted it to my mouth.
I took it from him, but my hand shook so badly that the damned potatoes fell on my lap.
“It’s all good. We all get it,” he said gently, taking the fork back and stabbing a couple of peas. “I’m sorry we didn’t check on you sooner. That was my fault. We were trying to give you space, but I should’ve listened to my gut and come over to make sure you were alright.”
I managed to get the peas in my mouth, and by some miracle, swallowed them.
“Let me grab you some water,” Elliot said, his voice kind. He set the plate down on the floor, and stepped into the kitchen as the front door opened. I heard hollering outside, and though I couldn’t distinguish the words, it sounded a hell of a lot like Del.
A dark-skinned man stepped in, holding an armful of premade protein shakes. “We heard you needed these,” he told Elliot, though his eyes trailed over me clinically as he stepped around me, leaving plenty of space. He had on a pair of joggers and a tight t-shirt that left not a single damn one of his abs to the imagination.