“How about if we get you cleaned up first?”
“No. Now,” I demanded as my head pounded.
Looking skyward, he seemed to be trying to find the words. What he finally told me was a story so unreal that I seriously believed I was dreaming. The thought that people could “magically”healsomeone on their deathbed was something from fairy tales and movies.
“Then why don’t I remember any of this?” I skeptically questioned. My mind went crazy trying to remember. Except I had no idea how I’d ended up in that bed, or why I was covered in dried blood. The last thing I remembered was walking out the door after work.
“I don’t have an answer for that,” he replied. “Maybe it was your mind’s way of protecting you from a breakdown? Fuck, I have no clue.”
“What if I don’t believe you?” Lifting my chin, I crossed my arms and stared at him. My eyes squinted as I fought the raging pain.
“To be honest, I don’t expect you to, but that’s what happened. What you shouldn’t know, but you have a right to know, is that your father isn’t going to survive this. Neither is your brother.” His nostrils flared, and I read blazing anger in his eyes.
“My brother?” My heart dropped at the thought of Viktor or Dmitry being in danger. My father, I could care less about, because since I was fifteen and he ruined me, I’d fought to keep the utter hatred I had for him bottled up.
With a curl of his lip, he spat, “Anatoly.”
Relief blossomed in me, because Anatoly was as evil as our father. “Fine. But why are you telling me this if you aren’t supposed to?”
“Because there are things that we do as Royal Bastards that you don’t need to know about. There will be many things that will fall under club business that I won’t be able to tell you, but this is your family we’re talking about.”
At the word family, I clutched my head—the pain excruciating by then. It was so bad, I cried out and nearly collapsed.
Ogun’s hands were holding me up, and I could hear him calling out to me, then someone else. Except it was but a mumble over the whooshing in my head. Flashes of images bombarded me and with them, the past twenty-four hours flooded back.
Pushing free of his hold, I leaned over the toilet and emptied my stomach. The sheet was draped over me, and I looked up to find it was Ogun covering me as Angel stepped into the small space.
“Get your big ass out of the way,” Angel said to Ogun, who growled at him.
Angel laid a calloused palm against my cheek and the other at the back of my head. Slowly, the pain began to ease, but the tears still ran down my face. “Breathe easy, little one,” he murmured.
“So you really saved me?” I asked in confusion, because I was completely and totally overwhelmed by that point.
Of course, he didn’t answer, merely shrugged modestly. He was a hard man to read.
“Can you take your hands off my woman now?” Ogun growled. Angel chuckled, winked at me, then released my face.
“Let me know if you need anything else,” he said before he kissed the top of my head and stood, drawing another growl out of Ogun. It was pretty evident he’d done that to mess with him.
“Sasha?” I questioned, dread pooling in my belly.
“She’s gonna be okay. She’s with Veronica, as she needed to be monitored overnight. I’m paying her to keep her for a couple of days because I wasn’t sure how your recovery would go,” Ogun said softly. Relief had me sagging into the wall.
They spoke quietly over by the door to the room while I got up and turned on the water for the shower. They were still talking by the time the water got warm, so I stepped under the spray. Closing my eyes, I let the water beat down on me as I replayed the events of the past twenty-four hours—hell, I wasn’t sure what time it was, so I didn’t know how long it had been.
“Got room in there for me?” My head rose at the sexy rasp of his voice over the shower. As beads of water dripped from my eyelashes, I nodded. Slowly, he climbed in and turned me around. My shoulders drooped as he massaged shampoo into my hair and scalp.
When he was done, he gently tugged my head back and rinsed it. A soft kiss was pressed to the pulse in my neck where I knew I should have a scar. Then he reverently lathered my body, all the way down to my feet.
Each stroke of his hands over my skin, brush of his lips, scrape of his teeth, was nothing less than worship. “I love you,” he whispered in my ear before he held my hair to the side and kissed my nape where my tattoo started.
A shiver skated through me at the sensuousness of his touch and the emotions it elicited.
I sucked in a startled breath when his tongue traced the lines of the tattoo.
“What does this say?” he asked.
“You know,” I gasped. His teeth sank into the corded muscles at the slope of my shoulder.