Her head was tilted down, her eyes focused on where I’d touched her, and she didn’t move after I pressed the button to turn on the wand, waved the blue light over her hand and watched as the cuts healed. I took her other hand, held it between us and healed that one, too.
Touching her was like an ion pulse to my cock. Swift, fiery and explosive. And that was just holding her hand. She gasped and I knew it wasn’t from pain. Tugging her hand free, she leaned back, away from me. The beast didn’t like it.
“I’m not done,” I told her. “You have other injuries.”
“I’m fine,” she replied, holding out her hand for the wand, but facing the water. She wouldn’t look at me.
That was not a problem since I could stare at her lush lips and curves.
“You are injured, Captain. Why fight me on this? Why insist on doing this to yourself?”
“I’m not weak.” She opened and closed her fingers, in a gesture I assumed meant she was waiting for me to give her the wand. Not a chance.
“I would never imply that you are.” I dropped to my knees beside her, every move slow and deliberate. I was seeing something here, learning something about the way her mind worked. Perhaps constant bickering didn’t work. Perhaps… “You are fierce, female. The strongest woman I’ve ever known.” It was the truth. I’d seen other women warriors fight, but none like she did, with a reckless courage that I both dreaded and admired. Perhaps it was time to admire her more, for she hadn’t yet snapped back at me.
I heard her sigh.
“Me and Beyoncé.”
She leaned her head back until it would go no farther and looked up at me with her dark brown eyes gone soft, warm. Inviting.
Yes, admiration seemed to have a much better effect than threats.
Gods, I’d never seen her like this, and the beast inside me roared. This was Megan. Soft and vulnerable, showing me her weakness. Allowing me to see her for the first time.
“Allow me to heal you.” I tried to temper my voice so it didn’t bounce off the rock that surrounded us.
She held my gaze and I nearly forgot to breathe. “You Atlans are all alike. Bossy and demanding.” Her harsh words were tempered with a teasing grin and I smiled back at her as I reached for the shoulder clasp on her armor.
“And you like that,” I replied. I hadn’t thought to temper my words, but we weren’t in battle at the moment. Yes, she was a fighter, but in this moment, she was a female. A female my beast wanted with an urgency never known before.
Her hand dropped to her side. “Keep dreaming, Warlord.”
While she was back to bickering, the usual vehemence was gone.
I shifted directly behind her, my beast nudging me forward. She was close, so close that if I took a deep breath, my bare chest would brush the armor on her back. With an urgency I could not explain, I undid the fastenings of her armor and removed it—while she was still allowing my touch. I knew this was not normal and would not last. It showed that she was more injured than she let on. My beast prowled impatiently, worried. She was bleeding, hurting. That was all I knew, but it was enough to drive my beast nearly mad.
With a gentleness I never knew I possessed, I pulled the thick battle armor from her body until only the soft, black undergarments remained. The smooth, silken material was designed to wick blood and sweat away from a warrior’s skin, to keep one cool in the heat or warm in the cold. It was also designed to act as a temporary bandage, to cling and compress the tissue around any wound, to stop the bleeding and offer a warrior more time to reach a healing station.
Megan pulled her knees up in front of her and rested her forehead there, unmoving.
“Megan?”
She shook her head with a barely perceptible movement.
The light attached to the front of her armor still shone, offering more than enough light for me to see her in the cave. And to see that her undergarment was nearly plastered to her back, soaked in blood in a long line from her left shoulder to her right hip.
Using the wand, I raised and lowered it just above her back until the wand’s controls indicated that the wound was healed. I gently pulled the material loose from her back. When she made no move to protest, I ran the wand over her arms, then feet. I scrambled around to her legs, where a small laceration dripped blood down to her foot was healed quickly.
When she still did not move, I studied her once more. Her hands were locked around her knees, but even the tight grip there could not hide her trembling. “Megan? You are in pain. Tell me where you are injured.”
“It’s nothing. I can’t…” her voice faded and my beast growled.
“Tell me, or I will spank that luscious ass.”
The threat earned me a chuckle, and an answer. “It’s my head,” she whispered. “It’s like I’ve got grenades going off inside my skull.”
I heard it again, vulnerability. Tentative trust. My beast wanted to beat his chest and howl with victory, claim the spoils. But I was a man first, and neither man nor beast could stand to see Megan in pain. “Come here.”