Kiss of Midnight_ A Midnight Breed Novel - Lara Adrian [620]
“What other choice did you have?” he said, reaching out and very tenderly brushing his fingertips along the line of her cheek. “What about Yakut? Where was he during all of this?”
“Not far behind. I had started running again when he stepped into my path and headed me off. I tried to take him down too, but he withstood it. I sent everything I had at him, to the point of exhaustion, but it wasn’t enough. He was too strong.”
“Because he was Gen One.”
Renata gave an acknowledging tilt of her head. “He explained it to me later, after that initial bout of reverb had knocked me unconscious for three full days and I woke to find myself pressed into service as a personal bodyguard to a vampire.”
“You never tried to leave?”
“In the beginning, I tried. More than once. It never took him long to locate me.” She tapped her index finger against the vein at the side of her neck. “Hard to get very far when your own blood is better than GPS for your pursuer. He used my blood as insurance of my loyalty. It was a shackle I couldn’t break. I was never going to be free of it.”
“You’re free now, Renata.”
“Yeah, I suppose I am,” she said, the answer sounding as hollow as it felt. “But what about Mira?”
Nikolai stared at her for a long moment, saying nothing. She didn’t want to see the doubt in his eyes, no more than she wanted empty assurances that there was anything either one of them could do for Mira now that she was in enemy hands. All the worse when she was currently weakened by her wound.
Nikolai pivoted to the claw-footed white tub and gave the twin handles a crank. As water rushed into the basin, he turned back to her where she sat. “A cool bath should bring your temperature down. Gome on, I’ll help you clean up.”
“No, I can manage on my own—”
He gave her a no-arguments lift of his brow. “The shirt, Renata. Let me help you out of it so I can have a better look at what’s going on with that wound.”
Obviously, he wasn’t about to give it up. Renata sat very still as Nikolai unfastened the last few buttons on the tent-sized oxford and gently eased it off her. The cotton fell in a soft crush on her lap and around her hips. Despite that she was wearing a bra, modesty ingrained in her from her early years in the church orphanage made her lift her hands up to shield her breasts from his eyes.
But he wasn’t looking at her in a sexual way just then. All his focus was on her shoulder right now. He was gentle, careful, his fingers probing lightly around the area. He followed the curve of her shoulder over and around to where the bullet had left her flesh. “Does it hurt when I touch you here?”
Even though his touch was barely a skimming contact, pain radiated through her. She winced, sucking in her breath.
“Sorry. There’s a lot of redness and swelling near the exit wound,” he said, his deep voice vibrating in her bones while his touch moved lightly on her. “It doesn’t look great, but I think if we flush it out and …”
As his voice trailed off, she knew what he was seeing now. Not the raw gunshot wound, but two other blemishes on the otherwise smooth skin of her back. She felt those marks sear as hotly as they had the night they’d been put there.
“Holy hell.” Nikolai’s breath left him in a slow sigh. “What happened to you? Are these burn marks? Jesus… are they brands?”
Renata closed her eyes. Part of her wanted nothing more than to shrink away and vanish into the tile, but she forced herself to remain still, her spine rigidly erect. “They are nothing.”
“Bullshit.” He stood before her and lifted her chin on the edge of his hand. She let her gaze drift up to meet his and found his pale eyes sharp with intensity. There was no pity in those eyes,