Total pages in book: 46
Estimated words: 42128 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 211(@200wpm)___ 169(@250wpm)___ 140(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 42128 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 211(@200wpm)___ 169(@250wpm)___ 140(@300wpm)
“I’m right here, angel,” I reassured her, moving back into her space without hesitation.
Only then did her grip ease a little around my wrist.
Across the exam room, Cage noticed the entire exchange while pulling gloves onto his hands, and a knowing look crossed his face—one only another brother could recognize immediately. The kind that said he already knew exactly what had happened to me the second this woman stumbled into my arms out on that dark road.
“Brother,” he muttered dryly while reaching for supplies, “you hovering this close is gonna make doing my job a little difficult.”
“I don’t remember asking.”
Hadley snorted softly behind Cage as she grabbed gauze and antiseptic from a nearby cabinet. Then she muttered, “You’d be acting the same way if I was the one sitting injured on that bed.”
Cage shot his old lady an irritated glance, but there wasn’t any real bite behind it, probably because she wasn’t wrong. She only smiled sweetly at him before moving toward Delaney with careful movements.
I stayed close enough that my thigh brushed the side of the exam bed. I’d known this woman for less than an hour, yet every instinct in my body had already aligned itself around protecting her.
Cage took the antiseptic and gauze from Hadley and turned toward Delaney. “I’m gonna clean these cuts up. You tell me if anything hurts worse than the rest.”
Delaney nodded faintly, though her eyes quickly found mine again, tracking my movements carefully like she needed constant reassurance that I wasn’t about to disappear on her.
The injuries looked even worse beneath the harsh fluorescent lights. Thin cuts and scrapes lined her calves and the tops of her feet, dirt still clinging stubbornly to some of them from running barefoot through woods and brush. The angry abrasions on her wrists were inflamed from rope bindings that had clearly been tight enough to leave bruising beneath the broken skin. My jaw tightened painfully every time I looked at them too long.
Rage simmered beneath my skin. Whoever had done this to her…
I was going to fucking destroy them.
Cage carefully cleaned the cuts with antiseptic, and every single time Delaney flinched from the sting, my body reacted right along with her. I noticed everything—the hitch in her breathing, the tension gathering through her shoulders, and the instinctive spikes of fear whenever something hurt unexpectedly. Every time it happened, she reached for me without even seeming aware she was doing it.
My hand settled against her ankle while Cage wrapped one foot, my thumb brushing lightly across warm skin as though I could soothe the pain out of her by touch alone. Later, when Cage cleaned the deeper scrapes along her arm, my palm slid over her shoulder automatically, grounding her beneath my hand the second panic started tightening her breathing again.
I could physically feel the difference each time I touched her, the fear easing almost instantly while her body settled beneath my hands in a way that nearly knocked the breath from my lungs.
“Any dizziness?” Cage asked while securing fresh gauze around one of her feet. “Blurred vision? Nausea?”
“A little dizzy earlier,” Delaney admitted quietly, her voice rough with exhaustion. “But better now.”
“You lose consciousness?”
Her gaze flicked toward me briefly, and I nodded. “I guess so.”
Cage hummed thoughtfully while examining the scrape along her temple. “Pupils look good. Probably shock and exhaustion more than anything serious.”
Thank fuck.
Hadley moved closer with a warm washcloth, gently cleaning dried blood from Delaney’s forearm while speaking softly enough not to crowd her. Throughout the entire exam, Delaney never recoiled from either of them. She tensed occasionally from pain or fear, but she never showed the kind of reaction I’d been watching for since the second I saw the condition she’d been in out on that road. She didn’t shy away from Cage touching her, didn’t panic at the presence of another man near her body, and didn’t carry that hollow, shattered look I’d seen before in women.
Cage clearly noticed too because his eyes lifted briefly toward mine before he spoke carefully. “I need to ask one thing, Delaney. Just medically necessary, okay?”
Her body tightened beneath my hand, and without thinking, I moved closer again, my palm settling gently against the back of her neck while my thumb brushed lightly beneath her hairline.
“You’re okay,” I murmured. “I’ve got you.”
Her eyes closed briefly at the sound of my voice before she gave Cage a small nod.
His tone remained professional when he finally asked, “Were you sexually assaulted?”
The room went dead silent.
Delaney’s fingers tightened painfully around mine before she shook her head. “No.”
Relief slammed through me so hard and fast it almost made me dizzy. Her captor wasn’t gonna be any less fucking dead when I was done with him, but it might be over a little quicker than if she’d said yes.
Cage nodded, clearly understanding far more than I wanted him to. “Okay. That’s all I needed.”