Elisabeth Naughton - Marked

His outstretched hand, coated in his own blood, beckoned her.

She moved forward, almost as if someone were pushing her, and hesitantly slid her hand into his. His eyes remained closed, but his fingers tightened around hers with stunning force.

Okay, that didn’t seem right. Something was off here. She tried to clear the fog from her brain, which seemed to be hanging like a shroud.

“T-Tell me what to do to help you,” she whispered.

“Lavender.”

“What?” No way she’d just heard him say—

“Fresh”—he hissed in a breath—“lavender. It grows. Here. Does it not?”

“Um, yeah,” she said as her mind spun. He tried to shift his big body farther up the bed. Letting go of his hand, she helped him lift his legs. He groaned when she touched his injured limb.

“I’m sorry,” she said on a cringe, then remembered what he’d asked for. “I don’t understand. Why do you need—?”

“You must get it for me. Steep the lavender in boiling water,” he said from between clenched teeth, as he fisted the once-white comforter at his sides. “Soak rags and bring them to me. Hurry.”

Casey stared at his wounds, momentarily transfixed by the damage. Her head was spinning. Nothing seemed to make sense. Not who he was or what had happened to him or how she’d gotten him here, into her house. And now he wanted lavender? That request was more ludicrous than anything else he’d—

“Now,” he rasped in a firm voice. “You must bring the lavender now. Before it’s too late.”

She felt herself nodding, but didn’t know why. And then her legs were moving and she was rushing out of the room, filling a stock pot with water in the kitchen and setting it on the stove to boil before she ran out of the house.

Lavender. Have to get lavender for him, because he needs it.

Outside, the moon peeked over a tall Douglas fir, splashing shadows across the surface of the lake as she moved and her mind battled some unseen force that seemed to be spurring her on. Somewhere in the distance an owl cried, the sound almost eerie in the stillness. The few houses nestled around the lake were separated by forest and distance, the nearest at least an eighth of a mile away, and tonight she was glad.

She pulled up short at the edge of her small yard and yanked a handful of lavender from the flower bed. Back inside she went right to work, waiting for the pot to boil and tossing the herbs inside to brew. While that heated, she raced for the linen closet off the hall bathroom and grabbed as many washcloths and hand towels as she could find, then hauled them back to the kitchen. She tossed the washcloths into the pot, grabbed the stack of clean hand towels and headed for her bedroom.

Halfway there a wave of nausea washed over her, and she paused in the hallway, one hand on the wall, to catch her breath.

It’s okay. I’m okay. It’s just seeing that blood. And the weird virus you’re fighting. Nothing more.

She swallowed once, twice, and waited until the dizziness passed, then moved forward.

The sight that greeted her tore a gasp from her mouth and brought that sickness right back to her stomach. Her patient was sitting up on her bed, bare to the waist, tearing his pants at his injured thigh. His face was scrunched up tight and his lips were compressed in obvious pain. Dark hair fell over his face. In the light from the hallway, the cuts and gashes and—oh, God, claw marks?—across his torso were a thousand times worse than she’d imagined.

She forced herself to go into the room, though she wanted to run away, and flipped on the bedside lamp. “I—oh, God.”

He was drenched in sweat. An ear-shattering roar tore out of him as he ripped his pant leg in two all the way to his waistband, then fell back against the pillows.

Casey immediately rounded the bed, dropped the wad of towels near his feet and took the top one, pressing the soft cotton against the gush of blood to slow the stream. Swallowing hard, she continued to apply pressure even as he growled low in his throat and writhed beneath her.

This was insane. He needed a doctor. He’d die if the wound wasn’t closed, continue to bleed out all over her grandmother’s antique white lace duvet. Somehow she had to get him back to her car and take him into town, where he could get real help. Why on earth had she brought him here in the first place?

Frantic, she glanced toward the doorway, then back at his leg. She didn’t want to leave him, but she needed to get to the phone.

“Have to stitch it closed.”

His gravelly voice brought her head around, and she looked at his face, this enormous dark and dangerous man who’d stalked through XScream earlier tonight with the arrogance of a warrior, now mere feet from death’s doorstep.

“I…I can call someone. If you hold this, I’ll go—”

“No!” He leaned up quickly, though she saw the shot of pain in his contorted features as he did so. He grabbed her wrist tight. That warmth spread through her body again. “Needle. And thread. You have those, don’t you?”

The haze returned. Thicker. Denser. Surrounding her body and blocking out her peripheral vision until all she saw were his dark-as-night eyes. Until all she heard were his words. Until all she felt was his finger stroking her pulse point, over and over again.

Slowly, she nodded, as she had before, like he was willing her to do so.

With his free hand he pressed down on the towel over his wounded thigh, then ground his teeth together. “Get those and come back.”

She hesitated. Stared at him. And had the strangest sense she’d met him before. Somewhere. Or maybe not him. But definitely someone like him.

Crazy. He was a stranger. Someone who had obviously gotten in over his head tonight. He could be a criminal. A mercenary. A madman. But even as the thoughts flickered through her mind, she dismissed them. Right now, he was nothing more than a man who needed her help.

Heart pounding, Casey turned and left the room, and when she came back with her sewing kit, she saw he wasn’t holding it together nearly as well now. His breathing was labored. Sweat dripped down his forehead. His skin was pale, his eyes clouded. She suspected he was fighting with everything he had left in him to keep from passing out.

Her hands shook as she dug through the kit and found a needle, then stilled as another thought struck. “It’s cotton. The thread is cotton. That’s not good, right? I mean, hospitals use something sterile. I need—”

“Cotton’s fine,” he rasped. “It’ll be absorbed into my skin within hours.”

She wanted to ask how that was possible, but he lifted those cloudy onyx eyes to hers before she could, and she got that fuzzy-headed feeling again, like someone else was controlling her from the outside in.

“I may pass out. I’ll try to stay awake, but I’m not sure I’ll be able to…take it. After you stitch up the wound, bring the lavender towels.” He squeezed his eyes shut tight. Blew out a breath. “Bring the towels, wring them out and lay them over my wounds.”

“But how will that—?”

“The lavender has healing properties. Trust me. On three. Alright, meli ?”

His eyes locked on hers. And something passed between them in that moment. A connection she couldn’t explain. A familiarity that touched her somewhere deep inside. As her heart raced, all Casey could do was nod.

He nodded back, then lifted his hand from his injured leg and dropped back on her mattress with a groan.

Casey’s stomach flipped around like a fish out of water as she went to work. After cleaning the needle, she tried not to think of what she was doing or the way blood ran down her hands as she worked. She made methodical stitches and remembered her home-ec teacher’s words from high school: Small, even stitches, Casey. Don’t rush.