I finish the thought. “Honorable.”
“Yes.” Lincoln’s mismatched eyes find mine again. My stomach lurches with something I don’t know how to name.
It’s time to leave.
“It’s late. I better head out.” I reach for Nightshade, she whinnies and prances away. I follow her down the stable’s main aisle. “Come on, girl.”
“Myla, what did you do to your back?”
I look over my shoulder. “Oh, that was the Arachnoid. I forgot it got one good lick in.”
Lincoln rises to his feet. “Come over here.”
What a worrywart. “It’s fine, really.”
Lincoln steps up behind me. “That looks bad. Arachnoids are poisonous. Wait one minute.” He rushes over to the shelves on the far wall, pulls down a white towel, and jogs back to my side. “I’m going to pat the wound, all right?”
“Okay.” I barely feel the fabric on my skin.
Lincoln steps in front of me, the towel in his hands. It’s covered with green and yellow pus. “See, what I mean? Bad.”
“Hells bells! But I don’t feel anything.”
“It’s the neurotoxin.” Lincoln jogs back over to the shelf of jars. “By the time you feel the pain, it’s too late.” He pulls a yellow jar from the shelves and inspects the hand-written label. “Don’t worry, this one’ll do it.”
“How do you know that?”
“I’ve hunted demons since I was six years old. I’ve seen every injury you can imagine. That’s an Arachnoid cut, and this ointment’s the cure.” A green horse blanket hangs from a peg on a nearby wall. Lincoln pulls it down with his free hand. “You’ll need to take your upper armor off. Cover up with this.”
He tosses the blanket to me; I catch it with my right hand. I look at the once-white towel lying on the stable floor. It could be my imagination, but the gooey stain seems to slowly creep along the fabric. Lincoln’s right; this is bad.
“Give me a minute.” I step into a nearby stall and strip off my breastplate and under-armor. I wish I’d brought my fighting suit–that Arachnoid would never have gotten through dragon scales. Oh, well. I hold the blanket to my chest and step back into the main aisle.
Lincoln steps closer. “You better sit.”
Bending my knees, I fold my legs beneath me on the stable floor. Lincoln crouches behind me. He leans forward, his breath tickling the shell of my ear. “This is going to hurt at first.”
I hear the scrape of the jar’s lid, then sense Lincoln’s vague touch on my back.
“I don’t feel anything.”
“Give it a few seconds.”
Suddenly, the skin on my back blazes with pain. Hurt explodes from my shoulders until every nerve ending in my body screams in agony. “Son of a bitch!” I jam the blanket into my mouth and bite down hard. I crouch forward, my head almost touching the stable floor.
“You’re doing great. Just a bit longer.”
The agony blasts through me again, then one by one, my nerve endings return to normal. The pain melts away. I pull the blanket from my mouth and exhale slowly. “Okay, it’s better now.”
Lincoln leans in closer. His warm breath glides down my bare neck. “Good.”
That’s when it hits me.
It’s the middle of the night; I’m half-naked in a deserted stable; the guy I hate most in the universe is massaging my back; and damn, his touch feels crazy-awesome.
I try to stand up. “I’m totally fine now.”
Lincoln’s hands grip the bare skin at my waist, pulling me back to the floor. The touch sends fire through me; I shiver.
“You’re not fine. Stay still.” The Prince’s fingers move in a relentless rhythm, starting at my shoulders. There my muscles flush with heat and loosen. His palms slide down the sides of my torso, then press against the small of my back. I bite into the blanket again, but not with pain. Heat and desire pool into places where I didn’t even know I had nerve endings. My inner Furor demon howls with a new sensation:
Lust.
The situation’s quickly heading into uncharted territory for yours truly. Massage skills aside, this guy’s still a pompous jerk. And since when do I get lusty about anybody? I only inherited the wrath side of the Furor lust-and-wrath combo, didn’t I? With every expert flick of the Prince’s fingers, another image flashes through my mind: Lincoln’s hands cupping on my breasts, gliding across my belly, sliding up my thighs. What the Hell is happening to me? I flat-out panic.
“I think I can–” I try to stand again. Waves of nausea hit me. The world turns fuzzy, then everything blurs into a white haze.
Chapter Fifteen