Page 22 of Speechless
Her teeth breaking skin didn’t compute.
There was copper in her mouth, a strange warmth running over her chin, red droplets on her flat chest that oozed down her scarred skin. The banging of her heart pounded in time with the hammer of Connor’s fist on wood until both sounds merged into one incessantbump-bump-bumpof noise.
Her chest grew tight. Her breathing came in shallow gasps.
There was warmth on her cheeks, salt mixing with the copper on her tongue, clear drops landing among the red.
Jenna pressed her fists against her ears and keened.
*
Knocking insistently on the bathroom door, calling Jenna’s name, Connor fought back the panic. It threatened to consume him. There was nothing coming from the other side of the door. No running water, nothing to indicate Jenna was lashing out, expressing her fear by trashing his bathroom.
Christ, he hadn’t anticipated this. Hadn’t foreseen she’d be able to read him as quickly and accurately as she had in those few seconds. He’d had a plan in place, a simple but effective one.
Sedating her while she was sleeping was an underhanded tactic, sneaky and not quite ethical. But it would have saved them both stress and anxiety, and she wouldn’t have known anything about it until after she woke up, her wounds treated, and her medication administered.
He’d seen the terror on her face. Torn between giving her space and keeping her safe, he’d faltered and fucked things up. He should have tackled her, held her until the worst of her panic attack was over.
Should have.
An eerie chill spiked down his spine, cold and nasty. A second later, the most godawful, most haunting sound erupted from the bathroom. An unholy keening wail that set every hair on his body standing straight and shoved ice beneath his skin.
It was the sound of an animal in horrific pain.
“Fuck this.” Mindless of his sock-clad feet, Connor reared back and kicked the door above the lock, baring his teeth as his foot jarred roughly. The door shuddered but remained intact.
Changing tactics, he took three steps back, breathed deep, and blanked everything out of his head but Jenna. He charged, dropping his broad shoulder into the wood and forcing all his weight behind it.
Wood cracked—or his shoulder did—before the lock gave in and he staggered into the bathroom. Whirling, he cursed as he spotted her curled up against the wall. Covered in blood from the mouth down, white as a sheet, and silent once again.
It took him a moment to discover the bite on her hand, still bleeding. Sluggishly, nothing to worry about too much. He pulled her eyelids open, found blown pupils. Her pulse raced in her wrist, her throat, and her skin was cold.
“Okay, baby, you’re in shock. I’ve got you.” Connor snagged a bath towel, bundled her into it, and scooped her up. Limping slightly, ignoring the pull of his shoulder, he carted her downstairs, shouting for Sarah as he descended.
“What the hell?” Sarah demanded incredulously, hurrying into the hallway.
“Get the heating turned up in the exam room. I need some more blankets.” He ducked past her, striding into the room and laying Jenna down on the examination table carefully. His fingers sought her pulse again. A fraction slower than it had been, a little stronger, but her breathing wasn’t quite right. “She needs oxygen.”
“Boss, you have to calm down.” Ever the medical professional, displaying the qualities Connor hired her for, Sarah got to work without a hint of flapping. In under a minute, the oxygen tank was in place beside the table, the mask strapped over Jenna’s slack mouth, and air hissed quietly. “Step back, Connor.”
Why did he feel numb? Blankly, he stared down at where his hand circled Jenna’s wrist, unable to understand why he was shaking. There was blood, he thought with a frown, and puncture wounds in her finger.
Teeth marks.
“Jesus, Connor, you’re as pale as she is.” Small, deft fingers unwrapped his from the fragile stem in his grasp, then curled around his bicep and led him away from the table. It only took a short, sharp shove from Sarah’s palm against his chest to sit him on his ass in the visitor’s chair. “Tell me what happened, boss. Jenna’s fine,” she assured him as he tried to get up. “You’re not. What happened?”
The last twenty minutes ran through his brain like a movie reel gone wrong. Connor told her everything as his hands gripped his jeans with the impotency of the situation. Relaying the information, slowly and in detail, helped his mind to clear.
Sarah nodded and patted his arm before walking to Jenna and checking the oxygen mask, monitoring her pulse again, and checking her pupils. Satisfied, she levelled him with a look. “The logical side of you knows she had a panic attack. An extreme one, but a panic attack, nonetheless. The part of you in love with her already just lost his shit because he couldn’t stand the thought of losing her.”
Connor scoffed and rubbed his hand over his face. “Come on, Sarah. That’s the kind of sappy crap that happens in romance novels.”
His nurse cocked a neatly groomed dark eyebrow. “Don’t believe in true love, Connor?”
Now she was putting words in his mouth. Love was a funny thing, wasn’t it? For some people—Louisa, his ex, for one—it wasn’t a feeling, but a tool. Nothing more than a word. In the wrong hands, off the wrong tongue, it had the power to cause more harm than a knife to the gut. “Didn’t say that. Love works for a lot of folk, Sarah. I’ve seen it, I believe in it.”
Slowly, she shook her head, chocolate eyes melting with sympathy. “I’m not talking the bullshit Louisa dumped on your head. That bitch didn’t deserve you, Con. I mean the tie between soulmates, that unbreakable link that forges deep and strong. The sappy crap,” she added with a smile, “happening to you right now, with this tragic young woman right here.”