His fingers parted my hair. “You could be bleeding internally.”

His hands in my hair made it hard to concentrate. “Am I still speaking slowly?”

“No.”

“Then it’s fine.”

In terms of magic regeneration, I was a freak.

He sat the bottle down and picked up a tube of antibiotic ointment. “Hold still.”

His hands were still touching my hair. It felt so intimate. Too intimate.

“You can lift your head.”

I brushed my hair out of my face. Alessandro knelt by me and leaned forward. His face was only inches from mine. He scrutinized my eyes, looking for something in there, probably some mystical signs of concussion. Only minutes ago, he’d disassembled the construct with efficient brutality, and now he was kneeling before me, and his eyes were kind and concerned.

The rest of the world could be on fire right now and I wouldn’t move an inch to put it out.

“Who am I?” he asked.

“Alessandro Niccolò Sagredo, Prime, antistasi, second son of House Sagredo, Count Sagredo,” I told him quietly. “Playboy, assassin, and internationally known influencer. Did I leave anything out?”

“Good enough. There is ibuprofen in this kit, but it’s a blood thinner, and if you are bleeding internally it would make things worse.”

“I’ll tough it out. The painkiller in the injection should kick in soon.”

He picked up the saline wash and touched me, his calloused fingers stretching my skin. I shivered. It hurt, and I didn’t care. I wanted him to keep touching me.

Warm saline water ran down my side.

“How many punctures?” I asked, to say something. I didn’t even sound like myself.

“Four. Looks like only the tips of the claws. You’re lucky, angelo mio. Half an inch more and it would’ve ripped through your liver.”

He called me his angel.

I closed my eyes, trying to shut him out. The warm water kept running over my skin. With the heat of the summer beating down on us, it actually felt kind of nice . . .

“Don’t fall asleep,” he said, his voice sharp.

“I’m not falling asleep. I’m just closing my eyes.” So I won’t have to look at you.

“Keep them open.”

“Yes, Prime Sagredo. As you wish, Prime Sagredo. I obey, Prime Sagredo.”

“Finally, proper treatment.” He pressed gauze to my side.

I winced.

“Don’t hold your breath,” he said quietly. “It will hurt more. Breathe through it.”

“You breathe through it.” Wow. What a stunning display of wit.

“I’m trying,” he said. “Believe me, I’m doing my best.”

He worked quickly, rinsing the wounds, patting me dry with sterile gauze, and finally moving on to antibiotic cream.

“How do you even know my second name?” he asked. “I’ve never used it.”

“I run a private detective agency. It’s my job to know things about potential threats.”

“If I wanted to be a threat to you, it wouldn’t matter how much you knew about me.”

“Promises, promises . . .”

His touch was featherlight. “Is the shot kicking in?”

I nodded. The pain had dulled. I had lost the last defense against him touching me.

“When was your last tetanus shot?”

“Right after you left.”

His fingers skimmed my skin just under my bra. A little spark dashed through me, all the way to my toes. He taped a square of gauze to me. His fingertips brushed the edge of my bra band. I bit my lip.

“Almost finished,” he said, his voice reassuring, kind. “Do you need a minute?”

You have no idea. “No. Let’s just get it done.”

He was like a drug and I was a hopeless, desperate addict.

Alessandro’s hand slid lower to the second wound. Another warm, careful touch, a flash of longing so intense, it nearly killed my common sense, another strip of medical tape smoothed into place. If I closed my eyes again, I could imagine he was caressing me, but if I did, he would make me look at him, at his eyes, at his face, and I would be forced to sit here and watch him kneeling in front of me, touching me, focusing on me to the exclusion of everything else.

Alessandro moved on to the third puncture in the bend of my waist. He leaned in, brushing his fingers over me to better apply the gauze. His whole hand settled on my waist. He paused. His fingers lingered on my skin, unmoving. He swallowed.

Oh my God. It wasn’t just me.

He put the gauze in place and ran his fingers along the tape.

The last wound was all the way down past the bend of my hip.

Alessandro stared at the curve of my body.

“Do you need a minute?” My voice was so sweet.

“No.”

He reached over and gently slid his hand down my hip, nudging the narrow strap of my white panties down. Heat pulsed through me, and it wasn’t any arcane venom.

He set his hand on the curve of my butt, cupping it to stretch the muscle. I almost purred. His face was a neutral mask. He fit the bandage over the wound and tore the medical tape. He placed it on my skin and ran his thumb up its length. If I closed my eyes, the journey of that thumb would’ve blazed through my mind.

Another strip of tape. He touched me again.

If I leaned forward, if he raised his head, I could kiss him. He would taste like wine, heady and crazy-making. I would kiss him and kiss him, melting against his powerful body, until neither of us could think anymore. Maybe I did have a concussion.

The last strip slid into place.

Alessandro looked up at me. His expression was almost cold, but his eyes were on fire. He looked at me the same way he’d looked at me in the opera house, just before he kissed me.

I wanted him. Not the Alessandro in my head who left, but this one, full of darkness. I wanted to throw my arms around him, pull him out of that deep dark hole he’d fallen into, and make him forget everything except me. I wanted him to grin at me.

He was still looking at me.

I raised my hand to stroke his hair.

He held completely still.

It wasn’t fair to him. It was selfish and mean of me, because I was about to promise him something I couldn’t deliver. Victoria would never let him have me. It took every shred of will I had to stop.

“Thank you, Prime Sagredo,” I said and pulled my underwear back up over my hip.

A shadow of pain flickered over his eyes. It lasted for a mere instant, but he couldn’t hide it from me. He had expected me to crush him and I did. When he spoke, his voice was perfectly cordial.

“You’re welcome, Catalina Beatrisa Baylor.”

Chapter 9

The headquarters of the PRP, the Pit Reclamation Project, occupied the smaller of the two southern islands in the Pit. It took us two more bridges and another small island to get to the final bridge leading there. This time, nobody tried to murder us along the way.

Alessandro drove. He was still laboring under the impression that I had a concussion or a cranial hemorrhage, and my brains could leak out of my ears at any second. He didn’t feel I was fit to drive, and I decided not to fight with him about it.

The cocktail of medication in the antivenom shot had cooled down the pain but didn’t banish it completely. My side hurt, the stabbing agony reduced to a low, dull ache that flared up every time I shifted in my seat. My head hurt too, but not bad enough to slow me down. It stopped bleeding and my hair was rapidly drying. I’d rolled it into a bun to hide the gash. My shoulder throbbed, a consequence of landing on hard concrete after being batted aside by a construct, and my right arm felt ready to fall off. The swords I usually swung were considerably lighter than Linus’ monster.

At least my clothes were dried. I’d changed into the spare outfit I always carried in the car.

The memory of Alessandro looking up at me cycled in my head. I had to sort myself out.

My cell rang. I glanced at the number, and a cold spike of anxiety shot through me. “Yes?”

“She will see you tomorrow at five,” the polite male voice said.

“Of course.”

“Have a nice day, Ms. Tremaine.”

The screen went dark.

“Who was that?” Alessandro asked.

“My grandmother.” Technically, it was Trevor, one of her assistants, a pit bull in human skin with a Harvard education and special forces training.

“I’m guessing it was your other grandmother, because you’re staring at the phone as if it’s a snake about to bite.”

We passed by a copse of trees growing straight out of the water. It ended and two islands swung into view, the first, larger on our right, and the PRP island, smaller and more distant, straight ahead.

On the larger island to our right, construction crews bulldozed remnants of the flooded buildings under the watchful eye of guards armed with tactical shotguns and . . .

“A flamethrower?”

Alessandro smiled. “They can be fun, under the right circumstances.”

“I remember.” He’d sprayed fire on a swarm of arcane creatures once. It happened at night, and he’d grinned like a lunatic while doing it. It’d made him look demonic.

Alessandro glanced at the island again. “Shotguns, flamethrowers, and at least four Mark V DGRs.”

Dangerous game rifles, designed to bring down magically created creatures, a catch-all term that covered any animal augmented by magic or summoned through it.