Garrett Blackwell is not a superhero, and his tattoos aren’t just ink. They’re the weapons he uses to hunt those who hurt the innocent as he tries to atone for his dark past of violence and crime. And he pays a price every time he uses his gift to summon the darkness around him.

Dory Miller has lived beside Garrett for two months and is torn by her feelings toward her sexy, reclusive neighbor. He’s the hottest man she’s ever met, but as more women in her building become targets of a stalker, she doesn’t know who she can trust—especially after she finds Garrett bleeding from a knife wound. Despite her fears that Garrett might be the one responsible for the violence, she feels compelled to help heal his wounds.

Garrett reluctantly lets her, and is shocked to discover that she can heal not only his physical wounds, but also the darkness brought by his powers. But if letting her in means putting her in danger, Garrett may have to keep his distance to keep her safe.

Wicked Ink

Misty Simon

www.millsandboon.co.uk

As always to Daniel, my super hero and cohort.

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Copyright

Chapter One

Dark glass shot out from Garrett Blackwell’s palms as he ran down the alley behind his apartment building. The college student from 4A screamed at the top of her lungs, grappling with the man in the black ski mask who held her by the throat. Garrett’s shards of glass struck true as they bloodied the assailant’s hands, giving the girl a quick second of release.

“Run,” he yelled to her, but she was already sprinting down the narrow road without looking back.

“You son of a bitch.” The girl’s attacker shook his bloody hands in front of him, splattering crimson against the brown brick walls.

“Truer words were never spoken,” Garrett said.

Drawing from the darkness around him and in the man opposite him, he mentally called up a long, double-edged blade into his right hand. A black tribal tattoo from his right biceps slithered down his arm, wrapped around his wrist, and pooled in his palm, materializing as a dagger. He readjusted his shoulders to soothe the crawling sensation as the tattoo did what he’d asked of it. The blade shone midnight-black in the dim light of the quarter moon above them.

The perpetrator started to back away before Garrett had fully gripped the dagger. “Oh no, you’re not getting away that easily,” he said.

Garrett launched himself toward the man, and felt a surge of satisfaction as the dagger sliced through the man’s arm. His blood slicked the blade and was absorbed into it within seconds. The man feinted to the right, then lunged to the left. They had reached the end of the alleyway, where bright streetlights gleamed against the night sky, chasing away the shadows that fueled Garrett’s power.

A car came careening around the corner and glanced off the man in the tattered ski mask. He went down, but was back up faster than Garrett would have anticipated. He ran into the middle of the street, loping painfully and cradling his arm against his side.

Before Garrett could follow him and finish this thing, the same car screeched to a halt and the man jumped in, shouting obscenities while the car zoomed off in a heartbeat.

Leaning against the brick building, Garrett dragged in a deep breath and absorbed the dagger back into his body, his tattoos reforming around his biceps. Later, he would need to find the shards of glass he’d sent shooting into the assailant’s hands. He could live without them, but he didn’t like to leave pieces of himself lying around. There would be enough fallout from this brawl without the added complication of making a trip to Lissa for a new tat.

He dug his fingers into the bricks, trying to ground himself so he could find the strength to fight the darkness swirling through his blood. His head swam with nausea and his knees almost gave out. Somehow he had to get back upstairs so he could detox. Right about now, he wished he could fly like the mythical Superman. He’d take Kryptonite over the purging any day.

Each step was painful, though no one would be able to tell from his outward appearance. He might look slightly drunk to the casual observer, his dark hair tousled, his T-shirt untucked from his worn jeans, but that suited his purpose. Hopefully it would keep his neighbors from being too nosy.

He made it to the third landing without coming across anyone. Staggering down the hallway, he only hoped he could make the last three steps without attracting notice.

This was not his night, though, in more ways than one. He snapped to his full height a breath before 3A’s door opened.

“Hey, Garrett,” his next-door neighbor said. “I’ve been working on a new recipe. Have you had dinner yet?”

He stifled a groan, not knowing whether it was from the unwelcome promise of another meal cooked by someone who shouldn’t even have a kitchen, or from the pain coursing through his body as the darkness sank deeper into his cells.

“Hi, Dory. Thanks for the offer, but I already ate.” The urge to bolt into his apartment was nearly overwhelming. But running from Dory was not going to do him any good. He’d realized the hard way that the more fodder you gave people for speculation, the more questions they tended to ask.

“Well, I’ll just bring some over in a container then. I’ve been trying out some new spices and I think you’ll like it.”

If only she knew how her wild concoctions never sat well with him. Maybe he was a bland-food kind of guy and she a woman of differing tastes. But after he’d eaten—or attempted to eat—the first meal she’d brought over, he hadn’t known how to turn down the many offers that followed.

He laughed because she was expecting it. “Sounds like a crowd pleaser. But you don’t need to send any over, I have plenty of food in my refrigerator.”

Her smile fell quickly into a frown. “You’ve liked everything else I’ve brought over, and this stew is supposed to freeze well. I bet you have plenty of room in your freezer.”

Yeah, right next everything else she’d brought him over the past two months—things he couldn’t stomach but would have felt rotten about throwing away. “Not a lot of room in there, either. Why don’t you freeze it for yourself?” The pain was racing throughout his entire body, making his vision narrow to near pinpricks. He had to get into his apartment soon or the darkness inside would burst out. “I have to go. I’ll see you later.”

“You need to eat something more nourishing than that fast food I see you carrying home all the time,” she said with a smile.

Dory and her cooking were going to be the death of him. He clenched his fist against the door frame. When her gaze flew between his clenched hand and his face, he immediately opened his hand and drummed his fingers against the wood. “You know what, go ahead and bring some over in about an hour. I need to take a shower and decompress from work, but then I’m sure I’ll be ready for some stew.” He tried hard not to gag on the words and was rewarded with an even brighter smile.

She tucked a strand of honey-colored hair behind her ear, glancing up at him through the lenses of her rectangular glasses. “If you’re sure.”

“Absolutely. Now I really have to go so I can wash this grime off. See you in an hour.” She had the classic look of the good girl next door. If he had been anyone but the worst guy in the neighborhood, he might have entertained thoughts of pursuing her. But he would never taint anyone with all that he was and would always be.

“Okay, Garrett, bye,” she said, waving as she popped back into her apartment. He waved back and then stepped inside his own door, collapsing against it with an exhale that sounded more like choking.

He crawled up the secret staircase he’d built into the coat closet and climbed out onto the floor in apartment 4B. No one knew he owned this apartment, as well. He preferred to keep it that way. After a few deep breaths, he dragged himself over to the custom-made wooden chair that resembled an electric chair from old prison movies. He fought the urge to kill, maim, wreak havoc on this world he had spent the past eighteen years protecting. As he strapped himself in, his thoughts flashed to tearing out Dory’s throat, slicing up the college student he’d just saved and bathing in their fear and horror. He prepared to purge the darkness that was fast taking over his soul. Again.

* * *

Precisely an hour later, Dory Miller straightened her top and smoothed a hand down her pants. She hadn’t changed from work yet, but that was okay. She would much rather have Garrett see her pressed and presentable from work than in her comfy sweats that had lost all elasticity about two years ago. Impressions were everything to her now that she had turned her life around.

Her stew would warm him after the long day he’d put in at work on the construction site downtown. He’d looked more worn out than usual, and it definitely wasn’t like him to pass up a meal. Her own work had been stressful lately, and the more stressed she was, the more she cooked. After only recently discovering the joys of cooking, she’d realized that most recipes were geared toward feeding multiple people. Though she took food to almost everyone in the building, she got the most satisfaction out of feeding her very hot neighbor.

Raising a hand to knock on his door, she first used it to pat the French twist she’d fixed before coming over. She’d see him for only a minute when he opened the door to thank her for her offering, but it wouldn’t do to be sloppy. Besides, he was just about the hottest man she had ever come across, not to mention that he positively radiated with the need for someone to take care of him. She might not be that person, but she would do until someone else came along.

The sound of a heavy tread echoed through his apartment. Thank goodness she had a hot bowl in her hands or she would have started fidgeting.

He opened the door, wearing fresh jeans that still looked worn and a different T-shirt—this one bright white. His hair was wet, as though he had just stepped out of the shower. An image of him in a towel flashed through her poor brain, making her almost bobble the bowl of stew.

“He-here…here you go, Garrett,” she managed to stutter.

“Thanks.” He took the bowl, blocking her view of his apartment with his body, his forearm leaning against the top of the door frame. She knew better than to try to sneak a peek around him. She’d done that once, and he’d almost immediately excused himself. It hadn’t been worth losing the extra minute of his company.

“I heated it back up for you. It’s a pretty cold night out there, so I figured this might help warm you up.” Now that the bowl was out of her hands, she did start fidgeting. She wrapped her hands around each other, then knotted them at her waist.

“Thanks. It smells delicious. I’m sure it will go down fine.”

“Okay.” She frantically searched her mind for something more to talk about. They weren’t exactly friends, but she didn’t feel like he was just marking time by talking to her. He always had a kind word for her. She knew little about his past, but there was an aura about him that said he was rebuilding himself, too.

“Um, did you hear anything about those two muggings in the neighborhood?” she asked. “I heard they were both women from the building. One was a single mother and the other a stripper. They had nothing in common besides living here, the paper said, but they were both okay when the guy ran off without getting anything from them. I thought this was a safe neighborhood. That’s why I moved here.” She clamped her mouth shut. His hunter-green eyes were getting darker and darker with every word she uttered. She knew she was saying too much, but she tended to have diarrhea of the mouth when she was nervous.

“Yeah, be careful out there.”

“You don’t think the guy would come back to the same place again after being thwarted twice, do you? At least I get home every day by four, so there’s not much chance I’ll be caught out after dark. But still, I don’t like feeling trapped, and it’s getting dark earlier and earlier now that winter’s on its way.” Shut up, Dory!

“If you’re out after dark, just make sure you have someone with you, okay? I should go eat this before it gets cold. I’ll see you later. Thank you.” He closed the door before she could squeak out another word, sending her back to her apartment with a flutter in her stomach and one near her heart.

Interacting with Garrett always made her fluttery. She knew she was not the kind of person he would see as more than a neighbor, but that was okay. She was just testing out her romantic wings after years of ugliness. She was a plain mouse to Garrett’s magnificent hawk, so he was safe to be dreamy over. And dreaming was all she would do. For now that made her content.

Chapter Two

The stew came back to haunt him at two o’clock in the morning. Garrett had given in and taken a bite of the stuff, hoping he’d like it enough to give Dory a genuine compliment about her food. No dice. Next time she caught him out in the hall, he’d have to lie about how much he liked the stew. He couldn’t imagine that she really was a terrible cook. She ate her own food, after all. It was probably just his palate. He hoped so, or she might just be poisoning herself every day.

Walking onto his balcony through the sliding-glass doors, Garrett breathed in the fresh air and let the darkness whip around him instead of invade him. He’d loved this building far longer than he’d lived here. It had been standing for almost a hundred years and was rich with history. As soon as an apartment had opened up, he’d snatched it up without a second thought. Then the unit above him had been vacated after he’d anonymously offered to pay for the old lady who rented it to live in the same retirement home as her sister. The construction business was good to him, but he would never have been able to maintain both apartments without the money his grandmother had left him instead of leaving it to his mother.

It had been a long day, and the last thing he wanted to do was think about the woman who had given him life, but she invaded his thoughts nonetheless. Margery Blackwell had a way of doing that. A hard woman and a terrible mother, she had been instrumental to the development of his powers. He’d thank her for them if they didn’t require so much sacrifice on his part.

She’d known exactly what she was doing when she took her sixteen-year-old son to Lissa to have the first tattoo etched on his lower back. She hadn’t bothered to clue him in. He’d been naive enough to think his mother was cool for letting him get a tattoo before he was of legal age. He still wasn’t sure how she’d figured out that he was different. Unfortunately, she had…and she’d had him marked in the custom of their ancestors, thinking it would give her the ability to control the powers that were unleashed inside him for her own gain. Instead, it had broken him in a way he was still struggling to repair.

He tried to shake off thoughts of Margery, who had ended her life by her own hand long ago, but other dark memories reared up to take their place. A black-haired girl, fierce and lovely. And dead. Morgan. The two women were intertwined in his mind, because without Margery’s interference, Morgan would still be alive. She was the first girl he’d ever touched, and the first who had ever touched him. He wouldn’t have called it love, but they’d been close, or at least as close as he’d been to anyone while the darkness had reigned free inside him. What was left of his heart had shattered the night he’d left her dead in a gutter. A gang war he never should have started had ended her life, transforming his in the process.

He went back to checking the vibes of his surrounding, feeling for dark energy as he did each and every night, looking for innocents to protect and evil to battle, all to atone for his many sins. Morgan and her untimely death were the reason for his vigil more than any other defining moment in his life.

Now this was his home and his territory, and it was no longer safe. That did not sit well with him. He had hoped the two incidences over the past week with the single mother and the stripper had just been odd coincidences, but with this third attack, the truth was becoming impossible to deny. Someone or something was targeting him. He was certain of it. He had God to thank for putting him in the right place at the right time to save all three women. Perhaps now that he had drawn real blood tonight, whoever was messing with him would realize what they were up against.

Patrolling the area during the night might not be a bad idea, though. He’d never done that on a frequent basis, relying instead on his heightened instinct for detecting evil. Like called to like, after all. He mentally put it on the list of things to do tomorrow, then closed his eyes and made himself feel the chill in the air, the slight gust of wind, the sleepy rustle of birds on the roof of the fourth floor. After slipping into a meditative trance, he brought up all the calm images of flowing water he could envision, allowing them to wash over his soul and his consciousness.

He took a step back and fell into the chair he’d set out on the balcony. Suddenly, his pretty neighbor wandered into his thoughts, laughing and twirling in a flirty little dress he seriously doubted she would own, much less wear.

It was enough to knock him out of his trance. Damn.

But it was a blessing in disguise, because down below another woman was being dragged into the alley. He jerked to his feet, ready for action. Under normal circumstances he tried to stay out of sight, do his vigilante thing on the sly. But the violence was escalating and he could not let another woman be harmed on his watch, much less in his territory. Stealth could take a flying leap, just like he was about to do. He didn’t need to be Superman this time.

Whereas before he had let the night hang dormant around him, now he actively sought it, pulling it into him. It sang in his blood and his ears, mixing within him to form a cocktail that was powerful beyond most people’s imaginations. The night itself was not evil, but the murky things, shadows and thoughts he drew from it were more than enough to send his POW army tattoo tingling down his arm until it flashed into a grappling hook.

Securing the equipment to the top of the balcony, he climbed over the railing and rappelled down the side of the building, trying hard to keep to the shadows. He certainly didn’t want to scare any of his neighbors by flashing past them as they sat watching television. But it couldn’t be helped. The two thugs below him held a cloth over the woman’s mouth. By the time he dropped the three stories to the ground, she had gone limp.

Recognition flashed through him as he approached the woman and her attackers. Marta Handel was an attorney who painted and listened to classical music in the evenings. Garrett often heard it as he ran up and down the stairs past her apartment in 2A to stay in shape. He liked to keep tabs on the people living around him, and he wasn’t big on gyms, where most of the guys on the weight machines were brimming over with inner darkness.

Now these assholes were dragging her down the alley like she was a rag doll. His conversation with Dory flashed into his mind, how the violence in their neighborhood had made her afraid of being outside after dark. He knew Marta and Dory talked often. Sometimes they’d wave to him as his did his exercises. Dory would be devastated if something happened to Marta.

Garrett didn’t bother to land quietly. He wanted them to know he was there, and he wanted them to be scared. The shadows were already working inside him when he tapped into the evil in the two men’s hearts, using it to power up for what must be done.

One of the men laughed as Garrett came in at a full run. But his laughter was choked off when Garrett circled his neck with a black rope fueled by hate and anger. Garrett rode the man down to the ground like he was a pony and Garrett the circus ringmaster.

He did not want the man’s blood on his hands, so he left him on the ground after he went limp from lack of oxygen. Which left one more asshole to take down.

“You think you’re going to get this one, pretty boy? You think you’re going to save her like you did the others? Well, think again. This one is mine.” The menacingly soft voice didn’t seem to fit the guy who could blot out the sun with his back, but Garrett didn’t let that put a hitch in his stride.

“Just give her to me and get the hell out of here. Don’t come back.” He struggled to get the words out. All Garrett really wanted to do was take the guy apart limb by limb, mangling him so badly that even his dental work wouldn’t help identify him. The blackness swelled inside him with each passing minute. He fought with everything he had to keep it stored away for making more weapons. If he let it leak out, he would no longer be in control.

“You think this is over? We’re just getting started, my man. Why don’t you just walk away, and we’ll see if we see you another day?”

Garrett barely had a chance to will a new weapon into being before the large gargoyle on his back contorted as if coming to life and ran straight to his hand. The huge sword emerged with little thought on his part. It shot into his hand and rang like a chime as he banged it against the brick wall. A shower of sparks streamed through the air. It should have scared Marta’s attacker senseless. Instead, the man stood his ground with a smile that would have put him first in line for a long stay in a mental institution.

“You think that fancy metal is going to make me run, Superboy? I know all about you. I know where your power comes from and I know you won’t kill me. A few scratches here and there aren’t going to bring me down a notch in Andraste’s eyes. Take a poke. Let’s see what happens.”

Garrett hesitated, and it cost him. The second guy had recovered from his near asphyxiation enough to take Marta from the man who was taunting Garrett. His concentration split between the two of them, Garrett pulled in more darkness to strengthen his sword, willing to take both of their lives to save the woman who was still hanging like a limp puppet from the second man’s dirty hands.

“Bring it, big man. Show me what your blade can do.”

Garrett rushed the guy, allowing himself to feel the euphoria of letting loose. Blood lust sang through his veins, making his own smile just a little too maniacal as it stretched his face to its limit. “Gladly, douche bag.”

The wind whistled as the black blade cut through the air on a direct path to the man’s chest. A second before he would have made contact, the man pulled out a sword of his own. The clang of the long pieces of metal crashing together rang through the air, reverberating against the brick and bouncing back to fill the alley. He expected people to come crashing out of their apartments or to hear the blare of cop sirens. Neither happened as he and his opponent continued to hack away at each other. There was no finesse here, only a killing urge.

Garrett watched helplessly as the other man hauled the woman off to the end of the alleyway, throwing her into a waiting car. Fury rose up inside him, along with a dark miasma that claimed his vision. Growling, he thrust his sword into his opponent, welcoming the pain when the man managed to land a blow just above his heart.

His tattoos coalesced into a solid mass around the blade, holding it in his skin, which gave him the advantage of keeping the man’s sword prisoner while he redoubled his attack.

His opponent went down with the word Andraste and a cackle on his lips—not dead, but unconscious from the blow Garrett had dealt to his head with a black mallet that had formed in his other hand.

Garrett removed the man’s sword from his own chest and threw it down next to his body. He would have to call his friend Jackson to come clean up after him. He hated to do it, but there was no way he would be able to get rid of this trash without going crazy. Garrett owed Jackson for a ton of things, but nothing more than the day he’d taken him off the streets as a favor to Lissa.

Fortunately he felt the weight of his cell phone in his back pocket. Taking it out, he growled instructions to Jackson, then limped toward the end of the alley. He had no idea how he was going to find the kidnapped woman. He might not interact with many people, but he knew their habits, the intricacies of their lives. He was a watcher. Marta was a lawyer who had three grandchildren from her only son. They all came to dinner on Saturdays, never missing a week. He had to find her.

He set out with the intention of searching every nook and cranny of the city, every single place he could think of where a prisoner might be stashed. But there was too much ground to cover, and the craving for chaos and oblivion was overwhelming. Two hours after the fight, when the sun began to peek over the range of mountains to his left, he decided to call it quits. It went against his every impulse, but he couldn’t fight the darkness and the craving much longer.

At the last minute he stopped, remembering to pick up the couple of shards of glass from earlier in the evening. Once he reached the area beneath his balcony, he used the grappling hook to pull himself back up the side of the building to avoid showing himself in the hallways. His chest ached enough to keep him conscious. The tattoos wouldn’t be able to hold back the blood flow from the injury much longer. He had to get to the chair quickly and then find some medical supplies.

Failure rode on his shoulders the whole way up to his balcony. He climbed hand over hand, hoping the exertion would help clear his mind, but it wasn’t working. The scream of police sirens down below did nothing for him, either. He hoped Jackson had had enough time to set things right.

When Garrett entered his apartment, it was to the sound of knocking. His breath came in sharp gasps and he felt like Mr. Hyde without a Dr. Jekyll in his near future.

He could ignore the sound, but the thought didn’t sit well with him. Jackson might need assistance, not that Garrett could provide it, or the police might be on the other side of the door with questions for him. They’d be willing to break down the door if he didn’t get there fast enough.

Fortunately, he’d been smart enough to keep his exposure as a person with weird abilities to a minimum. He’d never been caught in the act, although a few local newspapers had run articles about a mysterious man who helped poor schmucks who had gotten themselves into trouble.

Taking a moment, he calmed his breathing and ran a hand over his short hair. He had no idea who was on the other side of the door, and since he didn’t have X-ray vision like his favorite little-known comic-book hero Booster Gold, staring at the wood wasn’t going to do anything for him.

He opened the door to what he could have sworn was a ball of energy.

“Oh my God, Garrett, did you see what’s going on downstairs? There was another attack and they’re saying Mrs. Handel is missing! Do you think it’s the same people who attacked the others? Oh my God!” Her face was drained of color.

He stepped out of the door. He didn’t want her inside his apartment, but he was well aware that this wasn’t a conversation he should have while leaning against the door frame. Maybe she had information he could use? After all, she was friends with Marta. If only he’d had time to purge before talking with her. His head was muddled and his control was on the verge of cracking.

“Just be careful.”

“I am, but who knew this kind of thing would happen in our neighborhood? I’ve lived here for almost five years, and I’ve never seen anything like it. I’m scared. I don’t know why someone would target our building, but I can’t think of any other explanation.”

For the first time he took in what she was wearing. A pair of drawstring sweatpants hung from her lush hips, and a large T-shirt crept off the jut of her creamy shoulder. This was not the Dory he was used to seeing. Normal Dory was buttoned up to the top of her neck and decked out like the accountant she was. Beautiful, untouchable by the likes of him. This Dory was softer somehow, with curves and dips he had never noticed before. Ugly lust rose in him. He wanted to drop her to the floor and take her then and there, releasing all the pent-up rage inside him. He took an involuntary step back, breaking his eye contact with her body. It was disgusting of him to even be thinking things like that. Where was his decency? He needed the chair and the purge more than ever after two hours of running around with his body supercharged on all things dark and evil.

“Garrett?”

Blood blossomed on his shirt as the tattoos surrounding the wound in his chest gave out. The last thing he saw before the darkness finally claimed him was a pair of bright blue eyes widening in horror.

* * *

It was not easy to kick open Garrett’s door and drag him through it. Dory had never been inside his apartment. Since he was always so private, she was tempted to look around, but the deadweight in her arms was not going to go away, so she’d just have to stay curious a little longer.

He had fallen forward as a huge splotch of blood came gushing out of his chest right above his heart. She could have sworn something black had swirled beneath his white T-shirt, but it had disappeared too quickly for her to be sure.

The nearest piece of furniture was a black leather couch. She aimed for it, figuring she would drag him the last two feet by the hair if she had to. But they made it right before her legs gave out under her, thank God.

Arranging him as best she could on the sofa, she swung his legs up on to the long expanse of leather. All six foot plus of him didn’t completely fit, but it was the best she could do, since she didn’t want to tend to his wound while he was lying on the floor.

Running to the kitchen, she snagged a pair of kitchen scissors from a wooden knife block and quickly tore through three drawers until she found a handful of small towels. Surprisingly they all had flowers on them, but it didn’t matter…they would soon be covered in blood. She could replace them with new ones when she was done.

She headed back to the couch, thinking she could find bandages later. Maybe he had a first-aid kit in the bathroom or something. She had one in the living-room closet of her apartment, but she didn’t want to leave him alone until she was sure he was going to make it.

“Don’t you dare die on me,” she said fiercely as she cut away his T-shirt and unstuck the fabric from the long slit in his otherwise perfect skin. Blood seeped out of the cut, which looked like a stab wound. She gagged but got down to business without thinking too much about what she was doing.

He mumbled something and grabbed her around the waist. In his weakened state, pushing him away was akin to shaking a small kitten off her foot, but his hands kept coming for her. She ended up kneeling by the couch to make herself a smaller target. He was probably delirious. He kept muttering the words “Need chair” between guttural growls.

“You need to calm down or I’m not going to be able to do anything for you.” She ran a hand over his brow, trying her best to soothe him as her mother had done for her when she was a young girl. Pressing the small hand towel to his wound, she tried to stanch the blood. She’d never seen blood so dark before, but she chalked it up to the fact that she hadn’t seen much blood at all over the past seven years. She made a point not to be anywhere near it, but this was a special circumstance. She was willing to put her fears aside for this man who had been nothing but kind to her when kindness was sometimes hard to find.

Once the wound stopped gushing blood, she popped up and fetched a bowl full of water from the kitchen, along with the one remaining hand towel.

She sponged the cut, careful not to rub against the raw edges and make it worse. He was going to need stitches. It would be a shame for his beautiful chest to be marked by scars, but it was probably inevitable. At least he had enough darkly inked tattoos to make it less noticeable.

After she cleaned the cut, she grabbed a bottle of whiskey she had found in the cupboard above the refrigerator and poured it into the wound while trying to soothe him with words.

He shot up off the couch and nearly took her out with a fist, but she still had catlike reflexes from all those years of ducking hits. She grabbed his arm and pinned it between the couch and her body to keep him still. She didn’t want a black eye for her efforts, thank you very much.

Laying her hands on his ribs, she willed him to settle down. It was something she’d learned during her time in rehab. While it didn’t always work, it was worth a try.

He came off the couch in a rigid arc, his head pressed into the cushions and his heels digging into the arm of the couch. She tried again, having seen someone who was coming down off drugs do the same thing long ago. At the thought of drugs, she got sick to her stomach again. It would be a huge shame if he were a drug addict or a dealer. He always seemed like such a good guy—hardworking and friendly. But appearances couldn’t always be trusted.

Memories tried to assail her, eating at the edges of her mind, but she thrust them away. She would not go back down that dark hole where she’d lost control of herself after her mother’s death. She had turned to someone whom she’d thought had her best interests at heart, but instead he’d consumed her soul. He’d hooked her with drugs, then kept her by his side by making her believe she wasn’t worth more than a dime bag.

She was different now. Better. Clean. There was no need to go back to the ugly times when they were behind her.

Regardless of what Garrett might or might not have done, he was a human being. She was not going to let someone else die again while she stood by and fluttered her hands like some too-stupid-to-live heroine in an old romance novel.

At the second touch of her hands, the breath rushed out of him, and he clenched his jaw so hard she could hear his teeth grinding together.

Then he relaxed, his brow unfurrowing, his arm going limp against her body, his back sagging against the leather cushions. She stroked his forehead, murmuring soft, nonsensical things—things that might not mean anything but seemed to calm him nonetheless. She was certain the storm had passed for the moment, which was why he caught her so totally off guard. One minute he was relaxed, and the next his hard lips were fastened to her as if he were drawing her very soul from her.

His previously limp hand caged her neck as he deepened the kiss. Her mouth opened without her express permission, and she rode the tide of the feelings surging in her chest.

His lips were hard, his kiss demanding. He explored her mouth with his eyes closed. She should have closed her eyes, too, to better revel in the feel of him, but she couldn’t seem to stop staring at his divine face…and she was powerless to make herself pull away. Sure, she knew in her heart that he was far, far out of her league. But who could blame her for sinking into the sensation of being held by Garrett?

As quickly as the kiss had started, it stopped, and he sank back against the couch again without ever opening his eyes.

She slumped back on her heels, stunned. What on earth had just happened? Would he even remember the kiss? She should just forget it. Chalk it up to a moment out of time. Yes, that’s what she’d do. She was only happy that he had fallen unconscious in front of her rather than alone in his apartment.

Once she calmed her racing breath and rubbed at her tingling lips, she returned to reality. She listened to his breathing, grateful that it was smooth and regular. She took a small step away from the couch, but kept glancing back at him even as she let her gaze run over the apartment. Somehow she had to distract herself from the incredible feeling of his lips on hers, the way his hand had cradled her head and sent something akin to electricity charging though her entire body.

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