I woke up in my own bed, in my own apartment, with the comforting scent and warmth of Clay pressed against me. My entire body felt like I'd been steamrolled, my face was feeling particularly battered, and my mouth felt like I'd swallowed a desert whole. Which all added up to about right for my experience at the hands of the Xavier twins and their cohorts.
"Hey," the depth of his voice seemed to come from the very core of the earth, the way it vibrated through my bones. "Had me worried, Char, you passed out and then slept like the dead for almost 24 hours." Wow, an entire day lost.
I rolled over and he grimaced. Great, I was mangled. "Guess that answers my first question before I can ask it," I tried to say, but with the cotton mouth, and the soreness, well it came out less than perfect. "Ugh." I groaned and he chuckled.
Tucking me into his chest he sighed. "I should have known, Charlotte Ramble, that trying to put you in a cage and keep you safe wasn't going to work." I rolled my eyes and groaned again, even that hurt. "I figured one of them would toss out more shit about Aisha and me, but fuck if I would have bet on Walter being messenger boy."
I snuggled into his warmth, he'd taken his shirt off so my cheek against his bare skin somehow didn't hurt as much. "It wasn't just what he said about her," again the soreness and the dry mouth added to the muffled quality that came from me being pressed into him made me nearly completely unintelligible. He pulled away and I whimpered at the loss of his heat, but he was back, with a bottle of cool water.
"Here, slowly, your lip was busted open and it's swollen." He opened the cap and helped me sit up. I hissed when the plastic touched the tenderness of the cut, but then got distracted by the cool liquid. I couldn't have drank too fast if I'd wanted to, since he kept a hand on the bottle.
I sighed when I had my fill, the parched feeling relaxed and my tongue no longer was in danger of becoming part of the roof of my mouth. Our eyes met and I almost bit my lip, almost because when my tooth brushed that sore spot I gasped and his eyes narrowed dangerously. "Ow." That did nothing to make his expression less murderous, so I tried a different tact. "How ARE the twins?"
"Not nearly as battered as you and Carrie." Clay's hand came up to carefully cradle my face. "It took everything that Pooch had in him to keep Jensen from-" he took a deep breath through his nose and steadied himself. "I'm glad you couldn't see her, Char, because seeing YOU like this was hard enough, seeing you react to Carrie's condition would have forced Cougar and Pouch to work harder to keep Jensen AND me focused on the mission." I nodded, worried that Carrie would hate me since it was MY fault she was in whatever terrible state she was in. "She's fine, or she will be perfectly fine soon. Jensen isn't leaving her side, and she's enjoying his attention, I think."
"Who wouldn't enjoy a giant golden retriever that looks like Jensen?" I leaned into Clay's hand, drinking in the very sight of him. I was trying to remember why I was so angst ridden, what Walter had said that made going out so fucking important, but with him in front of me staring at me with all the concern I could see in his face, I couldn't fathom the reason. "I have to say, I think I prefer Franklin Clay keeping me warm."
He sighed and leaned closer so our foreheads could touch. "I swear, your forehead is the only part of your fucking face that asshole didn't bruise or beat." He growled, but then his nose brushed mine and I nudged him back and he groaned. "Char, tempting me isn't a good idea, sweetheart, not with-" But I didn't let him finish, no excuses, not now. My fingers slid through the soft hair at the nape of his neck and my mouth, even split and tender skin wouldn't stop me, touched his and I smiled at a victory won when Clay's arms wrapped around me and pulled me tight against him.
The tinge of metallic flavor that told me my lip reopened didn't stop us, nor did my slight gasp when his fingers slid through my hair and I was reminded of how terribly rough Alex had been with my fucking scalp. Nothing could stop us, not the twinges of pain that would hit me with a slight brush of his fingers, or a bump of his body against mine, at least not while I had any say in the matter.
"Char," he moaned, while I dug my heels into his lower back to hold him to me as he tried to pull away. "You're in pain."
"Then help me forget," I demanded, tugging his face back to mine and licking back into his mouth. He growled again and I counted another win when he stopped pulling away and his weight pressed me into my mattress, and he helped me push the Xaviers from my mind, at least for a little while.
