Iron Kissed

His head stilled and he took a deep breath, assessing my mood.

"Exhausted, scared, and stupid, you said." He paused as if he were evaluating what I'd said. "Exhausted, yes." If he could smell exhaustion, his nose was a lot better than mine, which I didn't believe. "And I can catch a faint trace of fear, though the shower took care of most of that. But stupid I don't believe. What else could you have done but bring it here where we could handle it?"

"I could have led it somewhere else."

He tipped my chin back and forced me to look into his bright gold eyes. "You'd have died."

His voice was soft, but the wolf's eyes were hot with the fire of battle.

"Jesse could have died…you almost did." For a moment I felt the gut-wrenching twist of seeing him disappear under the water.

He let me hide my face against his shoulder so he couldn't read my expression—but I felt the power that had been buzzing against my skin drop a notch. My reaction to his near-drowning pleased him.

"Shh," he said and one of his big, calloused hands slid under my hair and around the back of my neck to hold me against him. "I coughed up a gallon or two of river and am as good as new. Much better than I'd have been if you'd gotten yourself killed because you didn't trust me to take care of one lone fae."

Leaving my head tucked against him was as dangerous as anything I'd done tonight, and I knew it. I just couldn't seem to care. He smelled so good and his skin was so warm.

"All right," he said at last. "Let me take a look at your feet."

He did more than that. He washed them in hot water in the sink and scrubbed them with a brush he pulled out of a drawer that would have been uncomfortable even if my feet hadn't been all cut up.

To my yips, he purred a little, but it didn't slow down his scrub brush. Nor did I have a chance of pulling a foot out of his hand because he kept a firm grip on my ankle as he worked. He doused my feet in hydrogen peroxide and then dried them off with a dark towel.

"You're going to end up with bleached spots on the towel," I told him, pulling my feet away.

"Shut up, Mercy," he said, catching an ankle and dragging me over until he could hold the foot with one hand and use the towel to wipe my foot off with the other.

"Dad?" Jesse peered carefully around the door. When she got a good look at us, she trotted through the door and held out a cordless phone. "You have a phone call from Uncle Mike."

"Thanks," he said and took the phone and tucked it against his ear. "Could you finish up here, Jesse? She just needs drying off, bandaging, and something on her feet before we let her out of here."

I waited until he took the phone out of the room and down the stairs before I grabbed the towel from Jesse, who was giggling.

"If you could just see your face," she told me. "You look like a cat in a bathtub."

I dried my feet and then opened the box of bandages Adam had set on the counter next to me. "I can dry my own damn feet," I snarled. "Sit here, stay here."

I was sitting between the sinks so there was room on the far side of the one nearest the door for Jesse to hitch a hip on it and half sit. "So why did you listen to his orders?"

"Because he just saved my bacon and I don't need to rile him more than he already is." There were only three cuts that needed bandages, all of them on my left foot.

"Come on," she said. "Admit it, you enjoyed him fussing over you just a little bit."

I gave her a look. When she didn't back down, I turned my attention to peeling the paper off a bandage so I could stick it on my foot. I wasn't going to admit to anything. Not with Adam just downstairs where he might overhear something I didn't want him to hear.

"How come you're wearing a towel?" she asked.

I showed her and she giggled. "Whoops. I forgot you wouldn't have a bra. I'll get a sweatshirt for you to wear over that."

When she was safely gone, I smiled to myself. She was right. There is something about having someone take care of you, even when you don't need it—maybe especially when you don't need it.

Something else made me happier, though. Even though Adam was on edge, even though he'd been issuing orders left and right, I hadn't felt that desire to do whatever he asked me that was part of his magic as the Alpha. If he could manage that under these circumstances…Perhaps I could be his mate and keep myself at the same time.

Jesse's shoes, which Adam had brought in for me, were too small, but in addition to the sweatshirt, she managed to scrounge up a pair of flip-flops that worked.

Honey's husband walked in the door as I came down the stairs, Honey, as gorgeous in wolf form as she was in human, at his side. He gave me a friendly smile when he saw me.

"I didn't find the Porsche, but your Rabbit was off the side of the road with the keys in the ignition. I couldn't start it, so I locked it up." He handed me the keys.

"Thanks, Peter. Fideal must have gone back for his car. That means he wasn't badly hurt." I'd been going to head over to my house, but with Fideal ru

Peter obviously shared my displeasure at the fae's state of health. "I'm sorry," he said. "The steel would have done it, I think, but I couldn't find his body under all the fronds."

"How is it that you're so comfortable with the sword?" I asked. "And why did Adam have a sword here anyway?"

"It's my sword," Jesse said. "I got it at the Renaissance Faire last year and Peter's been teaching me how to use it."

He smiled. "I was a calvary officer before I Changed," he explained. "We used guns, of course, but they weren't accurate. The sword was still our first weapon." He sounded as he always had, his Midwest accent firmly back in place.

He'd been Changed during the Revolutionary War era or a little before, I thought, to use guns but rely on swords. That would make him, other than maybe Samuel and the Marrok himself, the oldest werewolf I'd ever met. Werewolves might not die of old age, but violence was part and parcel of their way of life.

He saw my surprise. "I'm not a dominant, Mercy. We tend to last a little longer." Honey pushed her face under his hand and he rubbed her gently behind her ears.

"Cool," I said.

"Fideal is in safe hands," said Adam from behind me.

I turned to see him replacing the phone in its base on the kitchen counter.

"Uncle Mike assures me that it was a mistake—an overeagerness on the part of Fideal to carry out the Gray Lords' orders."

I raised my eyebrows. "He told me he was hungry for human flesh. I guess that could be overeagerness."

He looked at me and I couldn't read his face or his scent. "I talked to Samuel earlier. He's sorry to have missed the excitement, but he's at home now. If Fideal follows you home, he'll have Samuel to contend with." He waved his hand around. "And there are plenty of us here to come to your aid."

"Are you sending me home?" Was I flirting? Damn it, I was.

He smiled, first with his eyes and then his lips, just a little, just enough to turn his face into something that made my pulse pick up. "You can stay if you'd like," he said, flirting right back. Then, a wicked light gleaming in his eyes, he went one step too far. "But I think there are too many people around for what I'd like you to stay for."

I dodged around Honey's husband and out the door, the flip-flops making little snapping sounds that didn't cover up Adam's final comment. "I like your tattoo, Mercy."

I made sure that my shoulders were stiff as I stalked away. He couldn't see the grin on my face…and it faded soon enough.

From the porch I could see the damage the fight had done to both the house and the SUV. That dent in the side of the shiny black vehicle was going to be expensive to fix. The side of the house had taken some damage, too, and I didn't know how much it would cost to repair. When I'd had to have the siding replaced on my trailer, the vampires had picked up the tab.