They Blamed Me for Mama's Death, So I Healed Their Worst Enemy novel · Chapter 4 of 24

Chapter 4: Skin

I shoved the door of my room shut with my heel and pushed him down to sit on the edge of the bed.

"Hold still," I said.

He held still.

I took the torn barn coat off his shoulders and dropped it on the floor.

Then I took both sides of his bloody shirt and pulled, and the buttons went across the room.

Four long cuts ran down his left side from his armpit to his hip.

They were deep, and they were bleeding steadily.

Below them, older than the cuts, there was something else.

A pale seam ran up his ribs the same way, silver-white and flat, from his hip to under his arm.

It was the shape of two hands, spread wide.

They were big hands, bigger than mine.

I know what a healer's seam looks like, because I had put one on a boy's shin the evening before.

Somebody who could do what I do had laid her hands on this man a long time ago.

"Who did that?" I said.

"Nobody you need to ask about." His voice was thin. "Dovie. Don't."

"I'm not healing you. You said no."

"Yes," he said.

"I'm going to put a hand on your side to see how bad it is. That's all."

I laid my palm flat against the cuts.

He sucked a breath through his teeth, and his whole body shook under my hand.

His skin was hot and slick with blood.

The muscle under it was jumping.

My palm began to warm.

I felt it start, and I tried to pull back, and I could not.

It is not a thing I decide.

It never is when somebody I care about bleeds.

The heat poured out of my hand and into him.

The cuts drew shut under my fingers, one and then the next.

Soon there was nothing under my palm but smooth skin and four new silver lines.

He had stopped breathing.

"I told you not to," he said.

"You were bleeding on my feet."

He looked down at his own side.

Then he looked at me, and his pale eyes were wet, and he did not seem to know it.

"It doesn't hurt," he said. "I've never had it not hurt."

I took my hand away and tried to be sensible about how cold I was getting.

I lost.

My knees went.

He caught me.

He had both arms around me before I knew he had moved, and he lifted me into his lap.

He put his face down in my neck.

"Dovie," he said, muffled. "You're ice. Let me warm you."

"Rule two," I said.

"Break it. Break all of it. Please."

I turned in his arms and took his face in my hands and kissed him.

It was not slow, the way it had been in the night.

His mouth came open under mine and he groaned.

His hands went up under my borrowed dress, onto my bare thighs, my hips, my ass, gripping hard.

I was warm.

I tore at the dress, and he helped me pull it off over my head.

I was naked on his lap with my breasts pressed to his bare chest.

His hands spread across my back, and held on.

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