The Heart of a Warrior

Chapter 12

I'm currently sitting on a white bed in the pack infirmary. My shirt has been returned to it's revealing position from the clearing. There's a bowl of warm water on the bedside table, and Adrian is using it to gently wash the blood off my shoulder and side with a cloth. Despite the fact, or perhaps because of it, that Adrian and I are alone in the room, my face feels hot enough to fry an egg on. I try to keep my eyes away from him, but it's proving to be an impossible task. There's something about his touch that seems to wake every nerve cell in my body, and not in the way I'm used to. Adrian's touch comes no where remotely close to anything I've ever felt before. I hate it nearly as much as I love it, and I hate that I love it.

Nearly every experience I've been through in my life has conditioned me to think of physical contact as only one thing: dangerous. I've been taught from a very young age that touch is either disgusting or painful, or, if I was really bad, both. Nothing could have ever prepared me for the loving sensation Adrian's gentle actions give me. Hell, I'm baffled at his actions in general. Why is he acting this way? Like...like he cares? Why is everyone here acting like they actually give a damn what happens to me and Sam?

Pushing my confusing thoughts away, I decide to deal with them later. Instead, I watch Adrian's soft features as he washes the dried blood off my body. His eyes hold the same glint from the diner that I had stupidly, initially, identified as love. Obviously, I had crushed such a ludicrous idea before it actually had a chance to develop. I do so again. There isn't any way he can love me. Love is an emotion reserved for a select few souls who have earned the right to experience it. The love I feel for Sam, for example. Sam earned the right to be loved the second he was born in that hell hole. Of course regardless of where he was born, I would have loved him, but if he hadn't been born in that cell he would have never been born at all. It's a moot point, and my belief still stands. I, however, have committed far too many offences to ever be loved. It isn't an experience I'm remotely worthy of. No matter what I spend the rest of my life doing, that fact will always remain.

Placing the, now bloody, cloth in the bowl for the final time, Adrian grabs his black long sleeve I had previously borrowed from the chair behind him and places it next to me on the bed. Moving his hands to the bottom edge of my shirt he looks into my eyes, silently asking my permission.

I snort. "No way in hell."

He breaths out a slightly frustrated sigh. "Why can't you just let me help you? You'll cause yourself pain doing it alone."

"I am not letting you see my topless."

"I'm your mate."

I resist the urge to roll my eyes. "I thought we already established that means nothing to me."

Opening his mouth to retort, he clearly thinks better of what he's about to say as he closes it again in the hope of avoiding an argument. "I'll close my eyes," he compromises.

"If you close your eyes, how will you be any help to me?"

"You still won't have to lift your arm. I'll open my eyes once you have your right arm and head through my shirt, like the one you're wearing now. Then, I'll help you with your left arm." Staring at me, waiting for my reaction he adds, "I won't see anything you don't want me to".

Doing something between a huff and a snort, I inform him, "That ship sailed in the clearing".

A look of hurt crosses his features at my words, and, probably making one of the top five stupidest decisions of my life, I agree to let him help me. I just can't stand to be the reason he's in pain.

I am so screwed.

Adrian grins slightly, though his eyes are soft as they gaze into mine. He's silently begging me to trust him. I'm beginning to realize that perhaps his wish isn't as impossible as I would have originally believed.