Mercy Thompson 01-05 - THE MERCY THOMPSON COLLECTION

still damp and the shirt was tight, I looked like a refugee from a wet T-shirt contest.
    I snagged the towel and used it to cover my assets just as Adam strode back in. He was wearing clean, dry jeans and a different pair of tennis shoes. He hadn’t bothered putting on a shirt: after two changes in under an hour, his skin must feel raw, like a bad sunburn. The shower wouldn’t have helped that.
    I focused on his feet and clutched the towel a little closer to my chest.
    To my surprise, he took a good look at me and laughed abruptly. “You look so meek. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you meek before.”
    â€œLooks are deceiving,” I said. “What I am is exhausted, scared, and stupid. I’m sorry I brought it here and endangered Jesse.”
    I watched his shoes as they approached the counter. He leaned close, enveloping me in his power and in his scent. His face rubbed against my hair, and the faint trace of stubble caught on the wet strands.
    â€œYou have a few cuts on your scalp,” he said.
    â€œI’m sorry I brought him here,” I told Adam again. “I thought I could lose him in the chase, but he was too fast. He has another form, some kind of horse, I think, though I was too busy running to look.”
    His head stilled and he took a deep breath, assessing my mood.
    â€œExhausted, 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?”
    â€œI 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.
    â€œJesse 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.
    â€œShh,” 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.
    â€œAll 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.
    â€œYou’re going to end up with bleached spots on the towel,” I told him, pulling my feet away.
    â€œShut 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.
    â€œDad?” 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.”
    â€œThanks,” 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.
    â€œIf 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