“Hey...do you have a phone? So I can call nine-one-one?”
His head lifted again, his attention coming to focus on her. Alice caught sight of his dark eyes and immediately thought it a trick of the light. They were eyes capable of seeing into tomorrow, she was sure of it.
“What’s wrong with your eyes?” he asked, his voice croaking.
“My eyes?” Under other circumstances she might have laughed. Maybe even thought he was flirting with her.
Beads of perspiration raced down the sides of his face, the crown of his dark hair almost black in color. If she hadn’t seen the clear sweat, she might have considered his head the source of all that blood.
“They’re...wrong,” he replied.
Ignoring their ridiculous conversation, she crouched right next to him. The scent of copper rushed at her, almost triggering her gag reflex. “My eyes aren’t at issue here. I need to get an ambulance or the police for you. Can you wait here alone for a minute? Do you know how to press on the wound?”
“Wound?”
“Where you’re bleeding from.”
“I’m not bleeding.” He attempted to rise again, but he’d managed to put his hand at the edge of the blood, where it slipped. “I don’t think.”
How much had he been drinking? He was too stoned to know he’d been shot or worse? “Why don’t you tell me your name?”
“Sebastian—Bast.”
Who took a perfectly good name like that and shortened it into something so ugly? Bast, indeed. “Look, Sebastian, I’m going for help.” If he was talking, he seemed okay enough to leave for a minute. “Stay here.” As if that might be a problem. He looked weaker than a wet kitten.
Sebastian’s hand, the same one that had just been slicked down with blood, shot out and caught her arm. Alice cried out at the grip, which would surely leave behind a bruise. “No!” he said.
“No?” She tried to wrench her arm away to no avail. “You need some help. I don’t think—”
Sebastian glanced up into the night sky. He scanned the stars, as if searching for something. “My car. Just to my car. I can’t stay out here like this.”
His paranoia catching, Alice couldn’t help but look around them. “Dude, I’m not trying to get in the middle—”
“My car. That’s all.”
For the first time, she noticed the way her skin heated beneath his hold. “I’m going to get you there,” she said slowly. “But then you need to do something about that fever and wherever you’re bleeding from.” No doubt his injuries explained his behavior. The blood was a mystery he was content to leave alone, and so was she. Good Samaritan duties only went so far.
If he heard her, or if he cared, she couldn’t tell. Sebastian wrapped his arms around her neck and used her as leverage. Alice almost toppled over as he rose, the solid weight of him enough to drag her back down to the ground. By the time he stood, he towered over her.
Wanting to weep for her meager clothes, Alice pressed herself against him, into the wall of muscle and heft and simultaneously into his own bloodstained clothing. Beneath the overpowering scent of blood, she smelled some cross between clean linen and coconut coming directly from him. Had they been at the beach, slathered beneath sunscreen, she could understand the memories of summers by the waves he conjured, but this man was sinfully sexy and erotically dark. Nothing summery or beachy about him.
She recognized him now. The man from not even twenty minutes ago who’d stopped to look at her while on the way into the club. Now that she knew he was in serious shit or at least seriously sick, she pushed aside stirrings of attraction and focused on getting one foot in front of the other without allowing him to bring them both down.
Sebastian reached into his back pocket and retrieved a key fob. He pressed it in the general direction of a row of cars, and they made their way forward to the one that chirruped back at them. Richard’s old toy collection, and the unforgettable prancing horse medallion, were the reasons she recognized the Ferrari Sebastian leaned against when they stopped.
“Help me. Inside.” His voice sounded shaky again.