Free Raw: Devil's Fighters MC by Evelyn Glass Page A

the trouble he carried with him out of her life.
     
    “Alyssa, please!”
     
    “You’ve got to be shitting me, Xavier—”
     
    “Please, you have to help me!”
     
    Alyssa wanted nothing more than to tell him she didn’t “have” to do anything, thank you very much, but something in his voice stopped her cold. It was laced with alarm and panic more intense than she had ever heard.
     
    He must have caught her uncertainty, because he caught her gaze and held it, his green eyes burning with his cry for help.
     
    “Please,” he said again.
     
    Alyssa thought of her dad, who had saved Bennie Lenday’s life even though he must be one of the most horrible human beings on Earth. She sighed heavily.
     
    “Fine,” she said, already regretting it. “Bring him in.”
     
    Xavier almost collapsed in relief. “Thank you,” he said sincerely.
     
    Alyssa shook her head and opened the door wider.
     
    The man was probably somewhere in his early thirties. At least, that’s what Alyssa could discern once she had finally managed to clean all the blood off his face. She could see there was a fresh face underneath the blood and the bruises, and Alyssa’s heart broke for him. Still, it was nothing compared to how she felt when she cut open his blood-soaked T-shirt and saw what was alarming Xavier so much.
     
    The man’s torso was a triumph of fresh bruises, cuts, and abrasions. He was breathing funny, and it didn’t take her long to assess that he had more than a few broken ribs.
     
    She looked up at Xavier. “He needs a hospital,” she said.
     
    Xavier was shaking his head even before she had finished her sentence. “I can’t bring him to a hospital; they won’t treat us.”
     
    Alyssa frowned. “How did my dad do it?”
     
    “He treated us privately.”
     
    “You mean illegally.”
     
    Xavier shrugged.
     
    Alyssa sighed. “I don’t have that kind of access to Pinebrook’s hospital.”
     
    “I know,” Xavier said. “That’s why I’m telling you we can’t bring him there.”
     
    Alyssa’s brain was working a mile a minute. “Fine,” she said. “I’ll need warm water and bandages.”
     
    Xavier acted immediately.
     
    “Stay with him,” Alyssa told him when he returned with what she had asked.
     
    “Where are you going?” he asked, alarmed.
     
    “To ransack my father’s medical supplies.”
     
    He relaxed a little when he realized she was not going to run out on them.
     
    In her father’s cabinets, Alyssa found an oxygen tank, needles, syringes, and anesthesia. She figured they would work much better than whiskey once she reset the bones that could be reset.
     
    Still, without the full arsenal of a hospital’s supplies at her disposal, it was slow-going work. Eventually, however, the man was resting more or less peacefully on the couch, with an oxygen mask to make the effort of breathing a little easier.
     
    Alyssa brought everything to the kitchen and began to wash the blood off her hands. It wasn’t long before she felt Xavier’s presence behind her—close, so close.
     
    He put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed. His fingers were warm on her skin.
     
    “Thank you,” he said, softly and heartedly.
     
    Alyssa finished washing her hands and wiped them on a towel. She turned around slowly. Xavier was really too close for comfort, but she refrained from saying anything about it.
     
    Instead, she said, “What happened to him?”
     
    “Are you sure he’s going to be fine?” Xavier asked.
     
    “Eventually,” Alyssa replied after a moment. “I don’t think either of his lungs were punctured.”
     
    They were silent for a long, long moment.
     
    “What happened to him, Xavier?” Alyssa asked again.
     
    His handsome features darkened. “I don’t think you’d want to know.”
     
    “I want to know,” she said. “After treating him, I deserve to know.”
     
    Xavier stared at her for a while, uncertain. Eventually, he nodded. “He was in a