Chapter 116: Applying the Ointment

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System Theta stayed silent for a reason.

It knew perfectly well that what Elias was feeling was not pain alone.

If this had been Liora Voss or Serena Blackwood, either of them would have noticed the wrongness in him almost immediately. If it had been Yvonne Quinn, she might have gone even farther and concluded that he had a real taste for being hurt. Giselle, on the other hand, was almost absurdly innocent in this particular area. For all the ice in her temperament and all the damage in the rest of her, there were still places where she remained far too straightforward.

That did not mean he was uninjured.

He was.

Giselle did not say anything else after catching him in the lie. She climbed into the front seat, opened the glove compartment, took out a metal tin, and returned to the back.

Then she handed it to him.

"Put it on yourself."

Elias took the ointment and nodded lightly. "Okay."

He held it for a moment without moving, his fingers resting on the cool metal. Then he looked at her, as though there were something else he wanted to say but could not bring himself to phrase.

Giselle understood at once.

"I’ll go farther away."

She shut the door behind her and walked off into the dark, putting distance between herself and the car without bothering to look back.

The second she turned away, Elias moved.

He lifted his shirt first. His upper body was mostly fine. There was dirt on him, a few dull aches that would probably spread by morning, but his skin was still smooth, pale, and largely unbroken. Then he shoved his pants down enough to inspect the real damage.

The bruise high on his thigh, near the place Giselle had pressed earlier, was already ugly. A broad patch of deep red had darkened across the pale skin there, vivid enough to look almost painted on, and the edges were beginning to shift toward purple.

He barely reacted.

Elias knew the body he had landed in better than anyone. Male leads like this were always built to take punishment in the most useful way possible. They held up well under strain, but bruised easily, flushed quickly, and marked beautifully, all for the benefit of making them look fragile in front of cruel women. Sometimes, if one of those women happened to have darker tastes, it worked even better.

After checking the bruise, he looked at his hands.

Both palms were filthy with dirt. Thin cuts and shallow scrapes crossed the skin where gravel and broken stone had dug in when he hit the ground. Some of them still held traces of grit.

Once he had confirmed where every injury was, he finally started moving again.

He did not open the tin.

Instead, he adjusted his posture, shifted his legs, pulled the fabric into place, and began setting himself up as though he were arranging a pose instead of treating wounds.

System Theta could not keep quiet this time.

[What are you doing?]

Posing.

[Posing for what? And why are you still not applying the ointment?]

Elias stopped in the middle of rearranging his legs and let out a long, disappointed sigh.

It’s been this long and you still don’t understand?

System Theta felt an unfamiliar flicker of alarm.

[Understand what?]

Elias sounded almost patient, which made it worse.

How could I possibly apply ointment myself? Things like this only matter if one of these heartless women does it for me. This is exactly the kind of chance that builds intimacy.

System Theta hesitated.

[And what if Giselle refuses to help you?]

By way of answer, Elias lifted one white-socked foot onto the seat and folded himself into place. He knelt there with deliberate care, his pants dragged up and laid loosely over one thigh, arranged in a way that hid just enough to suggest modesty while revealing more than it truly concealed.

Then he smiled.

I never plan around failure.

Five minutes later, Giselle decided that was enough time.

She returned to the car, opened the rear door, and asked, "Done yet?"

The scene inside made her pause.

Elias jerked like he had been caught in the middle of something he should not have been doing. There was a brief flurry of clumsy movement before he grabbed the pants fabric and pulled it over his thigh as if that would solve anything.

Giselle’s brows drew together.

"You still haven’t finished?"

The question left her mouth, but her mind had already flashed back to the first thing she had seen when the door opened. Elias had been kneeling on the seat, the backs of his thighs pale enough to stand out even in the dim light, and against that white skin the bruise looked even darker, an ugly red that seemed to burn.

She was already starting to shut the door again when her eyes landed on the metal tin resting near the cushion.

It had never been opened.

The calm in her expression flattened into coldness.

"You haven’t put any on at all."

Elias’s cheeks reddened at once. He tugged the fabric lower over his leg, though the gesture only made the glimpses of skin more distracting, not less. The attempt to cover himself did not work. It only suggested more than it hid.

"I was about to," he said quietly.

Giselle did not believe him for a second.

He had been alone for five full minutes. That was enough time to apply ointment to every scrape on his body twice over. There was only one explanation left that fit the facts.

"You’re afraid it’ll hurt?"

Her mind went back to the sound he had made earlier when she pressed his leg. The answer had been obvious even then.

He would hang off a moving helicopter with both hands and risk dying, but a little pain from medicine was enough to stop him cold.

At this point, she was too used to Elias to find the contradiction impossible.

The night air had teeth in it, and his constitution was not strong. If he kept sitting there bare-legged in that temperature, he would probably end up sick on top of everything else.

Once that thought settled, she stopped hesitating.

"Give it to me."

Elias blinked. "What?"

"The ointment."

Still staring at her, still looking a little slow from surprise, he handed the tin over without argument. 𝒻𝘳𝘦𝘦𝘸ℯ𝒷𝘯𝘰𝑣ℯ𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝘮

Giselle took it, opened the lid, scooped out a little of the ointment with her fingers, and climbed into the back seat.

Elias’s eyes widened on the spot.

"What are you doing?"

Giselle frowned. "If you’re too afraid of the pain to handle it yourself, then I’ll do it."

His head started shaking at once.

"No, I can do it. I really can."

Too late.

The words were never spoken aloud, but the judgment in Giselle’s face made them clear enough.

She braced one knee on the seat, kept the other foot planted on the ground outside, and leaned toward him.

Elias retreated immediately, inching backward until his shoulders pressed against the car door and there was nowhere left to go.

Giselle reached for his thigh.

That was the exact moment he seemed to give up on dignity and lash out instead. One leg shot free from under the draped fabric and kicked toward her.

Giselle pulled back fast enough to avoid it, but irritation flared in her eyes all the same.

"What is wrong with you?"

She was not trying to do anything to him beyond treat a bruise. Why was he reacting like this?

Then she looked up properly and understood.

His entire face had flushed red, not the faint color of embarrassment but a full, heated color that ran from his cheeks to the tips of his ears. He looked as though someone had rubbed blood into his skin.

The annoyance in her eased into flat understanding.

"There’s nothing to be shy about," she said. "It isn’t as if I haven’t seen your body before."

Elias stared at her.

You really do not know how to talk to people.

Of course he knew what she meant. She was referring to the hotel, and that memory was not even an accident. He had arranged it on purpose at the time. That did not mean he could acknowledge it now.

So instead he bit down hard, lifted the long bare leg again, and kicked at her a second time.

This time Giselle was ready.

She dropped the tin onto the seat, caught his ankle cleanly in one hand, and held it fast. Her grip was not savage, but it was firm enough that no amount of pulling got him free.

Still holding his leg, she moved closer.

Elias felt humiliation climb all the way up his neck.

"Giselle," he said, and now there was actual pleading in it. "I really can put it on myself..."

Giselle shook her head.

"I’ll do it quickly, and then we’re leaving."

There was fatigue in her face now, clear enough to catch him off guard.

She did not show that often. For someone like Giselle, even slight weariness counted as a visible crack. Tonight it meant she had been pushed close to the edge.

Elias looked at her for a second, then turned his head to the side and stopped resisting.

That was permission, or close enough to it.

Only then did Giselle lower his leg back down.

As she did, her fingers shifted once around his ankle in a small, unconscious rub. It was too thin. Alarmingly thin. The bones there felt so slight that with a little more force it almost seemed as though they might snap.

Her voice cooled again as she picked the tin back up.

"I have to rub it in properly if you want it to absorb. It’ll probably hurt."

She met his eyes.

"So endure it."

At that, Elias jammed his clenched fist between his teeth.

He did not trust himself to keep quiet otherwise.