by Joan Swan
A strategist she was not.
With a new level of calm, Creek opened the packaging, stuffed the lantern with the batteries and turned the lever until bright light filled the truck. Then he unfolded the blanket and set out supplies in what Alyssa slowly started to recognize as a procedure area.
She knew it was a bad idea to ask him anything right now, but she couldn’t help herself. “What are you doing?”
“We’ve got to get that gash closed.” He knelt alongside the blanket and leaned over to lower the rear door all but a couple inches. “Lie down, let me get a good look.”
“Wh-what? A few minutes ago you were ready to skin me alive. Why in the world would I let you treat me now?”
He pressed both hands to his thighs and leaned back on his heels. “Because I was a paramedic for twelve years in my past life.” His blue eyes stayed steady on hers. “I’m not happy with you right now, but I’ve never hit a woman in all my thirty-four years, and I’m not going to start with you.”
“A-a paramedic?” She didn’t like this new stutter. It was annoying as hell and undermined her already failing self-confidence.
“Yes, a paramedic and a firefighter. Let me look.”
As if she’d donned a pair of those funky red-and-blue glasses for three-D movies, Creek rounded out into a full-fledged human being. A man with a past, a present, a future. A man who’d once contributed to society, who’d healed the injured, who’d saved lives. A man who had a mother, father, siblings, possibly a wife and children ... I don’t have anyone. . . or not.
“How did you go from paramedic to prisoner? For life?” she asked, incredulous.
“I’m not giving you my life story. Just lie down and let me look at this cut. It needs to be cleaned and bandaged, minimum. Or would you rather get an infection that could kill you a hell of a lot faster than I ever would?”
While she debated, Alyssa examined the supplies he’d laid out, wondering when he’d put most of them in the cart. The combination of blood loss, sleep deprivation and stress was turning her mind into mush.
“Looks like you’re planning surgery,” she said.
“Just a few stitches.”
How did she know he wasn’t a pathological liar? She had no proof he’d ever seen a stitch before let alone placed one. He obviously had some altered body chemistry he wasn’t talking about, and—
An alternative idea clicked.
“What about ... ?” Alyssa shifted on her feet and gestured in his general direction. “What about that ... that ... heat thing you do?”
“I don’t—”
“Don’t you dare tell me I’m imagining things.” She held out her wrist. “Those are your fingerprints burned into my skin.”
His gaze lingered on her arm. “What about it?”
“Can’t you ... fix me with that?”
“No.” He looked away, as if embarrassed. “I’m not ... it’s not ... I can’t.”
She hadn’t thought so. But she’d had to ask. “If I let you ... do this, will you tell me how you do that?”
His mouth compressed. “Fine.”
Dammit. He’d agreed too easily. Now she had to decide. “How many times have you done this?”
“Stitches? Couple dozen. I’m competent.”
“What method will you use?”
“Won’t know until I get a good look at the cut. Either a horizontal mattress or a Smead-Jones. Depends on length and depth of the cut.” He paused, and while no grin turned his mouth, Alyssa sensed a smile simmering inside him. “Do I pass?”
“I suppose.” With a sick sense of anticipation, Alyssa lay down on her back. She lifted the T-shirt over her belly, exposing her injured ribs. They both inspected the wound. Creek’s touch was deft and gentle, checking the depth of tissue damage. Heat sparked beneath each point of contact. “I can’t believe I’m considering this.”
“Considering?” He sat back and met her eyes. “If you don’t let me do this, you’ll have one hell of a scar.”
“No matter what, I’ll have one hell of a scar.”
“Not if I can help it.”
Alyssa remained fearful over the grave mistake she was probably making, but didn’t protest as he poured instant hand sanitizer in his palms and scrubbed thoroughly before uncapping the hydrogen peroxide and cleaning the surface of the wound.
Her gaze focused in on the shamrocks on his knuckles, a well-known Aryan Brotherhood symbol, and her mind jumped to Taz. “Is there enough time?”
“There has to be. I won’t be responsible for a red, welted scar on this perfect body.” He tossed the bloody gauze into an empty Walmart bag.
“Was that a compliment?” Alyssa asked. “If I weren’t already lying down, I might faint.”
When his mouth tilted up, a fluttery sensation winged around her stomach. One she hadn’t felt in a long time. One she shouldn’t ever feel with this man. She forced it away. Forced herself to refocus as he poured saline into a Ziploc.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
With the nearly bursting plastic bag in one hand, he turned it bottom-side-up and ripped a hole in the corner with his teeth. “Cleaning the wound.” He spit out the plastic bit and poised the bag to turn it over. “Brace yourself. This isn’t going to feel very good.”
The cool saline hit her skin and stung as it flushed the gash. Then Creek squeezed the bag and drove the sterile solution out under pressure. The water knifed into her side. Sweating, panting, Alyssa fisted her hands in the blanket beneath her. She clenched her teeth around a scream and seethed air. Just when she thought it would never stop, the stream ended and the torture along with it.
“Sorry,” Creek said, his voice low and sincere. “That will be the worst of it.”
Dizzy with pain, Alyssa opened her eyes and stared at the scraped metal roof, illuminated by the lantern’s glow. “Liar,” she breathed. “I know the stitches are going to kill me.”
“I’ve got something to take the edge off.”
He flipped open a bottle of topical anesthetic and poured the solution on gauze four-by-fours, then dabbed it along the length of the wound. Sure enough, her skin started to tingle, then numbed.
Creek performed another round of hand sanitizing, threaded the smallest of the curved upholstery hooks with the nylon fishing line and set a pair of scissors nearby. The stress of the cleansing had left Alyssa weak and exhausted. She relaxed against the hard surface beneath her and watched Creek.
A kind of peace and purpose shimmered around him like an aura, giving Alyssa an unfounded confidence in his abilities. For the moment, she felt secure in his hands.
He tested the needle on the far edge of the wound. “Feel that?”
“Barely.”
“How about that?”
“A little. It’s fine. Let’s get it over with.”
She continued to amaze him. Teague made the first pierce of her skin at the distal edge of the wound. A wound, he’d discovered after inspection, that was far more extensive than he’d expected based on the way she had continued to function. He’d seen many a grown man—child molesters, rapists, murderers—howl like whipped dogs with injuries far less severe.
His limited attempts to heal her had done nothing but temporarily quell the bleeding, but then he hadn’t had the time or opportunity to make additional passes over the wound. Not that it would have mattered. His powers were too weak to heal this deeply.
“You promised.” Her voice brought his gaze up from her firm abs. Her eyes were closed, her fingers curled into the hem of the shirt bunched up beneath her breasts.
“Promised what?”
“To tell me about all that heat.”
He’d love to tell her about all this heat. Better yet, show her about all this heat. Tell her while showing her just how hot it could get.
Sweet Jesus, the images that filled his head would get him arrested all over again. He wiped at the sweat forming on his temple with his forearm. Too damn bad the heat she was talking about and t
he heat he was talking about were not one and the same.
“Right.” He pulled the nylon through and secured the anchoring stitch. “I don’t know.”
Her eyes opened and her head came up, tightening her stomach muscles and shifting his supplies. “What do you mean you don’t know?”
“Put your head down. You’re messing up my work space.” When she complied, Teague continued stitching. “I mean, I don’t know what it is. An anxiety disorder or something. When I get angry or stressed, my body temperature rises. It happens to everybody.”
She released her shirt and shoved her hand into his line of sight. “This level of heat does not happen to everybody.”
“If you don’t want a scar, stay out of the way.” He nudged her hand to the side and continued stitching. “I can’t tell you what I don’t know.”
As he made another stitch of her inner tissues, she tensed and turned her head away. Her fingers curled and released in the fabric of her shirt.
With her attention averted, Teague followed each stitch with long, steady pressure from the fingers of his free hand. He’d purposely chosen hand sanitizer instead of gloves because he’d never tried to heal through a barrier, and he wasn’t about to start now. And though he might not be able to wipe out her injury instantly, he could speed the healing and hinder scar formation while helping with pain relief. Of course, the whole sexual attraction thing that seemed to flow in its wake—that he hadn’t counted on.
As he steadied her skin and muscle for each double stitch, his subconscious kept whispering reminders of how soft and warm she was. Kept influencing him to peek at her supple belly and the swell of her breasts. He succumbed briefly to a vision of himself hovering over her, kissing his way up that belly toward those breasts, and the simmer in his body boiled to life. He imagined sinking down, pressing his body to hers, feeling all that satin skin against his own. He felt the supple play of her nipple against the roof of his mouth as he suckled, the roll of muscle and pressure of flesh as she arched against him in pleasure.
In the next instant, his traitorous mind replaced his own image with Luke’s. His fantasy shattered, as violent as boiling water on frozen glass.
“What’s wrong?” Hannah’s voice brought Teague back to where his hand hovered over her ribs. “Why’d you stop?”
He shook his head, clenched his teeth and resumed. “Just making sure I’m catching all the edges. It’s not going to look like a pretty package when I’m done. I’m exverting the edges so the skin won’t pucker and sink in, leaving a big divot. But it’ll invert on its own and heal flush.”
Hannah put one arm behind her head and watched Teague work.
“How long have you and Luke been together?” He hated the fact that he couldn’t keep these nagging questions inside. That he cared about the answers.
She didn’t immediately respond. Her brows furrowed, gaze steady on the ceiling. “I don’t know.” Her response came clipped and irritated. “I don’t keep track of that kind of thing.”
“Well, like weeks, months? What?”
“I supposedly hold some sort of leverage for you. Why don’t you already know this?”
“Why are you so evasive? Just answer the question.”
“I don’t know, a few, several ... a couple months ... maybe.”
He frowned at the bizarre answer. “Has he introduced you to Kat?”
“I work a lot. I don’t have much time to socialize.”
Halfway up the gash, Teague paused and took a closer look at Hannah’s face, trying to read her. “Some vague answers from someone who’s supposedly hot and heavy with the guy.”
Her light eyes flicked toward his. “Who told you that?”
“Friends.”
“I thought you didn’t have any friends.”
He looked away, irritated with her sharpness. Or maybe more irritated with the truth of the statement. Time for a change of subject.
Teague channeled all his focus, sent the heat down his arms, through his palms and into his fingertips as he slid his skin over hers, each pass healing another several hundred thousand cells at a time. “Am I hurting you?”
“Not much. Whatever you used for anesthetic is working.”
It’s called touch. That topical junk had only been a prop. A scapegoat on which to lay the pain relief. Teague had learned how to hide his abilities years ago. His thoughts of the past brought his mind back around to Luke, to Kat, to all that had happened, to all that had gone wrong in his life.
Hannah closed her eyes on a half-sigh and laid her head back again. Supple muscle moved beneath velvet skin. Teague would have to be dead not to notice.
“What do you see in Luke, anyway?” The words were out before he had a chance at a second thought.
Her lashes lifted halfway. “By your tone I think the question you wanted to ask was what does Luke see in me.”
“Maybe. Since he broke up with ...”
Teague shook the thought of Keira from his mind. He would have liked nothing more than to call on his long-time friend for help in this situation. She would have been there in an instant. But Keira had left the fire service for the F.B.I. months before, which only increased her risk of personal and professional catastrophe if she was ever connected to him. And unlike Luke, Teague would never put her in a situation where she would be forced to choose.
“In recent years,” Teague continued, “he seems to prefer the meek, bombshell, save-me type.”
“And since you see me as obnoxious, plain and independent, you don’t think he could find anything about me attractive.”
Hardly. “You might be obnoxiously independent, but you are not the least bit plain.” A fact which pissed him off when he thought about it too much and led him to his next taunt. “You know he’s a player, don’t you? Doesn’t stay with any woman long and often goes back and forth between two or more?”
The emotion that passed through her eyes appeared more relieved than surprised or angry. “So? What makes you think I’m not a player, too?”
He shrugged, but something deep in his gut tingled the way it did when a situation wasn’t quite right. “Guess you just don’t strike me that way. How did you meet him if you work so much?”
“Why the twenty questions?” she snapped. “What is it about Luke that you’re so obsessed with? What do you think you’re going to gain by keeping me?”
That tingle in his gut grew into a burn. He paused mid-stitch and looked at her again. She answered too many questions with questions. She was too defensive, too evasive. Something she’d said earlier, something that had seemed offbeat at the time, popped to mind again. “What did you mean when you said I’d cut your professional throat?”
“When?”
“Inside, after that woman came up to us.”
She heaved a breath and closed her eyes. “I’m competing for my job against someone else. This other guy is a total manipulator. By the time I get back, he’ll have wormed his way into making everyone believe they can’t live without him.”
“You already have the job.” He knew at least that much from his hasty research, from the stories his teammates had told him on their occasional visits to the prison. “You’ve had it for two years. How can you be competing for it?”
“They’re cutting back. Only keeping one of us, and he’s got seniority. They’re letting one of us go in two weeks.”
“Where’s the competition? Seniority usually wins out. Why don’t they just let you go?”
Alyssa shot him another angry look. “Because I’m better. Way the hell better. I work my butt off while he schmoozes.” The anger seemed to drain her energy. She closed her eyes and turned her head away. “He’s a frigging con man. No one like that is going to beat me.”
He admired her fight. Saw his own reflection in her struggle. And felt guilty for interfering in this important piece of her life, not to mention all the trauma and injury she’d sustained in the last few hours.
“Don’t worry.” He tied off the la
st stitch and cut the nylon. “I’ll have you back to your boyfriend and your job before you know it.”
“Then what? Where are you going? What are you going to do?”
Teague brought up an image of Kat’s face, those big, dark, sparkling eyes. He savored the idea of feeling her in his arms. The security of knowing where she was every moment of the day. The peace of having control over her safety, her growth, her well-being. The pure, unadulterated joy of hearing her laughter, experiencing her unconditional love.
A smile started in his soul and ended up on his face. “Then I disappear, and you’ll never have to see me again. I’ll be like a bad dream.”
She rolled onto her side and pushed herself to a sitting position. Her hands darted out and grabbed his. “Let me see your hands.”
He tugged back in automatic reaction, but she held firm. His smile vanished. “Why? Let go.”
“Let me see them, and I’ll let go.”
Exasperated, he turned his hands over and indulged her inspection. To humor her, not to feel her skin against his. Not to experience the gentle heat of her strong fingers. The pad of her index finger skimmed his palm, sending an erotic signal directly to his groin.
“Okay, enough.” Teague pulled out of her grasp. “See, no magic bullet. Just normal human parts. Now lie down so I can finish.”
“But—”
“No more buts, Hannah. Lie down.”
She stared at him with lingering questions in her eyes, but he was done. She was getting too curious and way too comfortable and, dammit, so was he. He needed to put a stop to all this small talk. And then get the hell away from her before he did something really stupid. Like told her the truth. Or found something else completely inappropriate to do with his mouth, like taste every inch of that glorious body.
She obviously sensed he was serious, because she obeyed.
Teague cleaned the wound with another dose of hydrogen peroxide, plastered it with Neosporin and bandaged her up tighter than he probably needed to. “There. It’s about time to pick up Taz.”
Hannah sat up and pulled her shirt over that tight belly. But this time she didn’t look at him. She didn’t touch him. And she sure as hell didn’t speak to him.