by Elise Faber
She reached for a plate that someone had left for me on the rolling tray, bringing it in front of me so I could see the contents. “I don’t think you’ll be eating pizza anytime soon,” she said. “It’ll be . . . let’s see what we’ve got here. Lime Jell-O and toast. Yum.”
I made a face.
Her laughter, so infrequent before Dan, made her teasing tolerable. Even though, “I hate lime Jell-O,” I grumbled.
She laughed again. “Well, Ollie, I’m sorry to say, but it might be a bit before you can torture the boys with Hawaiian pizza.”
My stink face didn’t relax.
“I promise, though, the moment you can scarf down pizza, I will be all over helping you stick it to the boys.”
“Promise?”
She pressed her hand to her heart. “I promise.”
“What do you know about the bomb?” I asked, transitioning to more important topics.
“Only that Laila had the residue tested and it’s GHS.”
My mouth fell open. GHS was a special explosive made exclusively by KTS’s engineering squad. It was lightweight, safe to transport, and a small amount could create huge explosions. “But how?”
Her face hardened. “It’s got to be Daniel. He’s the only one with working knowledge of this base, the only one who could have gotten back in. Fucking hell, I only wounded him.” She cursed. “I can’t believe I shanked that fucking shot.”
That shot being taken on a twice-broken ankle with limited rounds, her boyfriend bleeding out, and at a distance of several hundred meters. No big deal. “There were a lot of factors in that situation,” I reminded her. “And none of them under your control.” I narrowed my eyes. “Even if you did do more damage to that ankle, missy.”
“Not by choice, I promise you. Now”—she pushed to her feet, got her crutches under her arms—“I’m on the next watch of the security cameras, so I’m going to at least make myself somewhat useful.”
“Put up that ankle,” I called.
Pale brown eyes rolled. “I’ve already gotten the order from Linc and from Dan. I don’t need it from you.”
“That’s a lie,” I muttered. “I should be the only one you take orders from.”
“Yeah, yeah. Laila said the same thing.” She started puttering toward the door. “I get the picture. I’ve got a long list of people to answer to.”
“Exactly. Oh, wait,” I added before she got too far. “Can you wheel the computer over to me?”
She lifted a brow, her lips twitching. “Wanting to check the job Linc did on you?”
Maybe.
So what?
“Just bring it over, okay?”
Chuckling under her breath, Ava crutched over to the computer, pushed the wheeled unit up to my bedside. She even helpfully lowered it so my fingers could reach the keyboard. Then she shuffled out.
And with my head clear, my pain reasonable for the first time in—I glanced at the computer’s calendar—three days, I typed in my authorization code and pulled up my chart.
And read, my heart thudding in my chest, as the realization of how close I’d come to dying hit home.
I’d been in the gray space; one false move could have pushed me either way.
But Linc had hauled me back.
My lungs went a little tight, fear trickling through me as I read the description of the injury, as my eyes trailed across the list of medications, took in how much blood I’d been given. No wonder I still felt so incredibly weak.
No wonder these last three days had been primarily filled with unconsciousness and morphine highs.
Damn. It had been close.
I clicked out of my chart, ignoring the prickle on my nape, knowing it was just an after-effect because of the close call. Pushing that notion to the side, I ignored the spike of guilt for what I was about to do next and opened another chart.
Linc’s chart.
Was it an invasion of his privacy? Probably. No. Yes, it was. But he’d been hurt too, and I needed—
To be nosy?
Yes. That.
So, I let the guilt ride, gave into the nosiness, and I just . . . scrolled past anything that didn’t involve the treatment for the explosion three days before.
Some morals, I had.
And great, now I sounded like Yoda.
But fictional, green characters aside or not, I read the list of his injuries—bruising contusions and several second-degree burns on his back, a deep cut that had required sutures—and I couldn’t believe that the man had been coping with all of that and somehow performed an emergency surgery to save my life.
He shouldn’t have been standing, let alone been able to perform the precise kinds of procedures he’d done to stop the bleeding and ensure I survived.
Not to mention the fact that he’d done it with no complications, under pressure, and with a skeletal team of agents and nurses, who just happened to be nearby. All while injured.
Then if I added in how he’d managed to get me out of the way of the worst of the blast, and . . .
The man was practically a superhero.
Ugh.
Heat skating across my skin.
My thighs quivered.
Double ugh.
I turned before he spoke, my inner Linc-detector fully up and running, even if my body wasn’t.
“Checking my work?”
I clicked out of the screen, shoved back the keyboard, and winced—because shoving really wasn’t on my list of approved activities. “Would you expect anything less?” I asked.
A smile.
No, not a smile.
The smile. The killer smile that had my insides turning to jelly and that trickle of heat turning into a torrent. Which shouldn’t even be freaking possible! I was recovering from abdominal surgery, so I shouldn’t have any sort of sexual desire.
But I did.
Because this man was a flipping superhero.
A superhero whom I owed a thanks.
It was just . . . that freaking gratitude was sticking in my throat, tangled up with the last time I’d tried to extend an olive branch to this man.
Still, my grandmother had raised me to be polite—or at least to have some manners.
So, the thanks needed to happen.
Triple ugh.
“No,” he murmured, flopping down into the chair with a move that should have made him cry out in pain, based on the injuries listed in his chart. That he wasn’t—
The pieces clicked in my mind.
“You have the new bandages.”
A nod. “Figured I might as well be the first guinea pig.”
Excited now, I tried to prop my elbows beneath me, wanting to see, but unlike the keyboard on the computer, I couldn’t drag him closer or examine his back from a prone position like I had the screen. Instead, all I got was a burst of agony, a curse leaving my lips, and my elbows collapsing before I even managed more than an inch up from the mattress.
“Easy,” he said, leaning closer and gently resting his hand on my shoulder.
I was breathing heavily, trying to keep the inhalations and exhalations small and controlled so as not to exacerbate my wound, and the man touching me was not helping. But I did manage to get my breaths to slow, the pain to recede, and my gaze back on his. “How are they working?” I asked when I knew my voice would be even.
“I’ll show you.”
I started to tilt my head to the side, my lips parting to ask him what he meant—
Then he whipped off his shirt.
Just whipped it off and . . . oh my.
I mean, I had imagined this man without his shirt on, had wondered what he’d look like naked, and I supposed he’d taken it off during the explosion, used it as a pad on my wound, but I hadn’t been aware enough then, and I certainly hadn’t pictured—
This.
And oh, but it was glorious. The slightest bit of hair on his chest—just enough to scream that he was all manly and delicious, but not so much as to make it resemble a carpet. Blegh
. Instead, I wanted to stroke it, could imagine what it would feel like against my skin, brushing over my nipples, sliding along my torso, down farther until he positioned himself between my thighs—
Clenching my jaw, I tried to force myself to focus.
But how could I?
The man’s pecs were grabbable, his stomach was flat and etched into six crisp squares, and his tattoo trailing up and over one shoulder . . . fuck, I wanted to lick it, to trace its many lines with my tongue.
And considering that his tat covered more than half his chest and most of one arm, that would require a lot of licking, a lot of tracing.
Oh, the trials a woman had to bear.
Before I could focus further on the yumminess that was his happy trail disappearing under the waistband of his jeans and making my mouth water for a whole other reason, he spun around and showed me his back.
His strong, muscled, tasty looking back.
Yup. I had problems.
Control, Olive. Find some fucking control.
Right. I’d worked with this man for a long time and had never had difficulty with my control. Further that, I worked with sexy, built men all the time. Six-packs were like the currency at KTS, along with yummy arms, cut backs, and powerful thighs. Hell, I’d even seen more than my fair share of penises—which was maybe my least favorite body part to ogle, but my most favorite to feel.
Heh.
Except, it wasn’t exactly funny, how much this man made me feel.
Why was it that Linc’s respective parts somehow made my body stand up and take notice, when the rest of the male populace seemed to make me go just . . . meh? It was silly, and it wasn’t helpful, and—
It wasn’t pertinent to this conversation.
Well, not to the mental argument in my head, anyway. Which thankfully was taking place in my head and not out of it because otherwise . . . critical embarrassment.
Kind of like the mortification staining my cheeks pink when he glanced over his shoulder and caught me staring. “How’s it look?”
Damned fucking good.
But that wasn’t the point.
I had worked with the engineering department to create these bandages, which basically took our clotting packs and jacked up their effectiveness significantly. They were packed with materials that could stop a significant amount of bleeding and was only activated by red blood cells. They also had another KTS-developed substance on them that promoted healing and reduced pain. One final compound was activated with spit—not the most sanitary, certainly, but desperate times in the field called for desperate measures. Anyway, a small amount of saliva hardened the bandage so it could be used as a splint or even to make a cast. That one-two-three chemical configuration had been my idea. If one of us got hurt in the field, time was critical and being able to use one dressing for multiple reasons—wounds, burns, broken bones—made my ability to treat agents much more efficient and effective.
The only difficulty had been adhesion.
“Are they staying in place?” I asked.
He nodded. “With the new pattern of glue on the wings, they’ve stayed in position. And the pain-relief has been incredible. I swear, I don’t even feel like I was hurt.” He reached into his pocket then held up his hand, showed me that he’d brought along one large enough to cover my wound. “Wanna try one?”
Even if it wasn’t going to get me out of this hospital bed that much sooner, I would have jumped at the opportunity to try out this new tech. This was my baby, the thing I’d been working on for months. I needed. I wanted.
“Yes,” I said, grabbing the corner of the blanket and lifting it off.
Linc set the bandage on the bed, shrugged back into his shirt, then moved to the door, snagging a pair of gloves from a box mounted near the frame. A moment later, he was back at my side, grasping the edge of my hospital gown and shifting it to reveal the standard-issue KTS bandage beneath.
Notice how I didn’t make any allusions to him undressing me.
Nope.
That wouldn’t be good.
This was strictly doctor and patient, no matter how good his hands felt on me.
Gah!
His hands didn’t feel good. Nope. They were just hands administering treatment and that was it. It!
Then they actually were just hands administering treatment.
Because shit that didn’t feel good on my stitches, being tugged this way and that as he peeled back the dressing.
“Sorry,” he murmured, carefully easing the tape away from my skin. “I haven’t actually had to change this while you were conscious, yet.”
Which insinuated that he’d done it while I was unconscious.
And didn’t that give me something to ponder.
Cute.
As in, had he thought I was cute while I was unconscious? Or as in, was that sarcasm because I was trying to deflect the thoughts away from something that made me uncomfortable? I hoped for the second. I feared it might be the first.
“Blegh,” I muttered.
His gaze shifted, coming up to meet mine. “Blegh, what?”
I shook my head. “It doesn’t matter.”
Gray eyes on mine, studying me closely. “Hmm,” he murmured, then focused back on the bandage.
“I didn’t thank you.”
He looked up again, and I was momentarily stunned by my blurt, so words didn’t immediately come, making me unable to add anything more, except for a shrug. “We don’t do this job for the thanks. You know that.” The ghost of a smile. “I believe that’s part of what we were arguing about before the explosion.” He set the old bandage to the side, began to unwrap the new one. “The other thing—”
I grabbed his wrist. “Linc.”
He froze, stared into my eyes, arm shifting so his palm was suddenly pressed to mine, fingertips tracing patterns gently on the surface. Then he lifted my hand to his lips, kissed my palm. “What, baby?”
More of me being stunned, only by the endearment this time.
Before I was over that, he was smoothing my hand down, returning to the bandage.
“What are you doing?” I whispered.
And I wasn’t talking about treating my wound. I was talking about the fingertip stroking, the calling me baby, the kiss to my palm.
His eyes didn’t come to mine this time, rather they stayed on my abdomen as he unwrapped the outer layer, as he carefully covered my wound. “I’m taking care of you,” he said.
“I—” My mouth opened and closed. “I don’t need you to.”
Now his eyes came to mine. “I know.” A beat. “But I’m doing it anyway.”
Chapter Four
KTS Satellite Base
Western Georgia
17:47hrs
Linc
Surprise in those blue eyes of hers.
A bright cerulean I’d seen so often in the sky overhead that I’d figured it was the universe laughing at me.
A blue I’d never seen in another person—streaked with gold and gray, the clouds and the sun all coming out to play on a warm summer day. And that was what she’d brought.
I just hadn’t been ready for it.
For a long time, I couldn’t have been ready for that warmth.
But . . . times changed.
And I was hoping it wasn’t too late. I’d bungled things badly, been a total asshat, and now I needed to show her that I wasn’t normally like that—okay, so the last wasn’t true. I could definitely be an asshat, and I’d demonstrated that quite clearly. The only difference was that I normally wasn’t such a giant asshat to people like Olive.
People who were nice and smart and funny.
It was just . . . she’d made me feel too much on a day when I’d already been feeling too much, and then guilt had collided with the other strong emotions—with need and desire and respect and affection—to twist into a giant tangled ball that had made me lash out unforgivingly.
“What do you mean, you’re going to do it anyway?” Her dark brown brows drew d
own.
“I mean, I’m going to take care of you.”
I smoothed one side of the bandage.
“Okaaay,” she said. “So once again, we’re circling back to why in the ever-loving fuck you think I’d want you to take care of me. And further that, why you would think you had any right to—”
“I don’t.” I shrugged. “But I’m still going to do it anyway.”
Her mouth fell open; a flush appeared on her cheeks.
God, she was pretty.
I finished with the bandage, tugged her gown back in place, the blanket up, then disposed of the dirty gloves and wrapping. But instead of leaving like she probably wanted me to, I made myself comfortable back in the chair at her bedside.
Her head tilted in my direction, eyes sparking in annoyance.
“Is there a reason you’re still here?” she grumbled.
I nodded, rested my laced fingers on my chest. “I’m going to tell you a story.”
For the second time in as many minutes, her jaw dropped open. “You cannot be serious.”
“Oh, but I can,” I said lightly.
Her brows drew together, then she narrowed her eyes at me. “You know what? I think this bandage is doing the trick.” She propped her elbows beneath her. “I’m going to discharge myself.” She reached for the computer.
Infernal woman.
Still, I wasn’t going to engage in the discharging nonsense. She wouldn’t have the strength to get out of bed, no matter how tough she was or how good the bandage was. But, as I’d learned over the years of dealing with her, I knew that arguing would get me absolutely nowhere.
So, I went for distraction instead.
“Did you know that we named it The Ollie?”
She froze in the six inches she managed to lift herself. “What?”
“The bandage. The engineering team and I agreed it should be named after you.”
Her mouth opened and closed a few times, confusion in those blue depths. Confusion that enabled me to coax her back onto the mattress.
“It seemed only logical.” I tucked the blanket around her again. Snugly. So it would be harder for her to escape.
“But I was hardly the only one to work on it.”
