Chisholm Brothers 03 Night Watch Read online

  She winced and jerked back. “Ow, sorry, oh, that stings.”

  He looked down at her leg. It was bleeding again. “Oh, hell. Sorry, baby. Let’s have a look now. Have a seat in the kitchen, the light’s better.”

  Almost robotic, he turned away, and went deeper into the house. She stared at his back for a second, too turned on to move.

  Then he called out, “And take those pants off, too.”

  She smiled. “You’re always telling me to do that.” She went into the kitchen and slipped her jeans off.

  He came back with a large plastic toolbox. “And you keep doing it. What’s that say?”

  She sat at the kitchen table in panties and a T-shirt, peeling the layers of gauze. Her breath hissed.

  “Stop that before you tear the skin,” he said, and she looked up. He tugged her to her feet, gripped her at the waist, and lifted her to the counter. She gasped at the cold stone under her bare skin.

  “Do you always just do what you want without asking?”

  He looked chagrined. “By your leave, ma’am, I’m not used to waiting to take action.”

  “That just excites me all over. Bossy men, who’da thunk it?”

  He snapped on latex gloves. “Wiseass.” He carefully cut the bandage away and started cleaning the wound. It was bleeding at the point of impact, but the rest was dried and sticky.

  He wasn’t all that gentle and Syd smacked him on the shoulder when it hurt too much. “Ease up. I’m not a Marine, ya know.”

  “Oh, I know.” He winked, then rummaged in the large kit. He snapped the cap of a small plastic tube with a needle on the end. “This will help.”

  “Is that necessary?” Though it felt on fire right now.

  “Unless you have an amazing pain threshold, this is really gonna hurt. Too much blood is caked on the wound. There could be fibers from the jeans in it, glass. It did pass through the window. And who was telling me about how fast germs multiply?”

  She gestured for him to keep working. “You could have stopped at fibers.”

  “I have to open it back up.”

  “Gee, no stick to bite? No whiskey?”

  “I have morphine.”

  She shook her head. “Go ahead.” He injected the topical anesthetic, then while he waited for it to take effect, he laid out his bandages.

  Syd grabbed a stack and with some antiseptic, cleaned the couple of cuts on his jaw and neck. “They aren’t bad. But you have flakes of glass only a shower will clean.”

  “We can try that later.”

  “We?”

  He slid her a dark sexy look that liquefied her muscles. “Nothing gets past you, huh, Einstein?”

  “Not unless I want it to. And I could jump on you right now, boo-boo and all, like an undersexed teenager.”

  “Undersexed?”

  She lifted a bottle from the kit, read the label. “Antibiotics? Prescription?”

  He got the message. She didn’t want to discuss her sex life. Fine with him. His mind was already on that lacy bra he’d bought and how it looked on her—because the transparent panties were just about driving him nuts as it was.

  “Rick’s a corpsman, Navy.”

  “I thought he was a Marine.”

  He soaked a cloth in the sink. “Might as well be.” He hesitated for a second, in voice and moves, then said, “He found me in the mountains.”

  Sydney felt oddly privileged. The tiny piece of him made her feel closer to him. Rick had saved his life. “I should thank him for that. But I swore an oath.”

  He glanced, flashed a smile, then applied a wet cloth to the wound, softening the dried blood. He blotted and rubbed, taking tweezers to pluck out debris. “This will burn,” he warned and drizzled hydrogen peroxide on it. He blew and blotted again, but when she didn’t utter a sound, Jack looked up.

  She sat perfectly still, gripping the counter ledge, her lips tight. Yet tears cascaded down her face.

  “Aw, honey I—”

  “Keep going, please.”

  He felt helpless, a first in about a dozen years. Silent tears were a powerful thing to see, and he hated causing her more pain. She’d had enough for someone who didn’t wear Kevlar to the office. She bit her lip, swallowed hard, trying so hard not to sob, and Jack leaned in and kissed her, focusing everything into it, a slow molten roll of lips and tongue. She responded instantly, and he felt a tender ache in his chest when she cradled his jaw and took control. It was an eating kiss, as if her pain flowed through it, almost dark and ravenous, and when he pulled back, she looked more exotic than before.

  “It still hurts like hell.” She sniffled.

  “I was trying to take your mind off it.”

  “And that’s all you came up with?” Her fingers dribbled down his chest to his jeans.

  Christ, the woman was going to make him an idiot. “Give me a minute, I’ll think of something else.” Jack went back to cleaning the wound down to the tissue. It bled again.

  Syd wanted to cry like a baby, but what good would it do? She stared at the long, narrow gouge, seeing exactly how close they came to dying today. She’d have a permanent reminder of how precious life had become.

  “I know it looks bad,” he said, “but it has to heal from the inside out. It’s broad enough that stitches would just make the scar worse.”

  “The scar’s the least of my problems.”

  He covered it with antibacterial ointment, then bandaged it. He sat, and propped her leg on his shoulder to wrap the ace around her thigh. “Bad fashion statement in a bikini?” He secured it, then pulled off the surgical gloves.

  “As if. You do not want to see this body in a bikini.” She was glad to think of anything but the pain right now.

  His gaze lingered over her. “You underestimate yourself, Einstein.” He kissed her bandaged leg.

  “I rarely do, Jack. I know my weaknesses.” She slid her leg off his shoulder, and for a moment she just stared. “Algorithms, English Lit, loading i-Pods…” Suddenly, she gripped handfuls of his bloody shirt, yanked. “And right now—you.”

  Her mouth covered his in a swoop of heat and put every seductive nuance into it. There wasn’t much information in her past to gather. She’d spent her adult life getting her doctorate or using it. But she tried.

  And she was winning.

  Jack felt like a puppet being played and he let her. Her life was in shambles and she wanted control, wanted to command something and he let it be him. She teased, drawing back and making him chase her, then erotically licked the line of his lips before she pushed her tongue between. A hot, desperate need riddled him down to his heels as she kissed him. He wanted her, right now, on the counter, and the image made his dick like lead in his jeans. When she broke the kiss, it was to peel off his shirt. Her hands scraped over his skin, and she dragged her tongue across his nipple, then suckled.

  It left him trembling, his head thrown back, and he gripped her hips, wedging closer. His hand slid upward, under her shirt, shaping her ribs, teasing the underside of her breasts cupped in a lacy bra. Her kiss intensified.

  “Keep that up, Marine. Please.”

  He drew off her shirt, his lip quirking at the pink lace bra. A quick flick and it was falling. Jack swept it away. His gaze rolled down her body, and everything between them seemed to go still for a moment. By increments she leaned closer, her nipples grazing his chest. That first press of flesh to flesh held a sort of euphoria, crossing the line of intimacy. Jack had helped a lot of people, rescued many, killed to save them, but nothing compared to the single moment when you invited someone this close. He fought for patience when he was craving her like air, his body flexing with need. Although Syd might have a mouth on her, he sensed this was a brave thing to do.

  She was still, waiting for his touch, watching his hands come toward her and when they did, Syd experienced something close to nirvana. She covered his big hands and arched and Jack kissed her and kissed her, loving her moans, her eagerness.

  He wouldn’t
last long.