Just who and what was he?
She opened her mouth to ask and one of those fingers she’d bet could bend steel feathered down her cheek again. The gentleness of his touch almost pulverized her precarious control. Tears churned at the back of her eyes. She swallowed them along with any questions.
He asked them of her. “You weren’t exaggerating when you said you’d treated bullet wounds before. Just who are you, my heaven’s dew?”
Her hands stilled from checking her supplies before she started the procedure.
No one had ever realized the meaning of her name.
“Your parents are to be applauded for choosing such a name to befit your wonder and delicacy.”
She shot him an affronted look. “I’m not delicate!”
His smile filled with teasing indulgence. “Oh, but you are, incredibly so.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “How’s your jaw?”
Something hot and delighted rumbled deep in his chest, revved in her bones like a bass line made of urges instead of sound. “My jaw will always remember its meeting with your fist. But sheathe your claws. Delicacy doesn’t equate with fragility when describing you, but with refinement mixed with delectability wrapped around a core of resourcefulness. That’s what you are. An exterior of pure gold, a filling of sheer delight and a center of polished steel.”
Her lips twitched. “You sure you didn’t hit your head? Or are you always so ready and free with spontaneous poetry?”
“I’m the very opposite. Women call me a miser with words. I never say what I don’t mean. What I don’t feel. It’s no wonder I was chosen for law enforcement and not diplomacy.”
“So among the hordes of women who’ve stampeded through your life, I’m the only one who, in the aftermath of a rescue mission out of a Mission Impossible movie, has moved you so much you’ve found your inner poet.”
“You’ve summed it up perfectly.”
He suddenly turned around and lay back, placing his head and shoulders on her lap.
He grinned up at her as she froze, stared down at him. “This is the only place I’m lying down around here.”
She gulped, looked into his upside-down eyes and repressed the urge to smooth her hands over his face, to thread her fingers through that incredible mane fanned over her lap, and most insane of all, to bend down and kiss his forehead before she started poking him with needles and slicing him with scalpels.
Before she succumbed to any of those ridiculous urges, he transferred the tray she’d prepared to the floor, then turned to his side to present her with an optimum view of his injury.
She almost choked when he looked up from his sideways position and purred, “And that’s the best way to hand you instruments as you work.”
She gave a jerky nod and a throat-clearing cough, hoping to expel any mind-fogging stupidity.
Then proceeded to examine his wound.
Harres looked up at this enigma in a woman’s form whom he’d saved. And who was in turn saving him.
He held the flashlight at an optimal angle for her. And while she injected his side with local anesthetic, he examined her.
She was beyond beautiful. Unique. Magical. He hadn’t told her the half of it when she’d charged him with being poetic.
She finally made that throat-clearing noise he’d come to realize meant she was fighting for composure. And he bet it had nothing to do with the medical part of their situation.
“Okay. The bullet made a clear track through your muscles. It hit the tip of your scapula, grazing three ribs. No tendons or nerves are severed. There is muscle damage at the bullet’s entry point, then as it came out the front it tore a four-inch wound in your skin. But the bleeding is the worst of it, since a few arteries have recoiled out of reach. I’ll have to widen the wound and deepen it, to fish them out and cauterize them, and for future drainage. I’ll place deep sutures to repair the most traumatized tissues, but will leave the wound open to drain for later closure, once the swelling goes down, so no infection is trapped within.”
As she spoke, she continued to implement her plan with flawless execution. He continued to assist her.
Every minute brought more unprecedented sensations. It wasn’t just physical reactions to feeling her firm, warm thighs beneath his head, or breathing her hot, intoxicating scent with every breath. He’d never experienced this synergy, not even when working with his brothers or his men. He’d never let another person take charge of anything while he was around, let alone his own physical well-being. He’d never lusted after a woman anywhere near this intensely, let alone while simultaneously respecting the hell out of her capabilities, relying on her efficiency and wanting to pamper her with all he had and protect her with his life.
Was this real, or was everything being amplified by the circumstances combined with a dose of blood loss, survival elation and gratitude?
But when he added in his mounting physical response and mental appreciation, he was back to square one.
This was as real as anything got. And from the way she kept stroking him with her eyes after she finished each step and with her hands after each cut as if to apologize for the necessity of hurting him to heal him, from the way her hands and lips trembled at his merest indication of discomfort, he knew.
It was just as real for her.
It didn’t matter who they were, or how and when they’d met. What they’d done since, the seeming lifetime of life-changing events and feelings they’d experienced together, meant they could leap over most stages of development and acknowledgment of attraction.
She finished the procedure and he sat up, helped her wrap his torso in bandages. As she began to draw back, he couldn’t bear it. His right hand wove into her hair, kept her close, brought her closer. And she lurched away.
He stilled, his heart jolting with the same force.
After a long moment, he removed his hand, whispered, “Are you afraid of me?”
“No.” Relief deflated him at her vehement denial. Then she grinned sheepishly at him, boosting her beauty to dizzying heights. “Which might be the stupidest thing I’ve ever thought or felt, considering I’m in the middle of nowhere with a hulk of a man in a hostile land where I know no one. But there you go. I’m not afraid of you. Not for a second. I’m…the very opposite.”
Warmth flooded him at her admission. He’d been right. She felt the same way.
Another unknown urge took him over, the desire to tease her, even as he wanted to devour her. “Now that’s a little white lie. You were so afraid of me for at least a few seconds that you almost gave me a permanent disability.”