“No, you can’t. They took most of the medical supplies.”
“Not the kit in my cell.”
He raised an eyebrow. “And you still swear you’re not a nun?”
“Fine, I’m a nun. So keep your lascivious thoughts away from me. I can find enough butterfly bandages to keep that slash together so that it will heal.”
“’Lascivious’?” he echoed with a laugh. “I’ve never heard them called that before.”
“It means . . .”(
“I know what lascivious means, sweetheart. It’s just not a word I hear in everyday conversation.”
“You surprise me. You’re a powder keg of testosterone ready to explode. I’m surprised more women haven’t mentioned it.”
“I don’t tend to shag women with your vocabulary. And it’s been three years, remember?”
“How could I forget? Are you going to stay there, or come with me to my bedroom?”
He surged to his feet with far more energy than he felt. “Now there’s an offer I can’t refuse.”
“Medical treatment only, MacGowan.” Her previous bout of grief might never have happened – she was her calm, indomitable self. “Follow me.”
“To the ends of the earth, me darlin’.”
CHAPTER TEN
Don’t think about it, Beth told herself firmly. It won’t do any good, they’re gone and you’ve already fallen apart. You just have to hold on.
They hadn’t gotten into the living quarters. But then, why bother? They’d already killed everyone who lived here, and had her as hostage. She pushed the narrow door open and looked at the familiar, safe confines of her little room once more, and a stray shiver ran across her body.
“Get on the bed,” she said.
Odd how much bigger MacGowan seemed in her tiny room. Without his shirt she could see just how bony he was, probably twenty or thirty pounds under his fighting weight from his years in captivity. He loomed over her, and she finally understood her ambivalence. He had protected her, killed for her, led her to safety. He was safety.
But he was also big and raw and so elementally male that it made her teeth sweat. She’d spent most of her life blissfully above the calls of the flesh and the dark, desperate couplings that subsumed others. She didn’t like sex, didn’t want sex. Body parts were simply that. She looked at MacGowan and thought about sex.
“I’m too bloody, sweaty, and dirty to get on your sheets, sweetheart. You can work while I stand.”
Which kept him looming over her and kept her in a subservient position. She was going to argue with him, but the longer he stood in her tiny room the more overwhelmed she felt. She needed to get him patched up and out of there.
“All right,” she said, reaching under the bed and pulling out her medical kit. A bed that wasn’t as small as the bed they’d shared last night, she realized, feeling her face heat in sudden awareness, and she kept her face down, her voice brisk. She sat down on the bed herself, opening the kit. “Come here.”
He said nothing, moving closer so that his legs were against her knees. The knife had bounced off his ribs, only going in deep in one spot, and it looked relatively clean. She reached for a pair of rubber gloves and started to pull them on when he plucked them out of her hand. “We’ve already been mixing blood, sweat and tears. Save the plastic for someone else.”
“I bet you say the same thing about condoms.” The moment the words were out of her mouth she wanted to bite her tongue. She didn’t want to be talking condoms with this man.
He laughed. “What makes you think I use condoms, Sister Beth? I’m a good Catholic boy.”
That made her give him a disgusted look, but of course he was still teasing her.
“Lighten up. I don’t go around courting disease and dropping bastards. We’re almost out of here, this is just a scratch, and in a few days you’ll be safe back in the states and I’ll be a rich man. No one else is going to die, you’re safe, we’ve made it. Now patch me up and go take a long hot bath.”
She said nothing, bending to her work. Fresh blood had crusted on the wound, and she cleaned it before reaching for the butterfly bandages. She knew it hurt him, but he said nothing, not even flinching, and she began pulling the torn flesh together with the bandages. “How come you have so much hair on your face and so little on your chest?” she grumbled, trying to keep her mind off how warm and sleek his skin was.
“Hoping to shave my chest, were you? I never bothered to think about it. Do you like your men hairy or smooth?”
“It depends where the hair is.”