Authors: Tara Janzen
CHAPTER
18
H
OLDING HIS BREATH.
Smith was holding his goddamn breath.
He never held his breath. Ever.
But he’d never held the hem of a polka-dot dress in his fingers either, not with the intention of lifting it up and over what he knew deep in his heart was going to be a world-class ass.
Geezus.
She was face down on the bed, her junk pushed to one side, her shoes about half falling off her feet, with a truly heart-wrenching combination of silent sobs and not so silent hiccups percolating out of her.
Fuck
. He had to be on
Candid Camera
. This did
not
happen to him. Ever.
“That last one hurt.”
Yeah, it had hurt him, too, to pull a shard of glass out of her.
“That’s the last of the big ones.”
Big ones,
geezus
. They hadn’t been that big, just big enough to cut her dress and stick a bit of sharp edge in her skin. There was a little blood, though.
Lucky for her, he had a Medkit. Right. Like they were going to need that.
“I think there’s more in there. It still hurts. Really bad.”
Yes. He ran the beam of his flashlight over her again. Her dress was pretty cut up, and he was sure there was more in there, too, which was why he was going to take a look.
“I’m going to take a look,” he said in the most professional voice he could muster.
He
was
a professional, a professional soldier, not a medic. But he’d had training for situations like this, medical situations. Remaining calm was paramount.
So he was calm—until he lifted her dress, and then, for a second or two, he was a little less than calm.
She wasn’t wearing underwear—that was his first impression. Then he realized she was. It was just so incredibly sheer as to be almost invisible. If it hadn’t been for the tiny edge of pink lace trim, he might not have seen it at all.
It was so sheer, it didn’t have a color. It was like looking at her ass through a film of water, and he could have been happy looking at it for a long, long time. But he was on a mission. He had a job to do, and in order to do it, he had to remove that sheer nothing whisper of what could only be silk.
“I don’t work for the State Department.” God knew why he felt compelled to tell her that.
“I know,” she said, her voice muffled from where she had her face buried in her hands and in the bed.
“But I am with the U.S. government, working out of the, uh, Department of Defense.”
“That’s…that’s very comforting,” she said. “To know it’s an actual representative of the United States government who’s officially going to be taking off my underwear and looking at me naked in bed, while I lie here helplessly without my gun.”
“I’m not giving your gun back.” Or the bullet. It was in his pocket, a keepsake of what was turning out to be one of the craziest nights of his life. He had his limits, and arming a cupcake was beyond them. And whether she wanted to admit it or not, she had to know that the actual taking off of the underwear was completely beside the point. She was naked, right now.
“It is under only the most awful duress that I am allowing you to do this.”
“It’s the wise choice, Ms. York.” Just slightly better than hanging around the rest of the night and letting little shards of glass work their way deeper under her skin.
Which, honestly, is what he would have done. He didn’t know where her threshold of pain was, but it seemed to be set at “not very damn much.” He wouldn’t have stretched himself out naked on a bed for a stranger.
Except for someone like her.
Yeah, someone like her probably could talk him into it without having to talk too damn much.
Geezus
. He was such a guy.
“Ms. York-Lytton to you,” she said, her face still in her hands, and another small sob escaped her, followed up by a catch in her breath.
“Let’s just take a look,” he said, ready to do the deed and get it over with.
He slipped his fingers under the top edge of her panties, taking hold of that tiny strip of pink lace and stretching it out enough to pull everything off her without rubbing against her skin.
And the instant he bared her bottom, he realized his mistake.
“Okay,” he said, keeping his voice calm. “There is another piece in there, right next to where I took the last one out, but don’t worry. It’ll just take a minute to remove, and then you’ll be fine.”
And she would be, once he got it out—but
geezus.
He finished pulling her underwear down, but not off. He stopped at the top of her thighs, which gave him all the access he needed.
Not all he wanted, he silently admitted, and he wasn’t very happy about having to admit anything. But all he needed.
She sobbed again, and yeah, he could imagine it did hurt like hell. A long sliver of glass had embedded itself under her skin, a two-inch sliver with just its tip showing.
No wonder he hadn’t seen it, and no wonder she was crying and letting him take her panties off.
Which, for all the wonder of that, made him feel like shit.
He was going to have to use his knife.
“Would you like some pain meds? I have some in my pack.”
“Oh, right, like I’m…like I’m going to take drugs from a stranger. I don’t even know your name.”
“Smith,” he told her again.
She said something to that, something mumbled into her hands, and he thought it was “bullshit.” As a matter of fact, he was pretty damn sure that’s what she’d said. Two minutes ago, it would have made him grin, but not when he was going to have to cut her. The sliver of glass was just under her skin. He could see it very clearly.
“Just do it,” she said, sounding completely resigned and completely miserable. “Just do what you need to do to get it out.”
Okay.
He knelt by the side of the bed, where he’d left his pack, and pulled out his Medkit.
“Do you have another bottle of alcohol?” he asked.
The question got another sob and some rustling around through her junk. After a few seconds, she lifted a little bottle over her head.
“Vodka, the good stuff. Great. Thanks.” He was rambling, and that was a first, too. He opened the kit and pulled out some gauze bandages. Then he pulled his folding knife out of his pocket and thumbed it open.
“I-I heard that,” she said, lifting her head out of her hands and looking over her shoulder at him—her bare shoulder. Her face instantly fell. “A knife?”
“I’m going to need to make a small incision,” he said, and she started to tremble.
Just like that.
Like somebody had plugged her in.
“Do you want to reconsider the meds?” he asked.
She shook her head.
“You have about a three-inch sliver of glass just under the skin. I’m going to make a small incision at the top of it and—”
“N-no.”
“No?” What did she mean no?
“I want a doctor.”
As if to punctuate his next thought, another explosion sounded out on the streets of San Luis, coming from the east. Not close, just close enough to be heard for what it was: trouble.
“No,” he said. There was no doctor in her future, not tonight. It wasn’t going to happen. “It’s just a long sliver, Ms. York-Lytton. I’m not a doctor, but I have had some training, and I have taken care of much worse wounds than this without losing anybody.” There had been a night up on the Rio Putumayo when his partner, Kid Chaos Chronopolous, had been hurt real bad, a couple of gunshot wounds and various other superficial traumas, not to mention they’d had to swim the friggin’ Putumayo to catch a boat, and he’d gotten Kid through that just fine.
A terrible, ragged sigh left her, and she buried her face back into her hands.
“Just do it,” she said, the words barely audible.
“Can you stop shaking?” His knife was razor sharp, and he’d just as soon not end up autographing her butt with it.
“No.”
“Breathe.”
“I
am
breathing.”
Hell. He’d known it was a long shot.
“C. Smith Rydell,” he said. “And that’s the truth, the whole truth.”
And that got her attention.
She turned to look over her shoulder.
“C. Smith Rydell?”
“Yes,” he said, and handed her the flashlight. “Shine this on your butt—as best you can.”
“With two
L
s?”
“Two.” He poured vodka on a piece of gauze and very carefully wiped it over her skin. Then he poured a bit on the edge of his knife.
“What’s the
C
stand—
ahh
.” She gasped, but it was done.
He took the flashlight from her so she could bury her face back in her hands and cry a little. There was blood, but he got the glass out, and washed out the wound, and used a towel he’d brought from the bathroom to keep from getting the bed wet, and she sobbed a little more, and then a little more.
And he did what he did best—evaluate situations and solve problems.
He started by brushing off the rest of her butt, and yes, that was a medical procedure, using the pads of his fingers to carefully feel for more glass.
There was none—and yes, she had an incredible ass, one he wasn’t likely to forget, not in his current life, and probably not in the next one, either. But all told, she’d gotten the two minor pieces and the one big sliver in her, and her amazingly flimsy dress and almost nonexistent underwear had saved her from the rest.
Satisfied, at least in one sense of the word, he put some antibiotic cream on her and bandaged her up with a folded piece of gauze and a few strips of surgical tape, and was careful not to run his fingers over the tape any more than necessary. And there it was: her ass, soft curves, incredible skin, a tan line that could only be called Brazilian—which gave him another crazy, hot thought—and a small square of perfectly white gauze.
It was amazing really, the turns a life could take. Five days ago, he’d been in another hotel room with another woman, in another Central American city: Colón, Panama.
He tilted his head to one side, surveying his handiwork for about half a second before he let his gaze drift lower, into the shadowy area between her legs. He couldn’t see anything. He’d been too careful with her underwear, only pulling them down the absolute minimum amount he needed to get the job done.
Another inch would have been great.
Another two, and he’d probably have gotten himself in trouble.
He’d seen Red Dog in her underwear, her work underwear, which could best be described as sports underwear. Still, she looked damn good in it. The girl was ripped.
But there was nothing about Red Dog in her underwear that broke his heart. Sometimes he got a little turned on. She was gorgeous, and gorgeously fucked-up, but she didn’t really flip his switches.
Cupcake did.
He tilted his head the other way, and wondered if there was any way on earth to have her tonight. He was already about half hard, and there wasn’t much he wouldn’t give to play a few rounds of Shameless Sorority-Girl Sex Games with her—the more shameless the better.
“Y-you’re staring at my ass,” she said, and hiccupped.
“No, I’m not,” he lied.
He saw her wipe at her tears before she turned her head to look at him. He met her gaze straight on, without an ounce of guilt.
“Yes, you are.”
In Colón, he’d watched Red Dog take out two bad guys, smoke them right on the street.
The only person getting slain here tonight was him.