“The blood, the life and death responsibility, the long hours.”
“This isn’t giving me warm fuzzies for your commitment here.”
“It’s a long story, and we don’t really have time for that now. There are some bad men in this area.”
“No shit. I have the bullet in me to prove that. Bad men are ninety percent of my job, lady.”
“What’s the other ten percent?”
“Eating, sleeping, and having some semblance of personal time.”
“Uncle Sam allows you some personal time? He must be going soft in his old age.” Yeah, sounded to her like he was a SEAL.
This time he laughed, then clutched his side, his face contorted with pain.
“You must have gotten an A in bedside manner. Have at it, Doc. Mi casa, su casa.”
She laughed and then stifled it. Again, so not professional.
She started with his head, feeling for any broken bones in his oh-so-handsome face or jaw, the pads of her fingers scraping over his beard stubble, sending more tingles into her already tingly body, coalescing in the tips of her breasts. She tried to curb her reaction, but it was purely sensory and beyond her control. Then her fingers slipped into all that dark, silky hair. She stopped when he made a soft noise, the lump pronounced.
“How hard did you hit your head?”
“Hard enough to clean my clock, but the helmet took most of the impact.”
She nodded. “Possible concussion. Headache, blurriness, double vision, dizziness?”
“Headache, dizziness, and confusion at first, but now I only have a headache.”
She swiveled and pulled open her pack, taking out her small penlight. She clicked it on and with a flick of her wrist shone the light into each beautiful eye in quick succession. “Responsive. That’s good.” She tucked the light into her cleavage. His eyes flicked down there and back up, his thick brows hiking up.
She ran her hands down his neck to the tops of his broad shoulders. “Clavicle okay.” His clavicle was more than okay. It was sculpted with tantalizing dips and shadows, his trapezius muscles, on either side of his strong neck, well-defined and thick. She palpated his neck and found nothing but bruising.
“Can you sit up?”
“Sure, but the question is, do I want to?” he asked, his expression reluctant.
“I know it hurts, but first things first. I don’t want to move you until I make sure I know your body completely.”
“Is that so?” His voice was a sexy, teasing rumble. He had rule breaker written all over him, a lethal, drop-dead-gorgeous, card-carrying bad boy.
“Um…I meant injuries, purely in a medical sort of way.” Was he somehow playing ninja mind tricks on her? She wasn’t the kind of woman…uh…doctor to have an ulterior motive when touching her patient, but he wasn’t her normal patient.
“Oh, that’s disappointing, Doc, but you’re my rescuer. My body…ah…injuries are yours to handle any way you see fit.”
“You can’t stay here. You need medical attention. I’d like to examine your wound and properly bandage it, stitch up your dog, and handle other injuries that I discover.”
“Lady, I’m six-four and over two hundred pounds. How are you going to move me?”
“So?” She shrugged. She never worried about the how until she had to. At this point, it was all about him and the medical exam. “It’s just a problem to be solved. Leave it to me. I’m the one that constructed a net to catch your tertiary weapon.”
“Jugs isn’t my third weapon. He’s my first.”
“Jugs?” She rolled her eyes. “Please tell me you didn’t name your dog after female mammary glands.”
He chuckled, his eyes going right to her penlight, then he clutched his side again. “Dammit, woman, don’t make me laugh.”
“Well, it’s a legitimate question, you being a pushy alpha male.”
“I am a pushy alpha male and his name is Juggernaut, but I call him Jugs for short or Jughead when he’s being an a-hole.”
“Juggernaut?” She swallowed hard. She’d held her own against a dog called Juggernaut. After the fact, she got nervous thinking if she had been just a fraction of a second too slow to trap the Malinois in her hastily constructed net…
“He really could have hurt me,” she whispered.
“Severely. You are very brave or very stupid, Doc.”
“I took the Hippocratic Oath. Even though I’m no longer practicing medicine, it still applies. It’s an oath.”
“I gotcha. You said something about sitting up?”
“Yes, I need to remove your shirts so that I can assess your torso, especially for hematoma, and then get to work on your wound.” He started to sit up. “Let me do most of the work,” she cautioned. “Put your arm around my shoulders.” She had to get close to him, the heat from his body wafting against her skin. This close she could see his jaw tensing, and she slipped her arms under his back and helped him to rise to a sitting position. He groaned deep in his chest, the rumble vibrating against her, his hand bunching in her khaki vest. His face contorted, and he panted softly.
She scooted behind him and braced him against her. Slipping her hands under both the undershirt and his military shirt, she worked off first one side, then the other, trying to be as gentle as she could.
He expelled all the air from his lungs, then held his breath for a few seconds, then inhaled, holding again for a few seconds. Then he released the air in a controlled exhale.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
“Combat breathing. It helps.”
“Aw, okay,” she said. “Almost there.”
She pulled the clothing over his head and set it on the ground near his tactical vest. Her eyes went to his broad, heavily muscled back. She searched from his neck down to his waist. There were several bruises, but nothing to be alarmed about.
She slipped out from behind him to her knees while he continued breathing, then she helped him to lie back downbearing as much of his weight as possible. He was heavy, but that wasn’t a surprise. He had all that gorgeous, dense muscle on his tall frame.
When he was once again flat on his back, she moved to his wound.
“There are scissors—”
“I’ve got it. Just relax.”
“Mind over matter,” he said, his voice hitching with the pain. “I think the bullet bounced off my rib. It feels broken.”
Her hands went immediately to his lower ribs, and when she touched him there, he gasped. There was swelling, but it wasn’t bad. “Maybe bruised. How far away were you when you were shot?”
“I was in the air when they shot from the ground, so quite a ways.”
“That’s good. There’ll be less damage internally from the impact.” She bit her lip. Even with less damage, she still needed to retrieve the bullet, and to do that, she needed to find a place to safely open him up. She’d have to find some kind of medical facility, and they were too many miles away from any kind of modern city.
One step at a time. She pulled out her own first aid kit and opened it. Grabbing her scissors, she cut off the awkwardly placed bandage. She slipped on a pair of surgical gloves. He made a muffled gasp as she placed her hands on his six-pack abs and palpated his abdomen with her palms. She breathed out slowly in relief. No distention which meant he wasn’t hemorrhaging. She looked down at the wound, and it was sluggishly oozing blood.