“Sure,” he said. “Go right ahead.”
She lifted one leg and crossed it over her knee. From there, she eased the boot from that foot and daintily lowered it to the floor. “You next.”
Sighing, Cole unbuckled his belt, pulled open his jeans and shimmied out of them.
Within seconds after Paige’s eyes dropped down below his waist, she started laughing. “Are those rabbits?”
It was useless for Cole to try and hide them from her, but he couldn’t bring himself to look at the cartoon bunnies plastered all over his boxers. “They were on sale.”
“Oh no they weren’t! The ugly stripes and polka dots go on sale. The solid colors go on sale. Those cute ones are always more. You paid extra for those!”
“I’m bleeding, you know. Weren’t you going to help me?”
Tugging at the leg of his boxers, she giggled, “And it looks like there’s a whole little garden on there too. Is that a carrot?”
“Yowza! Watch where you’re reaching, woman!”
Paige’s hands may have drifted a bit too close to the carrot printed over the fly of his boxers, but she wasn’t so quick to move it. “What other critters have you got hiding in there?”
“You’re about to find out if you’re not careful.”
Leaning in close only caused her hand to drift a bit higher up. “I haven’t been careful all night. Why start now?”
Cole was wounded, bleeding, and more tired than he thought he could be without passing out. He was also close enough to smell the natural scent of Paige’s skin and feel her hair brush against the side of his face. Pulling in half a breath of her was more than enough to push his mouth against her lips and for him to grab hold of her with both arms.
Paige let out a soft, sighing groan as she pushed him onto the bed and took the kiss to a whole other level. Her lips parted and she teased him with her tongue as she swung her leg over and straddled him. The instant that leg fell into place, it brushed against the wound that ran down the length of his calf.
“Oh my God,” Cole gasped. “You’re gonna have to get off of me.”
Tracing her fingers down his chest, she was about to say something when she snapped her attention to his leg. “Oh no! I’m sorry,” she said as she climbed off. “Does that hurt?”
Every part of his body wanted to tell her he was fine and that she should hop aboard to pick up right where they’d left off. Well, some parts more than others. As he tried to move his leg, he grunted, “Yes. It does.”
“Let me just fix you up and we can get back to business.”
“That would be…that sounds…I mean…yes. That sounds good.”
Paige had already gotten up to head for the bathroom. When she came out, she tossed a few towels to him and said, “Clean off that wound first.”
He pressed the towel against his leg, but found that most of the blood had already hardened into a sticky crust. Rather than tear the coating off and create a gruesome mess, he wiped away as much as he could from around the wound. When he looked up again, he was just in time to watch Paige trade her filthy T-shirt for a fresher sleeveless version.
Noticing he was watching, she walked over to him and said, “Good enough. Now hand me that turkey baster.”
In one of the top trays of the kit, he saw several long plastic tubes filled with clear liquid, sealed with plastic caps at one end and rubber bulbs at the other. “Which one?” he asked.
“The one with the stuff to keep you from turning into a Half Breed.” Since Cole hadn’t reached for any of the tubes, she added, “One of the ones marked HB. It doesn’t look like you got hurt bad enough to have a serious problem, but better safe than sorry.”
He grabbed one of those tubes and handed it to her. She popped off the cap and squirted some of the clear blue fluid onto his wound. The stuff might have looked like windshield wiper solution, but soaked in with a cool touch. Paige emptied the rest of the large baster on every open wound both she and Cole had. The treatment left them looking like they’d been in a wet T-shirt contest, which Cole didn’t mind one bit. It all soaked in or evaporated within a couple minutes.
“Now hand me the epidermic paste.”
“What?”
“The tube near the bottom of the kit.”
Cole found the tube and handed it over. He wasn’t quite sure what the stuff was and didn’t think to ask her about it, since Paige was slowly lowering herself onto her knees in front of him. She took the tube from him, popped it open, and looked up with a sly grin on her face.
“Are you ready for this?” she whispered.
“Oh God, yes.”
Reaching out with one hand to brush her fingers and thumb along the side of his wound, she asked, “Are you sure?”
Feeling a rise in the carrot patch, Cole leaned back and told her, “Go for it.”
Thanks to the numbness spreading once more through his leg, he didn’t feel it when Paige pressed her hands against the skin alongside his wound. His calm frame of mind was shot to hell when she pinched the torn skin together and covered it with the stuff from the tube. His hands dug into the mattress and his butt lifted an inch or so up to send the rabbit right back into hiding.
“What the fu—” was all he could get out before the next wave hit him. Paige slid her hand all the way down the length of the wound, pinching it shut and sealing it with the clear, quick-drying glue. She set the tube aside a few seconds later, but the pain in his leg was a gift that kept right on giving.
She leaned forward, brushing against him while reaching for one of the syringes she’d taken from her kit. “Hold still, Cole.”
“Hold still? I can’t believe you tricked me like that!”
“Did that hurt?”
“Fuck, yes it did!”
“What about this?” she purred as she leaned forward again so her breasts rubbed against his other leg. “Is that better?”
Even though it was all he could do to pull in a breath, he replied, “A little.”
“Just think about how nice that feels.” As soon as she saw the first trace of a contented smirk drift across Cole’s face, Paige buried the syringe’s needle into a spot at the top of his wound. With a swift, crisp motion, she turned the needle under his skin so it was pointed downward and then pressed the plunger.
The healing serum flooded through Cole’s leg like ice water, to banish the numbness below his knee and replace it with a whole new kind of pain. While smaller wounds and infections were treated with thinner needles attached to smaller syringes, this one felt like a marker being shoved into his aching shin. “Damn, you’d make a good vet.”
“What made you think of that?”
“The way you distract me right before the hammer drops makes me feel like a dog getting his vaccinations.”
“Just wait until I fish out my rubber gloves.”
“Don’t even joke about that,” he warned.
“Were you hurt anywhere else?” she asked.
“Feels like I was hurt everywhere else, but it’s not too bad.” That was a lie, but he could see the wound on his leg was bleeding less than a few seconds ago.
“Normally, that’d be a bit too much serum for such a short amount of time, but you were hurt enough to burn most of it off. If you have trouble sleeping, take this,” she said while handing him one of the smaller syringes. “Now, do me.”
“I thought I’d ease back into it a bit more, but…” Paige turned her back to Cole and held out the tube of skin sealant she’d just used on him. He took it and sat on the bed behind her.
Peeling her shirt off and holding it against her front, she said, “There’s a few cuts on my back I couldn’t reach. Pinch them shut and cover them with that stuff. Then give me an injection from that small syringe. I don’t need much.”
Cole took his time working on her. There were plenty of scratches, bumps, and bruises, but nothing half as bad as the set of three slashes that ran all the way across her ribs and wrapped around to stop abruptly near her spine. “Looks like something got to you,” he told her. “Your vest caught some of it, though. You ready?”