“Nikolai.”
I race to him, the uneven ground not enough of a deterrent to stop me from reaching him.
“Oh god.” My visual of his thigh bone piercing his jeans is too sickening for a mature response.
“Why didn’t you say something? You’re hurt. You can’t walk with a bone sticking out of your leg.”
My panicked rant stops when Nikolai says, “I had to protect you,Ahren.Nothing will stop me from keeping you safe.”
His sentence ends in a roar from me applying pressure to the top half of his thigh. “You need to suck it up. You’re bleeding from too many areas. You’ll bled out if we don’t stop it.”
I don’t know whether to kiss him or punch him when he laughs, “You can’t get rid of me that easily,Ahren.You’re stuck with me for eternity, remember?”
God, I hope so.
After bracing his back on the wall, Nikolai says, “We need a splint, something to hold the bone straight and stop the bleeding.”
I don’t want to know why he’s so knowledgeable on broken bone management, but unfortunately, I already am. His medical records expose how many horrible injuries he suffered during his childhood.
“Will this work?” I hold up two decently wide sticks lying on the ground next to us.
Nikolai nods. “Now we need something to strap them to my leg.”
I scan every inch of the land visible in the moonlight. There are a handful of vines lying around, but I don’t see them helping. They’re too fragile to knot.
“What about my skirt?” I suggest, waving my hand over the material covered with soot and ash.
“No,Ahren.When my men come, I don’t want to send them packing so they don’t see you like that.” His hot breath fans my lips when he growls, “I don’t share,” in Russian.
“Seriously?” I roll my eyes. “You’re being ridiculous. You either rip it, or I’ll remove it entirely.”
Glaring at him, I shove the hem of my skirt in his hands. I’m cramping and hormonal; now is not the time to mess with me.
Realizing I’ll never scare a man who is fearless into obeying me, I try another tactic. “Come on, Nikolai, don’t act like you haven’t been fantasizing about tearing it off me all night.”
Just when I think he’ll never agree with my demand, the sound of cotton ripping echoes in the silence of the night. He doesn’t shred my skirt off me like he did in the plane earlier this week; he just weakens the hem line enough that a rope-like material hangs halfway down my thighs a few seconds later.
After an additional tug, he hands the shredded material to me. “Now we both win.”
I roll my eyes while circling it around his leg.
“Sorry,” I apologize on repeat when I use it to constrict the blood flow to his thigh. “Is it too tight?”
Nikolai shakes his head, preferring to lie without words. I don’t need to hear his words to know he’s in pain, though. I can see it in his eyes. He’s hurting badly, both physically and mentally.
I remove a bead of sweat from his brow before asking, “Now what?”
Nikolai leans his back against the rockface he had me pinned to minutes ago before drawing me into his chest. I accept his comfort, but do it without placing any of my weight on him. He has a broken leg and a bullet wound in his shoulder. He shouldn’t be sitting upright, much less sheltering me.
“Now we rest until our men find us.” His low, shallow breaths as he struggles to remain conscious lull me to sleep within minutes. . .
“This way. He’s over here.”
Trey signals to the men watching our every move from above to make sure we’re heading in the right direction before he follows me to the ledge Nikolai and I spent the night huddled on. The only thing is, Nikolai isn’t there.
“Are you sure this is the right spot?”
I nod before all of Trey’s question leaves his mouth. There is a strand of cotton the same color as my skirt floating between the leaves of the tree we camped under, and the blood Nikolai’s shirt failed to absorb is giving the earth-toned rock a red tint.
