Page 18 of Grim’s Angel

Grim leads me through an open doorway.

A man with watchful dark eyes waits inside a medical room that would embarrass several rural clinics. Locked cabinets line one wall, and monitors stand beside a padded examination table.

“Razor,” Grim says. “The nurse says it needs stitches.”

Razor inspects the bloodied scarf. “She’s right. Sit down before you ruin my floor.”

I like him immediately.

Grim removes his cut and sets it carefully over the back of a chair. When he catches the hem of his wet shirt with his good hand, pain tightens his jaw.

“Stop,” I say.

His silver eyes meet mine.

I step closer. “May I?”

“Yeah.”

I ease the bloodied fabric away from his skin and lift it carefully over his head.

My nursing education supplies the correct anatomical term for every muscle revealed beneath the shirt. My body dismisses years of Latin and offers one thoroughly unprofessional diagnosis.

He is dangerously male.

Heavy muscle spans his chest and shoulders before narrowing into a hard waist. His body looks built to carry wounded men out of fire and make a woman forget every sensible promise she has ever made. Dark hair shades the center of his chest before tracing a path over the ridges of his abdomen toward the waistband of his jeans.

Black ink curves around his ribs and covers his arms, shifting with each controlled breath.

I have spent years learning how to examine a body without reacting to it. Grim’s makes me want to forget the clinical version and discover the rest with my hands.

My gaze follows the shallow hollows above his hips before the damage across his shoulder reminds me why his shirt is off. Pale scars mark the places bullets tore through him, each one a brutal interruption in the ink.

The fresh wound cuts across them in an angry red line.

Grim watches me notice everything.

His silver eyes darken, and the medical room suddenly feels too small for both of us.

Heat reaches my face.

“This would be easier if you were less enormous.”

His mouth moves at one corner. “Overgrown, remember?”

“The condition appears more serious without the shirt.”

Razor makes a sound suspiciously close to a laugh before handing me gloves and a bottle of sterile saline.

“So you’re a nurse.”

“Newly licensed.”

“A new license still counts. Irrigate while I prepare the anesthetic.”

Grim sits on the examination table. I pull on the gloves and clean the wound while Razor draws lidocaine into a syringe.

Striker appears in the doorway.