Page 9 of Grim’s Angel

Her face is level with my chest. The struggle left her coat hanging open, and when she bends over her purse, the collar of the dark shirt beneath it shifts low enough to give me a glimpse of soft cleavage.

My cock thickens behind my zipper because blood loss has done nothing to improve my judgment.

Pain burns through my shoulder and punishes me for noticing.

It does nothing to stop me.

She pulls a small medical kit from her purse and produces gloves, antiseptic, and gauze.

“You carry that everywhere?”

“I’m a nurse.”

“That doesn’t answer the question.”

“I also have anxiety. I could probably treat a minor stabbing and survive two nights in the wilderness with the contents of my purse.”

I look at the broken suitcase lying several yards away. “The luggage might not make it.”

“It has lived a full life.”

Her mouth twitches.

Mine almost follows.

She pulls on the gloves and lifts her hands toward my shirt. “May I?”

The question catches me somewhere beneath the ribs.

People touch a man like me because they want something or believe they have permission they were never given. Women in my bed know what I like, and my brothers know when to keep their distance. Nobody asks before tending a wound.

“Do it.”

Her fingers ease the torn sleeve away from my skin. The movement exposes the fresh path of the bullet and the old scars beneath it.

Three rounds tore through that shoulder during the mission that ended my military career. Men were shouting, sand filled my mouth, and every order that came through the radio asked us to abandon someone who had bled beside us.

The tattoos covering my arms stop before the damaged skin. I leave the scars bare because I need to see them. Forgetting the men who never came home would be another kind of betrayal.

Command buried the truth and pinned the failure on me. The men who gave the order kept their careers.

McKenna looks at them.

She does not ask.

Her gloved fingers follow the edge of the fresh wound with careful pressure, and her breath warms my chest. My cock gives another hard pulse.

She is tending the shoulder she shot while kneeling between my spread thighs, and my body has decided this is foreplay.

Fucking perfect.

“The bullet passed through the top of the muscle,” she says. “You need stitches.”

“I need you to wrap it.”

“You need stitches.”

“You volunteering?”