Page 59 of Nothing to Fear

“Let’s get started.” She gave him an expectant look. “Take off your pants and lie down on the bed.”

The words tangled in his head, curling like strangling vines. “What?”

“With the irrigation, you should remove your jeans. The blood will ruin them.”

“Yeah. Sure. Okay.” Hell no. Trapped in a confined space with Willow and no pants on added up to bad idea. Far from okay.

“Gideon.” A question danced in her eyes. “Your pants?”

Holy mother. He was scared, a big yellow-bellied coward, and nothing scared him. Nada. Zilch. Not deep-cover missions, hunting terrorists, hit squads, the prospect of dying—none of it elevated his pulse past eighty. Yet this sexy half-pint had his pulse in a flat-out sprint over the idea of taking off his stupid pants.

Willow snagged a finger through a belt loop and tugged him closer. His mutinous feet moved forward, and the next thing he knew, she lowered his zipper.

He swatted her hand away. “I’ve got it.”

If his pants were coming off—and they had to, as clothes were limited and blood on his jeans wouldn’t be inconspicuous in the Caymans—then he’d be the one to remove them.

“Don’t snap at me when I’m only trying to help,” she said, letting her steely backbone show. “I don’t appreciate it.”

He admired a woman who wasn’t afraid to put him in his place. “Got it. Sorry.” Kicking off his boots, he slid his pants down, revealing his boxer briefs, and shoved them aside.

Her gaze dipped past his waist. She wet her bottom lip and snagged it between her teeth. “You’d be more comfortable lying down. Let’s go to the bed.”

Yeah, that was not going to happen. “We’ll do it out here.” He sat on the L-shaped bench.

“Fine.” She sank to her knees between his legs and draped a towel across his hip below the wound. Her knuckles skimmed his inner thigh, stirring a tingle across every nerve ending. The hot and hungry kiss they’d shared came roaring back to him, her curves filling his palms, her eager tongue licking up into his mouth and luring him deeper.

Stiffening, he beat his monstrous libido unconscious, threw it in a trunk along with the memory of that kiss, and locked both away.

He popped a couple of pain-reliever tablets and snagged a packet of ceftriaxone. The one-dose antibiotic came as a crystalline powder. He mixed it with water, filled a sterile syringe, and injected it in a vein in his arm.

Peeling off the gauze, Willow inspected his injury. Then she looked up at him with those sparkling eyes. His skin turned tight as a vacuum-sealed pack with the need for something ineffable, and for a split second, he forgot the pain.

Ice-cold saline shot into the wound. Shards of agony bloomed and splintered through his body.

“Jeez!” He clenched his jaw and turned his hands into fists, breathing through his nose. “It’s freezing. A little warning next time.”

“Warm water sits in a hot water tank where sediment and sludge accumulate. I thought it was better to use cold water to flush the wound.”

In theory, it sounded smart. In reality, it gave him the startling equivalent of a much-needed cold shower. He’d take a lot of those in the next two days.

Blood leaked from the gaping flesh onto the towel. She dabbed at his abdomen with gauze. He watched for any signs she was about to toss her cookies, but her gaze didn’t waver, and her fingers stayed steady. Impressive.

She grabbed a new dressing treated with the blood-clotting agent and pressed it to the slit. “You’ll have to talk me through stitches. The more specifics, the better. In college, I could wing anything, except social stuff. I’ve always sucked at that.”

Her openness was astonishing, took his breath away, and left him in awe.

“No stitches. You’ll have to use this.” He handed her the skin stapler. “Hold the wound closed and line up the arrow with the center of the cut. Then press down hard with the device and deploy a staple about every centimeter.”

He pulled away the gauze. The blood-clotting agent had worked, giving him a clear view. All in all, the wound wasn’t too bad. Barring infection, it would heal, but with a nasty scar.

“This is going to hurt, isn’t it? A lot.”

He nodded. It was going to hurt like a son of a bitch, but there was no way around it. “Have at it. Has to be done.” He gripped the edge of the table and braced himself.

She held the two sides of the wound together and, following his instructions, pressed the first of ten staples in.

A sharp pang arced through him and he gritted his teeth. If he were the one wielding the stapler, he’d focus on the internal ticking in his head until he was done. But with Willow touching him, the one sound in the world he longed to hear was her voice.