“It’s okay. Olek fell,” she said softly to Jayson.
Her lips were still tingling from his kiss, and all she wanted was for him to walk back over to her and pick up where they’d left off, but he stayed where he was and slowly eased his pistol into the holster behind his back. His heart was beating hard though, and that—along with the scent of his arousal—told her he was still hungry for her.
Layla smiled, about to ask why he was standing all the way over there with a hard-on in his jeans, when another scent caught her attention—blood. Then she saw the big stain on the upper right side of his pants. Her heart seized in her chest.
She was across the room and on her knees in front of him so fast that he actually took a step back.
“Whoa,” he laughed. “Not that I’m complaining or anything, but is now seriously the time for this?”
Layla rolled her eyes.Men. She gave him a look and pointed at the dark stain on his jeans. “You’re bleeding.”
“Oh.”
Layla almost laughed at the blatant disappointment on his face. A rain check was definitely in order for this particular position as soon as they got back to DC.
“Yeah, I got shot. The wound isn’t infected though,” he added. “The hybrid serum must have taken care of that for me. It’s not healing up like I heard it does for shifters, but it stopped bleeding almost right away. I think it’ll be fine.”
She bit her lip. How the hell could she just come out and say Zarina had given him a drug that had stopped most, if not all, of the hybrid changes he’d probably been expecting?
“Do you mind if I take a look anyway?” she asked.
“Go ahead.”
She extended her claws and reached for his jeans, but he grabbed her hands.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m going to tear open your jeans so I can check the wound.”
His mouth curved into a smile. “You don’t have to rip them. It’s not like I brought extra clothes with me, and I’m pretty sure I’d attract a lot of attention walking around flashing bare leg and a bloody bandage.”
He had a point.
When she reached for his belt, she thought he might stop her again and insist that he could do it. But he didn’t complain as she undid the buckle, then the buttons on his jeans. While easing his pants down his hips was certainly fun, it would have been a lot more pleasurable if not for the present circumstances.
She only pushed them down to mid-thigh, just enough to bare the bandage-wrapped wound. He’d done a good job, which wasn’t surprising since all Special Forces guys had combat medic skills, but blood still seeped through the material.
“Do you have any more cloth so I can put on a fresh bandage?” she asked as she untied the knot and slowly unwrapped it.
Motioning behind her with his head, he said, “Yeah, there’s some in the back room. I was trying to catch a few hours of sleep when you ran in and scared the hell out of me.”
She winced. “Sorry about that.”
Layla swallowed hard as she unwrapped the last of the material to expose the ragged bullet wound in his upper thigh. She wasn’t usually the squeamish type, but seeing Jayson’s blood made her feel queasy. She could clearly see the entrance and exit wounds, and while the edges were red and angry, they didn’t look infected. Jayson was right. Most of the bleeding had stopped, though she doubted it had anything to do with the hybrid serum. Most likely, the constriction of the capillaries due to swelling was responsible for that. She didn’t point that out to him, though.
“I’ll be right back,” she said as she straightened up.
She went into the back room to get more material only to stop midstep when she saw the folded piece of carpet Jayson had been using as a bed. Sleeping on that would have been murder on her back. She couldn’t imagine what it was doing to his.
Beside the carpet, there was a half-filled bottle of water, a stack of candy bars, and some torn strips of material from what looked like a T-shirt. She grabbed the water and material and walked back into the main room. Kneeling down in front of Jayson again, she gently began to clean the wounds. Looking at them still made her feel a little ill, and she forced herself to focus on something else. Like Jayson’s legs. Even as crazy as the situation was, there was still something sexy about being so close to all that muscle. Other than when he wore shorts, she’d never really gotten a very good look at his legs. He had some seriously sexy thighs, wounded or not.
She did her best to keep her eyes averted from his underwear—and everything in there that seemed to be working hard to get out. Yet something else she hadn’t seen much of lately. Oh, if this had been another place, another time.
“How did you find me anyway?” he said as she wiped away the crusted blood that had dried on his leg. “And what are you doing in Donetsk by yourself?”
Layla had been wondering when they’d have to talk about this stuff. She took a deep breath, reminding herself that this time, at least, neither one of them would be able to walk out on the other.
“Finding you was the easy part,” she said. “The whole town is buzzing with stories about the gunfight you and Powell got into with the militia soldiers. I eavesdropped enough to figure out where it started, then followed your scent from there. I lost it for a while on the building where you and Powell split up.”
