They kissed until someone let out a teasing whistle.
Lance pulled one hand from her and flipped his friends off as he eased from her lips. His eyes never strayed from hers. “Why’re you running through the forest in a pretty dress, sweetheart?”
Her chest warmed and she smoothed her palms down his front. “Because a lunatic tried killing me outside my best friend’s apartment. The forest was the only place we could get to and get out of sight before we got shot.”
He drew a hard breath. “Which you did.”
She cringed. “As it turns out, yes.” In an attempt to ease the darkening mood building behind his eyes, she added, “Not until after I hit three of them, technically.”
He didn’t fall for it. “I’m gonna need to see.”
Lynnette patted his chest. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believeI’mthe nurse here? And I know I damn sure don’t have any medical supplies available.”
Lance brushed another kiss to her lips, then eased a half-step back and looped an arm around her shoulders. “Not to worry, Lynn. We should have enough. Let’s get you comfortable and you can walk me through what needs doing.”
She blinked, watching as the blond male named Billy shrugged out of his oversized backpack and dropped to a knee. She was still watching as the man casually asked, “What’re we doing about the other guy?”
“Let him fuckin’ bleed,” Lance replied as he guided Lynnette toward a large rock.
“Other guy?” Lynnette heard herself ask, her gaze flitting over the three laid side-by-side, face-down on the dirt. She should probably have felt bad for the way the one jerk’s shoulders were heaving, indicating that he was having a harder time breathing in that position. Instead, she decided he was lucky aerosol was all she’d had to defend herself with at the time.
Lance bent down, cupping his hand over her bleeding thigh as if the motion of her sitting or the nearness of the rock put her at greater risk. Once she was seated, he eased the skirt of her dress out of the way just enough to reveal the wounded area, moving the fabric carefully so as to preserve her modesty, and she saw the way his jaw clenched again.
Billy answered for him as he passed over a clearly marked med kit. “The guy who had his gun on you, and whom our sharpshooting Master Guns left alive in the shrubs up ahead.”
Lynnette’s eyes widened. “He’s still alive?” She nudged Lance. “I thought you’d killed him.”
Lance roughly removed the gloves from his hands. “Shot him once through the spine. He’s paralyzed, not dead. It’ll take him a damn long time to bleed out from that. More likely bears orwolves will finish him off, assuming this forest has those.” He tore open a sanitary wipe and scrubbed at his skin, dipping the cloth beneath his short nails in a quick, efficient manner.
Lynnette rolled his words through her mind, replayed the scene, and finally shoved it all aside. Was it cruel? Yes, arguably. Was it kinder than what that man had openly intended to do to her? Absolutely. And to her mind, it was no less a fate than men in his chosen profession deserved. “We do,” she said as the decision settled. “Have bears and wolves, I mean.” She angled herself carefully to get a better look at the wound still throbbing in her leg.
Blood was smeared and trickling over her skin, and she knew the next several minutes were going to be incredibly uncomfortable. They would need to clear away as much of the blood as possible, find some way to sanitize the area, then stop the bleeding and close up the gash. It looked—as best she could tell—rather rough. About three inches in length, give or take, and wider than she had hoped. It’d probably scar.
Lynnette blew out a hard breath and lifted her gaze to find Lance’s. “Hope you don’t mind me a little less feminine.”
He blinked once. “When this is healed enough not to hurt anymore,” he said, reaching for another wipe, “I’ll show you exactly how much I don’t mind.” He held her stare, the green in his eyes sparking. “The only thing I give two shits about is that you stayed alive. This? This is nothing, babe.”
Chapter twenty-two
Bleeding Out
“Jenna!” Lynnette exclaimed almostbefore Lance finished wrapping the gauze around her thigh. The wrap was mostly to hold the larger padding in place, but it also helped to protect against infection. Lynnette didn’t heal like he did.
She shoved to her feet the moment he turned to tuck things back into the med kit. “We can’t linger here. Jenna is—”
Lance latched onto her hips to hold her in place, tossed the kit in Billy’s direction, and rocked to his feet. “Jenna is fine,” he said, forcing his words to be calm. Calm was close to the last thing he felt.
He’d seen terrible injuries. He’d watched men die in an instant. He’dtakengruesome injuries that would have rendered most men lame or worse. To say nothing for the other unpleasant shit he’d endured. A little blood on a small, barely finger-width gash shouldn’t mean a damn thing to him. But it was her blood. The gash marred her flesh. And he wasn’t well-equipped enough to keep it from scarring when it healed.
All because he hadn’t caught up to her in time.
Lynnette shook her head, one hand pushing at his chest. “No,” she said. “I left her alone, by the creek, so I could draw these assholes away—”
Lance lifted his hands to cup her face. “Lynn,” he said, more firmly, “Jenna’s fine. Jon will have caught up to her by now.” He waited a beat for the words to process in her mind. “You left her by water? Then I promise you, she was safe before you were. You can take a breath, sweetheart. Think about your own needs.”
Her mouth opened and her fingers curled over his shirt. Then she gave her head a tight shake. “If I do that, I think I’ll collapse.”
Well, at least she was honest.
