“The need to protect people.”
“Oh.” She furrowed her brow, considering. Her uncle ran a security firm. Her dad had been a cop. And she had been with the Secret Service. “Huh. I’ve never really thought about it that way. Yeah. I guess you’re right. Must be in the blood. And speaking of blood… I’ve cleaned up all the dried blood around your wound. Now I need to clean the wound itself. Brace yourself.”
Dan didn’t utter a word, didn’t suck in his breath, didn’t hiss when the big, crusty scab came away to reveal the angry, slowly seeping laceration beneath. His stoic silence was the very opposite of Winterfield’s overblown theatrics.
When Penni ducked her chin, she discovered the reason for his reticence. The front of her V-neck sweater was gaping open, and he was staring at her boobs with a hungry intensity that stole her breath. She played it off with a teasing snort, shaking her head even as her nipples twanged with sensation. It was like his heated gaze was a physical caress, the movement of his eyes over the lace-covered peaks the equivalent of a warm, wet tongue.
“See something you like, sailor?”
“Roger that.” He licked his lips, not even pretending to repent for having been caught ogling her goodies. “Helps keep my mind off the…oh…ow…owy…pain.” He added a blatant whine to his tone in an effort to gain her sympathy.
“Oh, and now who’s using the oldest trick in the Men’s Guidebook to Women? Appealing to the Florence Nightingale in my nature?”
His eyes flashed up to her, sparkling devilishly, his hands sneaking up to grip her hips. God, he’s hot. Both metaphorically and literally. “And here I was hoping I was being subtle,” he said.
“If there’s a subtle bone in your body,” she told him—was it her imagination, or had the temperature inside the little room jumped ten degrees in the last ten seconds?—“I’ll eat that tissue dispenser.” She gestured over her shoulder.
“Is that a bad thing?” he asked, his thumbs rubbing circles on her hip bones. She imagined those thumbs rubbing in the same circular motion on a totally different part of her body. Heat bloomed over her skin, under her skin, coalescing low in her belly. She turned to grab another wipe. It was either that or she was going to find a way to join that Mile High Club, and damn the pulled muscles and sprained joints that would inevitably follow!
“Eating the tissue dispenser?” she asked, one brow raised. “Well, I imagine it’ll cause some mad indigestion and probably won’t—”
“That I’m not subtle about what I want,” he interrupted, his voice wonderfully low. It made the tiny room seem even more intimate.
“D-did I say it was a bad thing?” she asked, putting the towelette to good use on his clean, slowly seeping wound while simultaneously searching through the first-aid kit for more butterfly bandages. You know, just to give her hands something to do other than sneak up under the hem of his sweater and run all over his corrugated belly and mile-wide chest. The iron-y smell of blood reached her nose, competing with Dan’s clean scent and the harsh, medicinal aroma of the antiseptic.
“Some women like a little mystery in their men.” He shrugged one big shoulder. “They like the not knowing. They think it’s exciting.”
“Pfft,” she snorted, tossing the last wipe away and then carefully pulling the two halves of his wound together with one of the bandages. The cut could probably use a stitch or two, but she hadn’t the skill or the stomach for that task. Needles? She shivered. No, thank you. “You mean some girls like it,” she corrected. Her proximity to him made her head spin and her knees tremble with the desire to straddle him and rock herself to completion against the huge erection straining the front of his jeans.
He didn’t even pretend to hide it from her when he shifted atop the toilet and her eyes automatically pinged down to his fly. “I-I…” She had to stop and lick her lips. Her throat had gone completely dry. “I stopped playing games, including hard to get, when I was in my twenties.”
“Mmm,” he grumbled.
Now he was Mr. Grumbly Grumbleton. She couldn’t decide who she liked better. Growlerton or Grumbleton. They were both sexy as hell. Applying two more butterfly bandages, she used a tissue to wipe away the few drops of blood that had welled out of the wound. She was in the process of backing away to study her handiwork when Dan tightened his hands on her hips.
“You have no idea how glad I am to hear you say that,” he rumbled. Mr. Rumbly Rumbleton? “’Cause I don’t believe in playing games either.”
“So what do you believe in?” Her voice was now so hoarse it sounded like she’d been eating glass. Some people didn’t have a poker face. She didn’t have a poker voice.
“Oh, I believe in a lot of things,” he whispered, a muscle ticking in his jaw beneath his beard stubble. It made the crescent-moon scar twitch.