“What are you doing?”
“I’m looking for something to make a tourniquet. We’ve got to stop the bleeding. I’m not going to let you bleed out in the back of this godforsaken cab.” I leaned back over the front seat. “No offense.”
“None taken.”
I could feel the sweat bead out at my hairline and above my upper lip as I wrung my hands and looked out the front windshield. “Can’t you go any faster?”
When I turned back to Alex, he was grinning.
“What?”
“You. I’m fine, really. It’s a scratch. Hey, guy, can you just take us back to her house? In the Sunset.”
The driver obediently flipped on his blinker and I lurched over the front seat. “No. San Francisco General.”
He flipped his blinker in the other direction.
“Lawson, I’m fine.”
“You’re delirious! We need to call the cops. Did we get anything on the perp?”
Alex pushed me back with his good hand and a slight smile. “You’re delirious. The perp? Didn’t I tell you no more Law and Order?” He reached for me, fingered my elbow. “You’ve got a heck of a scratch there.”
I glanced down, shrugged him off, and pointed to the piddly-looking collection of scratches on my arm. “That is nothing. That”—I gestured to his gaping wound—“is serious.”
“Lawson—”
I touched Alex’s hand, and felt his blood on my fingertips. I felt the tears burning behind my eyes. “But you’re going to bleed out.”
Alex put both hands firmly on my shoulders and stared me in the eye, his an intense, piercing blue. “Lawson, I am not going to bleed out. I am not”—he glanced over the seat and then back at me, dropping his voice—“a normal person.”
I don’t know if it was divine intervention, angelic persuasion or the post-mustard drunkenness of a Giants win, but I believed him instantly and nodded enthusiastically. “Right. Right.”
“So no hospital?” the cab driver wondered.
“No, no.” I glanced back at Alex. “It’s not as bad as I thought it was.”
Alex kept a firm grip on his shoulder as I pushed open the door of the apartment building. “You’re sure you’re okay?”
“It’s going to be fine.” His tongue dragged across his bottom lip and I cursed myself for feeling so wildly attracted to this sexy, bleeding man.
“Come upstairs.”
I held the apartment door open for Alex and watched Nina go from prone to bolt upright on the couch, an InStyle magazine falling onto the floor, her nostrils flaring. “Who’s bleeding?” she asked without turning around.
Alex paled and took a step back, ramming into me. I shoved around him. “Alex. And he’s going to be fine. Is the first aid kit still under the sink?”
He grabbed my elbow as I tried to step away. “Is she going to—?”
“Eat you? No.” Nina stood in front of us, offered me the first aid kit. While I was impressed by her vampire speed, Alex still seemed unconvinced that he wasn’t about to be a vamp snack.
“And Vlad is out with the fang gang, burning copies of True Blood or something. So what happened?”
“We were mugged. Take off your shirt.”
Alex’s eyes nervously trailed to Nina and she rolled hers. “Fine!” She stomped toward her room. “But just so you know, if I were going to eat you, I would have done it a long time ago.”
“Good to know.”
“Hemophobe.” She slammed the door.
“Shirt off.”
Alex did as he was told and I went from Florence Nightingale to Jenna Jameson. My mouth watered at the smooth contours of his chest and my body ached, remembering how long it had been since I had seen half-naked man flesh ... in the flesh. Now it was twice in one night.
“Is something wrong?”
I wagged my head and busied myself soaking a washrag under the faucet and lining up a roll of gauze and surgical tape. “Okay, move your hand.”
The blood was smeared from the edge of Alex’s collarbone and thickened into a dark red band around his bicep. The thin edges of his tattoo faded into the blood and I used the damp rag to gently wipe it away, careful not to aggravate the open wound. I wiped a little more and Alex’s naked skin peeked through, a healthy pink. More skin, more pink. I grabbed his palm and scrubbed that, then frowned, taking a step back.
“Where is all this blood coming from?” I snatched the discarded Barry Bonds T-shirt he had been wearing and poked my fingers through the neat, blood-soaked hole at the shoulder.
Alex bit his bottom lip. “I told you.”
“But it’s—gone?”
Alex rung out the rag, wetted it again, and scrubbed his arm. He turned on the coffee-table lamp and beckoned me to look closer. I squinted, and saw a five-inch scar in his skin. It was clean, slightly puckered—a pale remembrance of a slice.
I touched it gently, my fingertips gliding over the glossy, raised surface. “It’s healed.”
He gave me a tight-lipped smile. “Kind of an above-world perk.”