Hell on Wheels (Black Knights Inc. #1)(66)

After she finished helping him clean and bandage his gunshot wound, then and only then she’d attend to her vomit breath.

Crimeny! She’d been mugged, bugged, surveilled, shot at by an assassin, and now she was about to march into that disgusting excuse for a bathroom and clean out a gunshot wound. She glanced over at the silenced Big Mouth Billy Bass and shook her head.

Don’t worry, be happy. Right.

Trudging back into the bathroom, dreading the next few minutes with every step, she silently coached herself.

You can do this. You can do this. You can—

Oh, boy, there was that wound again. Looking like…well, like a bullet hole.

She quickly averted her eyes and dumped the supplies on the counter. Nate turned and once more presented her with his back.

Ugh, that was worse. The back looked so much worse.

Of course, exit holes usually did—or so she’d been led to believe.

“Pour the disinfectant into the squeeze bottle.”

“’Kay,” she uncapped the brown bottle of peroxide and emptied it into the white plastic squeeze bottle. It had a long, narrow, painful looking nozzle.

“Now shove the nozzle into the wound and give a good squish.”

Ali closed her eyes, silently blew out a breath, shoved the nozzle into his tattered flesh and squeezed. The peroxide spilled from the hole in his back, hissing and bubbling like it was mad at the torn flesh. When she glanced over his shoulder, she could see the same frothing pinkish-red mess fizzing down his chest.

Oh cripes.

“Erp.”

“That’s fine, sugar. Take a break if’y’need to.”

“Nope. I’m good.” She thought maybe she’d thrown up a little in her mouth, but…whatever.

“Okay, now grab the pack of QuikClot. Open it up and sprinkle it into the wound, back and front.”

Mr. Stoic wasn’t fooling her. It had to hurt like crazy when she flushed that ragged hole left by the bullet, but except for the single drop of sweat trickling down his left temple, there was no indication he felt the slightest discomfort.

Swallowing down the burning ball of stomach acid sitting at the back of her throat, she grabbed the pack of QuikClot and ripped it open. His wound, sluggishly oozing before the cleansing, was now bleeding in earnest.

“QuikClot works only if applied directly to the leakin’ vessels, so don’t be shy. Really get th’stuff in there,” he instructed, leaning forward slightly to give her more room to work.

As quickly as she could, she shook some powder from the package and pressed it into the angry wound. Amazingly, the river of blood running down his back dried up in an instant.

Huh, it’s miracle powder.

“Good. Now the front.”

He swiveled on the toilet seat and leaned back against the tank. The front of the wound was neater, cleaner, but still oozing blood in a thick line. Straddling his legs, she leaned over him and repeated the process.

Again the bleeding immediately ceased, drying up quicker than a slug hit by salt. And gross. As if the situation wasn’t disturbing enough, she had to go and think of that.

“That’s good, sugar.” His voice was rough.

She looked down, expecting to see him grimacing in pain, but the crazy man was busy eyeballing her cleavage, revealed by the gaping collar of her shirt.

Really? Boobs? That’s what he was thinking about?

She was thinking of gunshot wounds and blood and slugs, and he was thinking of boobs?

“You men,” she grumbled with disgust as she backed away, moving toward the sink and the washcloths stacked there. “You really only have a few brain cells, don’t you?”

“Yep,” he chuckled, the sound low and intimate and still so totally foreign to her ears. “But they’re very committed.”

“Pfft.”

She wet two washcloths with hot water then twirled her finger, motioning for him to turn back toward the tub. She dropped one of the washcloths over his shoulder and into his lap. “You work on cleaning up your front. I’ll do your back.”

“Roger that.”

As gently as she could, she cleaned the blood from his broad back. Unfortunately, some of it had dried to a sticky paste that required a bit of scrubbing. “Sorry,” she said when he grunted.

“Don’t be,” he hissed, for the first time letting her hear just how bad it really hurt. “It’s gotta be done.”

Yes it did, and amazingly, she was doing it—without tossing her cookies. It was a day for firsts, that was for sure. Then again, it’s not like she had any cookies left to toss.

When they’d washed him clean, she took the bloody washcloths and dumped them in the trash. No amount of laundering would ever make those suckers viable for future use, but she sure as heck didn’t trust the housekeeping staff at Happy Acres not to give it the ol’ college try.

Peeling open two packages of self-adhesive gauze pads, she applied one to each side of the wound.

“There,” she said, dusting off her hands. “All done.”

“Y’did good.”

She rolled her eyes and stepped to the sink, squeezing toothpaste onto the travel-sized toothbrush she’d taken from the first aid kit. “Yeah, I did just great. I only hurled once…er, twice.”

He winked, and she gaped with the toothbrush halfway to her mouth. “Who are you, and what have you done with brooding, morose Nathan Weller?”