Girl Gone Viral (Modern Love #2)(50)

“Nothing on me is that sharp.”

He took a second to reply. “Your knee. Your elbow.” He placed his hand on her elbow.

Zings. Zings aplenty. Enough zings to power a nuclear plant.

Oh no, oh no, oh no.

It’s your elbow. The unsexiest part of any body.

And yet.

His hand was warm and callused, the snags on his skin catching her softer flesh. She had a brief fantasy of those hands rubbing their way down the rest of her body. Her naked body.

“Katrina?”

His voice came from far away, like it was being filtered through Vaseline. “Got it. Eyes. Sharp parts of my body. Softer parts of theirs. Claws first.”

“Or weapons. You have your pepper spray, right?”

After her kidnapping, when she’d been especially jumpy, Jas had given her a few pepper spray containers to keep around, and then refreshed them with new ones every couple of years.

The spray was the only kind of weapon she felt equipped to carry. Guns and knives scared her. When she’d asked Jas to move to California and be her main security, he’d quietly explained he wasn’t capable of handling firearms, and only carried a Taser.

She hadn’t needed him to elaborate. She wasn’t na?ve, and it didn’t take a huge leap of imagination to understand why a wounded vet might shy away from guns. It hadn’t been a deal breaker for her. She trusted him to protect her with every resource at his disposal. “The last ones you gave me just expired.”

Jas frowned. “Why didn’t you say something? I’ll get you new ones.”

She rubbed her nose, mildly embarrassed by imparting new evidence of her nerdiness. “I actually made a batch a couple weeks ago.”

“You made it?”

“Yes. I read—”

“An article,” he finished.

Katrina lifted a shoulder. “I was curious. I still planned on ordering new commercial ones, but it was a fun science experiment. I stuck one in my purse.”

Jas narrowed his eyes. “Can you show me?”

“Um. Sure.”

He followed her upstairs and into the kitchen. Doodle thumped her tail from her position in front of the front door.

Her large tote was on the kitchen counter. She pulled out a small unlabeled red bottle and handed it to him. “The biggest drawback is the pressurization, of course,” she remarked. “The ones sold in stores are obviously more forceful.”

“What’s in it?” He opened the bottle and carefully sniffed it. His nose twitched.

“Peppers, cayenne, all stuff I had in my kitchen.”

“Have you tested it?” He inhaled again. “I should be sneezing, at least.” He shut the bottle.

“I definitely coughed when I took a whiff of it. To test it any more, I’d have to spray— Jesus Christ, what are you doing?”

Jas doubled over, choking and coughing, which made sense, because he’d just pumped a direct spray of the stuff right at his face.

“Oh my God!” Katrina grabbed him by the arm, helping him over to the kitchen table. “What do we do? We can’t wash it, right? Why would you do that?”

“Bowl. Dish soap. Water.” He choked the words out. They were punctuated with racking coughs.

She grabbed the items as quickly as possible, along with clean towels, then came back to the table. He was still gasping.

“I am so sorry, so, so sorry,” she babbled, and dumped the dish soap into the bowl of water, until he indicated for her to stop. She watched, dismayed, as he dunked his whole face in the bowl for a few seconds, then came up and patted it with a towel, then dunked again. He kept repeating that while she stood around wringing her hands.

Unable to watch, she pulled out her phone and googled and found an article. “Take your shirt off, you may have gotten some spray on it,” she instructed. Later, she’d think about what an absurd variation that command was on the good old take your shirt off, it’s all wet.

While he stripped his shirt off, she went to the fridge and grabbed a gallon of milk. When she came back, he had stopped dunking his head, though he was still coughing slightly. He sat with his head tipped back, the towel over his face. “Here,” she said softly, then pulled off the towel and replaced it with the one she’d soaked in milk. “This may help.”

He groaned in appreciation and touched the towel. “Yes,” he said, his voice raspy.

Katrina didn’t know what else to do, so she kept patting his shoulder as his coughing subsided. She didn’t know how long she stood there. He finally pulled the towel off his face.

She flinched at his pink face, at his still-teared-up eyes. His chest was wet from the dish-soap antidote.

She couldn’t stop patting his shoulder. But she had to know. “What.” Pat, pat. “And I cannot stress this enough.” Pat, pat. “The actual fuck?”

He blinked at her, and she couldn’t tell if he was confused, or if he was still blinking out the pepper spray. “I wanted to see how effective it was.”

Her mouth fell open, and her pats became harder. “Are you.” Pat, pat. “Fucking.” Swat, swat. “Kidding me right now?”

He grabbed her hand. “You don’t swear often.”

“Then you should understand how upset I am,” she said, her voice hoarse. Hardeep had once noted that when she got angry, her voice got quiet. A function of her upbringing. She’d been perpetually angry at her dad, and she’d learned at a young age it was easier to push that anger down and deal with him quietly than to blow up.