Polaris Rising (Consortium Rebellion, #1)(115)

I pressed closer, mindless. Loch picked me up and I wrapped my legs around his waist. I could feel him, hot and hard against me. I grabbed his shoulders and my right hand hit the tackiness of drying blood. That jerked me out of my daze.

His hand traced a dangerous path up my thigh. “Wait, I need to clean and bandage your wound,” I managed to gasp out. “I don’t even know how badly you’re injured. You shouldn’t be holding me.”

“It’ll take more than a couple minor wounds to prevent me from holding you,” he growled. “Especially when you’re wearing that dress.” He tried to capture my mouth again but I evaded him.

“I’m not kissing you while you’re dripping blood. Let me look at your wounds and I promise you can peel me out of this dress later,” I said.

Loch grumbled but he put me back on my feet. I kissed his jaw. “Thank you,” I said. “Now hop up on the diagnostic table and let’s see what’s going on.”

He moved to the table and I set the scanner to run a full body diagnostic. For all I knew, he could be hiding injuries other than his shoulder. “I’m going to have to cut off the rest of your shirt,” I said. Bianca had already cut out a section but I needed to see his entire shoulder.

“If you wanted me naked, darling, you just had to ask,” Loch drawled with a grin.

I dug around in Rhys’s pristine medbay until I found a pair of scissors. Laser cutters could be a little finicky with blood-soaked cloth, so it was easier to do it manually. I cut away most of the shirt, leaving the section that was stuck to his skin.

The scanner beeped and I checked the display. I blinked and read it again. “You have a blaster hole in your shoulder,” I said. “Through your shoulder.”

Loch shrugged. “When the cowards realized their stun bolts didn’t work so well, one of them shot me,” he said.

“You picked me up when you had a hole through your shoulder,” I reiterated.

“Bianca triaged it. It’s just a flesh wound and I heal fast.”

I counted to ten and prayed for patience. When I could speak without yelling, I said, “From now on, if you get injured, even if it’s just a ‘flesh wound,’ you will get it taken care of immediately. You will not go around aggravating the injury further.” Loch looked ready to argue. “Please,” I added, “for me.”

He grumbled out something that vaguely resembled agreement.

“Thank you,” I said. I doused the remaining piece of shirt in saline and gently pulled it away from the wound. Bianca had bandaged over the worst of it, but according to the diagnostic, the whole wound needed to be irrigated and slathered in regeneration gel.

“I’m going to have to remove the bandage,” I said, “and clean out the wound. How do you react to regeneration gel?”

“Better than you,” he said with a grin.





Chapter 31




Ten minutes later, Loch’s shoulder was covered front and back in bandages while the regeneration gel did its thing. I’d used a sterile wipe to clean off some of the blood, but he still needed a shower. And a new shirt—Scarlett was still somewhere on this ship.

“If you two lovebirds are done playing doctor,” Rhys’s voice said from the overhead speaker, “then get up here and clip in. We’re ready to leave.”

Loch flipped off the room then slid off the table.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to grab some pain meds, just in case?” I asked again.

“Regen gel doesn’t incapacitate me,” he said. “It’s tingling and that’s about it.”

I nodded and picked up my bag. Loch picked up the weapon case before I could grab it. “Don’t even try,” he warned.

We stopped by the crew quarters on the way up and Loch found a spare shirt. He shrugged it on without so much as a wince, and his delicious chest disappeared under the fabric. My fingers itched to pull it off of him again.

“Keep looking at me like that and we’re not going to make it upstairs,” Loch said.

I was tempted, but we needed to leave before the RCDF decided to take drastic measures. I winked at him and left the room. He followed with a growl.

When we entered the flight deck, I wasn’t surprised to see Scarlett in the captain’s chair. Rhys knew better than to override the captain of the ship, even if he owned said ship. He sat at the navigator’s station and Veronica hovered by his shoulder. An unfamiliar dark-haired man sat in the tactical station.

“Clip in,” Scarlett said. “Ground control is getting quite insistent that we leave now.” Her hands moved over the controls with confident familiarity.

Loch and I sat in the extra chairs along the wall. Veronica sat on my other side. She touched my arm. “Are you okay?” she asked.

Unexpected and unwanted tears flooded my eyes. The one-minute-warning chime sounded throughout the ship, which gave me a moment to compose myself. I blinked rapidly then met her gaze and very slightly shook my head. She squeezed my arm in silent support, then turned her attention back toward the control stations.

The ship lifted away from the ground. This was the last time I would be on Earth for a very long time. I closed my eyes and breathed deeply. I refused to break down in front of strangers.

We settled into orbit and Scarlett stood and turned to me. “We have about six hours before we can jump back to Sedition. How likely are we to be harassed by the RCDF now that you’re on board?”