Page 145 of At Her Pleasure
She looked at the ground. “I fell down.”
He stroked her arm. “You’re still breathing fine.”
A bullet in the leg was nothing to mess with. But if it had hit a major artery, she would have bled out already. He didn’t let his mind dwell there. He was a master at keeping anything out of range that didn’t serve the moment’s needs, but touching her, her eyes on him, was making that difficult.
File it, manage it, deal with it later.
“Put your arms around my neck,” he told her.
“You are not carrying me when you have a bullet in—”
He picked her up and carried her to the nearest ambulance, where they’d just put the gurney out. They saw him coming and removed the go bag so he could put her on the mattress. “Shut up, Mistress,” he murmured. “How are you supposed to kick my ass if you don’t let them take care of you?”
Her hand was on his face, her eyes full of a reaction to that. “Not now,” he told her. “I can’t…not now.”
He didn’t know what would happen if he let it out here. He bottled the rage, the fear, all of it. When this was done, he’d bring it to a remote campground, and let the primal take over.
Would he tell Cyn about the day he’d stripped naked, rolled in mud and run with wolves? Or startled a young grizzly into bolting away from him when he charged him screaming, daring him to take Mick on?
She’d tell him he was a fucking idiot. No argument. If it had been a mother with cubs, he would have been lunch meat. But he’d dreamed of being wrapped in those arms, the talons raking across his flesh, the blood-tinged breath coming in for the kill, his head dropped back to take it.
Giving the mother grizzly his ferocity and then yielding to her judgment.
If he had a guardian angel—and today his looked a lot like Tyler Winterman—the angel probably wondered what he’d done to be saddled with a crazy bastard like Mick.
“Mick.” Pain shot through his shoulder. Despite the startled look from the tech, Cyn had put her thumb on the chunk of flesh the graze had taken and pressed down. Proof that she’d said his name a couple times and resorted to other measures to bring his attention back.
Mick put his hand over hers. “I’m here.”
Cyn moved her touch to his collarbone, her bloodstained thumb rubbing a caressing track over the first scar she’d given him and hooking the necklace. His flesh tingled under the contact, helping to ground him further. “Go get checked out, or I will make you get on this gurney instead,” she said.
God, a smile hurt worse than the wound. He put his head down against hers. The techs had cut her pants away to reveal the blood-smeared thigh and an oozing bullet hole. When she stiffened against the pain, hers hurt him far worse than his own ever could.
“Sir, you need to give us room.”
“Back the fuck off,” Cyn told the tech.
The pain of a laugh would surely kill him. So Mick brushed his mouth over hers and stepped back, giving her hand a quick squeeze. “Mick,” she warned.
“Yes, ma’am. I’m headed for the nearest available person with a paramedic go-bag. Stolen or not.”
He gestured to the EMTs. “Don’t let her near anything sharp. And she bites.”
The promise of retribution flashed through her gaze, but he moved out of range. He knew to stay within her line of sight as he reached the triage area. The people in the truck were being assessed by the army of emergency personnel. They’d separated out the ones in the worst shape, and the schizophrenic girl had been mercifully sedated. She was on a gurney, her grandmother hovering close as another EMT checked her nose and mouth for smoke exposure.
“Sir, let’s take a look at that shoulder. Were you exposed to the fire?”
Mick shifted away from the male EMT and pointed at his female partner. She’d just finished an assessment of the tire iron man and was directing him toward the area where those who were in good shape were being given bottled water, energy bars, and a place to sit and wait for the next step.
Experienced enough to read his patient—or warned by that look in Mick’s eyes—the male EMT pointed his partner to Mick.
As Mick took a seat on the open back of the ambulance and let himself be examined, he noted the EMT working on Cyn had returned to the leg after evaluating the rest of her. So the leg was the worst of it. From the paleness of her cheeks and the set of her mouth, the bullet might not be life threatening, but it was lodged somewhere painful. They’d immobilized the limb and would soon be transporting her. Or they’d better be, if they didn’t want him up their asses about it.
His EMT cleared him with the usual “recommend you go to the hospital” spiel. He gave her a courteous but dismissive nod. “Got it.”
The Hispanic woman had a chunky build, sharp brown eyes and abundant, gray-streaked hair pulled back in a ponytail. “I know you cop types think you’re invincible, but just sit here a few minutes. You’ve done enough for one day.”
“Honey, I have three more raids and a shootout scheduled before midnight.”