Riding the storm - By Julie Miller Page 0,47
and slid his palm beneath. His fingertips found bare skin, warmer and softer than anything they’d touched before.
His own breathing quickened when she sighed with pleasure. “You like that, hmm?” he whispered, surprised to hear the deep-pitched huskiness of his voice. “Feels good to slow down sometimes, doesn’t it.”
They both started when the lights in the house flickered, following a show of electrical activity in the skies outside. The tension he’d eased immediately returned beneath his hand. Jolene pulled away, her mouth a grim line.
She tucked that long strand of hair behind her ear and got back to the business of tending his wounds. Nate took the hint. Hands off. Keep it casual. Her needs, not his.
“I don’t think the liquid adhesive can hold the skin together on your shoulder,” she reported in an efficient, apologetic tone. “It needs to be sutured.”
“Do you do good work?”
She propped one hand on her hip and gestured with the other. “Nate, I don’t have any anesthetic.”
“You have a sterile needle and thread?”
“Yes, but—”
“Then stitch it up.”
“It’ll hurt.”
Nate lifted his gaze to her compassionate one. Get real. He already felt like a piece of tenderized meat sitting here. What harm could a few stabs with a needle do?
It took one long visual sweep of all his cuts and bumps and bruises for her to get the picture. “Oh.”
Besides, a little more pain might do the trick to suppress his desires for this beautiful woman.
A few minutes later, the lights were flickering almost nonstop. Nate held a flashlight and sat up as straight as he could while Jolene braced herself on one knee on the edge of the couch and stitched him together.
He winced as the needle pierced his skin, but he inhaled deeply and gritted his teeth to keep from jerking.
“Sorry.” She apologized with the same breathy catch in her voice, the way she had after every other stitch.
“I’m okay.”
For someone as dedicated to relieving pain as she was, this had to be almost more torturous for her than it was for him. But to her credit, Jolene worked quickly and surely. One tear at the front of his shoulder had already been closed, and she was nearly done with the second one.
He felt the grating of the thread through raw skin. “Almost there.” Another pinch. “Sorry.”
The baby had awakened inside her to add his two cents to the world. Nate could feel a tickle of movement against his ribs as her belly pressed against him. This kid would have the same drive and energy as his mama, judging by the tiny, repetitive thrusts into Nate’s flank.
Think clinical thoughts, he warned himself as he started to count each time he felt the flick of the baby’s movement. “Try to remember that this will help me more in the long run. If the cut isn’t treated now, it could get infected or refuse to heal.”
“I know, but…” Tug. Wince.
“Ow.”
“Sorry.”
He barely felt the next prick of the needle. Clinical thoughts vanished. Jolene had shifted her position, lining up straight behind him to insert the last sutures at the jut of his shoulder. The tip of one perky breast poked his shoulder blade through the layers of material that separated them, and all of his senses careened and focused on that very spot. The whole breast pillowed as she leaned forward.
Nate swallowed hard. Her breasts weren’t big, and she didn’t accentuate them with the clothes she wore. But they were definitely there. And, like her personality, they had plenty of attitude. Despite his best intentions, that most masculine part of him couldn’t help but take notice.
Maybe he should move the ice pack to his lap.
Prick. “Ow!” he cried.
“Sorry.”
He’d been too preoccupied with female curves to feel that one coming. “Are you done yet?”
Her breast brushed across every sensitized nerve on his back as she got up to retrieve the first-aid kit. Nate’s breath hissed between his teeth.
“It just needs a bandage,” she said.
She reached over him to set gauze pads and tape on the back of the sofa. As she moved across him, her ponytail fell over her shoulder, stirring up the scent of rain-washed hair and traces of cinnamon and home-baked breads that still clung to her. Or maybe they just lingered in his imagination whenever she was this close.
“Jolene—” He couldn’t come up with one clinical thought.
“Do you need a bandage anywhere else?” She pulled back and faced him. “I might let the other cuts breathe. As long as we can keep ourselves dry.” With