Trusting Love (12 page)

The impact of what they’d done settled over her until, with a sense of panic, she eased from under his arm and his leg and slipped over to the side of the bed. Robert shifted restlessly onto his back when she did, frowning in his sleep. His penis was still out and she couldn’t help the rise in her temperature at the sight of his flaccid flesh nestled in his dark curls.

Quickly, so as not to disturb him, she tucked him back inside his boxer briefs. He groaned and tried to take her hand, but she moved out of the way and instead froze half off the bed when he reached inside his shorts to grip himself.

Her heart really couldn’t take the ups and downs he caused, she thought, watching him shift his legs restlessly while he stroked himself. Was he going to come again?

She watched the fascinating muscles in his chest and stomach bulge. She was too shocked to move as he masturbated, then with a groan, he stopped, pulled his hand free with a frustrated sound and lay still again.

As soon as she could breathe normally—and get her mind off ideas of what to do with him when he did heal—she got off the bed and paced the room to the window and back. Her body was still simmering, still hot for the feel of him filling her. She’d been close to begging him but so close to climax from his fingers alone, she’d been unable to think beyond the pure pleasure.

She had to stop and focus on what she needed to do to help him. While making him come again would be wonderful and her body tingled all over at the thought, she needed to fix him first. Or at least try.

Yes. I have to at least try.

Reluctant to leave him, she walked to the bathroom and cleaned up, shocked to see how flushed her face was in the mirror. Well, why wouldn’t it be? She’d just had sex—or closer to sex than she’d been in years. She patted her wet face with a towel and examined herself, trying to see what a man like Robert seemed to like about her. He did like her, too. The thrill from confirming that made her smile.

“So that’s what you look like smiling?” she whispered.

She used to smile so much. Now the expression looked odd, as if her mouth wasn’t made for it any longer. Her lips were swollen from his kisses, and she spotted a red mark on her chin from the rough rub of his unshaven jaw, but nothing in her face that would make a man like Robert still want her after all these years.

Exhaling shakily, she steeled herself for the job ahead, forcing herself to think of how hurt he was, not girlish worries over what he saw when he looked at her. He was in pain, whether he admitted it or not. She’d got him drunk—now she needed to hurry before he woke up. She’d seen Dr Valentine pull a bullet out of more than one dog, even a horse. She would go slow and hope the bullets would be simple to remove.

All too soon, she stood over Robert again, caught by the way he slept so peacefully and how she was going to hurt him, even if he was out and couldn’t feel it. He’d feel it in the morning. She wasn’t a doctor, and she hadn’t even been a full vet before she had quit her studies.

“Not going there,” she whispered to the past and all the pain waiting with the memories. “Just gotta start, that’s always the hardest part.”

She breathed in and out a few times, and when her hand stopped trembling, she picked up the forceps and began. She hit the bullet after several slippery tries, but Robert was bleeding so badly, she couldn’t see well enough and playing blind woman fetching a bullet from a man wasn’t her favourite game. Finally she pulled the tiny bullet free.

She nearly passed out herself from the relief.

“Oh thank you, and please don’t make the other so hard to get out,” she muttered, sopping up the blood as best she could with a folded piece of linen. After a minute of holding the bandage firmly in place she dabbed the wound again, noticing it was slowing already.

“Now the fun part,” she whispered, getting the needle, thread and her nerves back on line.

With a lot of trial and error she managed to sew him up, and remain conscious doing it. Thankfully he hadn’t woken either, but he’d downed two full bottles of Jack on an empty stomach with a loss of blood that scared her. He had more alcohol in his body right now than blood, in her opinion.

She admired her work, and added more antibiotic to the wound before she gently tugged his big warm body onto his side so she could wrap a bandage she’d made of an old sheet around and over his shoulder several times. She settled him on his back quickly and tied off the wad of sheet with a sigh of relief.

Now the hip. Only the hip was harder, wasn’t it? Since to get to that bullet properly, she’d have to take his pants off again.

Her heart stuttered erratically at the memory of what they’d done with his pants on. Another fantasy surfaced, rushing through her head in a hot image of him making love to her on the kitchen table. She blinked the thought away and tightened her hands into fists. A woman should be better at not thinking such thoughts when a man lay wounded in front of her.

Robert frowned and shifted on the bed and his boxers pulled tight over the bulge under them. She held her breath, half horrified he’d wake up and she’d have to get him drunk all over again and half alarmed he
was
awake and watching her admiring his body. Or waking up and wanting to talk about how he’d let her masturbate him into an orgasm that still thrilled her.

His features relaxed and he merely settled more firmly on the bed, even let out a few loud breaths that might have been snores before he quieted.

“All right, let’s do this,” she said to the empty room.

Rowdy was outside the door, but she could hear him pacing. She’d been too afraid he’d bark at the wrong time to allow him in here. Besides, she didn’t need an audience.

Robert didn’t move when she got his hip clean and with a breath of frustration at her own silliness she pulled his open pants down further and slowly over his legs and off. He had a line of hair from his flat navel down to the top of his briefs where more was visible, then more black hairs sprinkled his muscled legs. She’d not had time to take in everything about him when he’d had his magical fingers down her jeans, but now she noticed so much she couldn’t seem to process it all quick enough. He was a real man for one, not one of those lady’s men who ‘cultivated’ their privates for the ladies. At least she didn’t think so.

She blinked and groaned at, once again, getting caught up in admiring his body.

With a great deal of effort, she ignored the way his penis was big enough soft to ride his hip and concentrated on the painful tissue she had to dig into. If the way he sweated and was so silent meant anything, he wasn’t going anywhere, least of all off into a snowstorm anytime soon.

The thought made her shiver, but she couldn’t claim to be unhappy about it. Slowly, she caressed his stomach, easing him she hoped before she had to hurt him. When she’d built up enough nerve, she carefully pulled him to turn him slightly using his side above the wound to do it. His skin was smooth and warm, a little freckled she noticed maybe from the sun. He had one of those tan lines Anglos got from the sun hitting them above their waist but not below it. She wondered if he tanned easily or burned. She’d bet he tanned.

Why that mattered she didn’t know. The proximity to him was making her lose her intelligence.

Thankful that he’d been shot in the same side twice so she could move him like this, she tenderly felt the back of his wounded hip, not feeling anything under the smooth skin. Did that mean the bones weren’t fractured? What would she do if they were? No, she answered herself, they weren’t fractured. No way could he have moved his hips like he had when he’d been closing in on his orgasm if he’d had a fractured bone in his hip. But there was no exit wound, so the bullet was inside his body.

She gently lowered him back on the bed and took a few deep breaths. He was very heavy. He wasn’t a large man, like a body builder, but every ounce of his frame had ropes of solid muscle. She warily pressed her palm on his lower stomach and tried to be as careful as she could as she brought the forceps to his wound. She pulled gently on his flesh with her hand, opening the round hole bit by bit and guided the silver instrument forward.

Luck was on her side because she felt the tap of metal on metal immediately, which meant the bullet had to be close to the surface. She watched the skin around his wound rise when she pulled on it. The bullet was right there, only marginally under the surface.

How is that possible?

Sweat dripped down her face and she paused to rub her brow on her shoulder, blinking rapidly to clear her eyes when some of the sweat dripped in her eyes. Her hand shook a little from the tension, so she waited a moment, then gripped the little bullet with her forceps and pulled. The bullet popped free with a sick sound she hoped she could forget quickly.

“Robert, you owe me for this,” she told him as she cleaned the wound, dabbing it with more triple antibiotic before she settled back on the bed. She’d need to bind it, but maybe only with a big square bandage from the bathroom, the kind she never used because they were so big. She gathered her things, trying not to look too closely at the bloody instruments, bullets or her hands and headed to the kitchen to clean up. As quick as she could, she returned and gently slipped the bandage on his hip wound and tucked the blankets over his tempting body. He slept peacefully, only that small furrow between his eyebrows marring his handsome face. Maybe the expression was from his discomfort, but she smoothed her fingers over the skin and saw the lines etched there from years of frowning. He used to smile, she remembered. A half smile, but still, he’d seemed like a settled kind of man, not a grump.

Volatile.
He’d said his temper was volatile. Whatever that meant, she wasn’t buying it. Robert McNeil was a controlled kind of person, reserved even, but never out of control. She couldn’t believe any military experimental drug, or even the years that had passed, had changed him so completely. But maybe the men after him, men he wanted to kill, he’d said, or would kill him for what he had, made him volatile. She couldn’t imagine knowing someone wanted to kill her and could…

What kind of life is that, Robbie?

She brushed her hand through his hair once then let her arm fall to her side. She had no room to talk. Her life was pretty pathetic after all.

Sighing, she watched him for a moment more then turned away. She had work to do and for now at least, Robert was fine. She’d see to him again, after she’d caught up on her chores.

* * * *

It ended up taking her longer than she’d wanted, but she let Rowdy out for his run, and started some stew on the stove before she added more wood to the fire, and had the time to check on Robert again.

As soon as she walked back in, she froze a foot from the bed where he lay, completely naked and masturbating with a roughness that startled her and stopped the breath in her throat.

Robert wasn’t awake, Kristen realised quickly but that was as far as her brain would function as she took in the sight of his thick, large cock slipping through his big hands.

He was magnificent.

Each muscle in his body tensed from his neck to his toes, outlining every inch of him—some drew more interest—in rich detail.

It wasn’t just his erection that sent a hot flash along her body. It was everything. The sounds his flesh made slipping through his fist, mixed with the rough groan she registered coming from his throat as he worked harder and harder to find relief.

His chest swelled on each rough breath, and with a deeper groan, he spread his legs wider and pushed his feet down on her bed, and began lifting his hips to thrust the broad shaft of his erection into his hands so that the rounded head got most of the friction.

She swallowed, watching the way his sac swung with each upward drive and how beads of sweat glistened and dripped along his rounded ass and made his stomach and chest look like he’d spread oil over himself.

She nearly swooned. The image was such a sensory overload, she couldn’t breathe and the lack of oxygen had her head spinning.

A flush of heat erupted like a hot shower along her body, warming her to a point that she’d never reached with a man before—until this one. But Robert, the visual of him, stroking his bare, very big, very dark erection made her knees weak. Only barely aware she was doing it, she backed away, slowly erasing the sight of him.

She couldn’t do this again. Once had been enough to make her think things she shouldn’t—like how hot it would be to feel him making love to her for real—with every thick inch of him.

Just thinking of it made her flush grow and her pussy throb with an ache she knew would only be eased by him making love to her in every possible way. She couldn’t do this, and if she couldn’t do this, she needed to go, quickly before she
did
do this then when he left, when he walked out the door and didn’t return, she’d be torn in two.

Or maybe the pieces that used to be her would be ripped to even small bits. So small, she’d never feel like herself again.

With one more glance at his straining body, she shut the door and headed to where she knew she’d not be interrupted—not by her past and not by the present.

Chapter Eight

“What the—?” Robert woke with a suddenness that brought him to his feet, searching for a weapon. The room wasn’t familiar until, like a slap in the face, he realised several things. First, he was naked. Second, he was in Kristen’s home. And third, God help him, he’d been jacking off—or he
had
jacked off. The question was, had he done what he’d dreamed and pinned Kristen down and felt every sweet tremble from her climax? Right before he’d come from her stroking him?

No way was that what he’d done. It had to be a dream, only if he’d dreamed it, why did he feel like he should have his cargos on still?

He found them, folded neatly on top of the dresser by the door, but his boxers were tangled up in the blankets. The door was closed. Kristen wasn’t here and if he had to face her without knowing if he’d kissed her until he’d nearly blacked out, he was going to lose his mind.