Cut & Run (Cut & Run #1)(24)
Author: Abigail Roux

Ty merely watched silently, inwardly wincing in sympathy. “At least you had your back to it,” he offered finally.

“Reflex,” Zane answered. “I actually had my side to it.” He lifted his hand to his mouth as a trickle of blood seeped from the abused skin just under the curve of his chin.

“Eh. Ass, face, same difference,” Ty muttered with a shrug.

Zane’s good hand flashed out and smacked Ty upside the back of the head.

“Ow! What the hell?” Ty cried as he rubbed his head and huffed.

“You’re lucky I repress the Instakill for you,” he muttered.

Zane sniffed and pried at a piece of glass in the heel of his hand. “My lucky streak is about played out.”

“Want a little cheese with that whine, maestro?” Ty drawled.

“Never mind,” Zane replied tightly, not even wanting to think about wine. The pain was worse moving, and he was not looking forward to sitting in the car. “Let’s just get to the hotel. I feel like a pincushion.”

“Look like one, too,” Ty observed dryly as the elevator doors opened.

“After you, Oh Injured One,” Ty invited with a sweeping gesture of his hand.

“Want me to commandeer a van?” he asked with a bit of gleeful anticipation in his voice.

Zane looked at Ty sideways. “Why do you have that ‘I’m up to something ever-so-wrong’ sound in your voice?” he asked suspiciously as they got outside and approached the car.

“I don’t,” Ty answered defensively. “Don’t bleed on the seats,” he added with a huff as he slid into the driver’s seat. “God, I hate driving in the city,” he muttered under his breath.

Closing his eyes as he sat carefully and felt glass chunks dig into the backs of his thighs, Zane’s face went very still as he gritted his teeth. “I’m not wearing the damn seat belt,” he said as he gripped the door handle to keep himself from leaning back.

“You could try not sitting on the parts that got hit,” Ty suggested.

“Just get us out of here.”

“You got it,” Ty grinned as he tore out of the parking place and out of the parking deck in record time. He hit the lights as they got to the street. “I love the flashy blue lights,” he told Zane almost gleefully.

Groaning, Zane braced one hand on the seat behind him. Despite Ty’s reckless driving, they got to the hotel quickly and in one piece without leaving carnage behind, so he didn’t say a single word. By the time they got upstairs, Zane seriously wanted several stiff drinks. Hell. A bottle.

“Strip,” Ty ordered as soon as the door was closed. “And face down on the bed,” he added as he took off his jacket and tossed it onto the back of a chair, then began rolling up his sleeves.

Zane walked over to the corner of the room and carefully shrugged out of the jacket, seeing glass chunks scatter on the carpet as he dropped it.

Instead of trying to pull the holster off, he pulled at the straps to totally unfasten it, and he carefully set it and the gun on the stacks of files covering the small round table. It was followed by the sheaths, but for one knife that he pulled and used to handily slice open his Henley from collar to waist, not willing to try pulling it over his head. The back of the shirt was matted with blood, and he let it drop, too, hissing as the fabric pulled debris fragments loose as he peeled it off.

He unfastened his jeans and shoved them over his hips with another hiss, leaving his legs mostly free of glass. He toed out of his shoes and socks, leaving them under the jeans, and stepped free to the foot of the bed. He crawled onto the mattress in nothing but his boxer briefs and settled on his belly with several winces.

Ty watched him with a furrowed brow, his face unreadable as his eyes followed the bits of bloody clothing to the floor. He snapped open his KA-BAR folding knife with a distinctive metallic clink as he stepped closer to the bed.

Pressing his lips together hard, Zane closed his eyes. It occurred to him that he just might need to be worried, but he made himself dismiss the thought. He wasn’t all that sure he trusted Ty, but he did trust him enough to think he wouldn’t maim or kill him, given the chance. Grady had already had those chances.

Ty knelt on the bed beside him, surprisingly gentle as he tried not to jostle Zane too much, and he leaned to his side, putting his head beside Zane’s ear to get a better look at the glass fragments. “Going to have to dig for some of ’em,” he told Zane with that same gleefully anticipatory tone of voice he had used earlier.

“Go on,” Zane murmured tightly, not moving. It would hurt like hell, but it all had to come out. At least the damage wouldn’t require surgery this time. He would have sighed at Ty’s seeming enjoyment, but it would have required him to move.

Ty didn’t touch him for several moments, just hovered next to him on the bed peering over the wounds quietly. Finally, he moved, the rustle of his clothing and the slight dip in the bed the only indication that he was even still there. A moment later cold steel touched the skin of Zane’s nape. Once, twice, three times in rapid succession, merely brushing over the skin as if Ty were touching the side of the blade to his skin experimentally and then raising it again. The movement was repeated several more times, the only sound a swish of cotton and the tinkle of glass shards being deposited into Ty’s hand after every three or four flicks of the knife.

Zane’s eyes squeezed shut and his fingers curled in the bedspread, but otherwise he didn’t move or make a sound. He was breathing shallowly to keep his back still, and he thought after this a good, angry fit was in order.

Some of the glass felt like pins being removed as Ty scraped, just little pricks.

Other times he felt the knife cut in, and his breathing stilled as he felt the glass pry loose, leaving a tiny gouge behind.

“When I was in the service they had us testing this stuff,” Ty told him in a conversational manner as he saw the muscles in Zane’s back bunch with tension. “It was called Dragon Skin Body Armor. They wanted us to see how far it could go, you know, before it would give in. Put it through the wringer.

And since we were these crazy-ass Recon boys with a bit of a reputation for destroying government property, they figured we’d be perfect to do it. Well, we took that shit everywhere with us. Threw it out of planes, planted landmines under it, tossed grenades at it, ran over it with a Humvee. My buddy and I even set it up on this pole once and launched a ground-to-air missile at it. God, that was funny as hell,” he mused with obvious fondness.