Tempt (Take It Off #3)(7)
Author: Cambria Hebert

“Sweet,” he said, scooping it up. He scrounged around a few more minutes and came up with two bottles of water. Just looking at them made me realize how thirsty I was.

He uncapped one of the bottles and extended it to me. I took it, lifting the lukewarm liquid to my lips. It slid across my tongue and down my throat with ease, rinsing away some of the dryness. A small sound of appreciation ripped from my chest, and I greedily took another gulping sip.

I caught Nash watching me from over the bottle still stuck to my lips. I stopped drinking immediately and held it out to him. I felt selfish just then, hogging down the water when he likely was just as thirsty as I.

He gave me a small shake of his head and held up the other bottle. “That one is yours.”

I watched as he uncapped his own bottle and took a drink. My gaze fastened right to his throat when his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down with every swallow. He had another smear of blood on his neck and some splotches of dirt. My fingers itched to reach out and brush it away, to feel for his steady pulse at the base of his neck. The need to touch him—to reassure myself that we were indeed alive and breathing—was almost overwhelming.

I pulled the bottle away from my lips, my thirst satiated but an all-new need arising within in.

He seemed to sense the change in the air around us and he too lowered the bottle from his lips and recapped it. Keeping his green-eyed stare on me, he reached out and took my bottle, twisting the cap back onto it as well.

“We need to drink slowly, try and save this until we know what we’re dealing with.”

I saw his lips move. I heard the deep timbre of his voice. But I barely heard his words. I stepped forward and wrapped my arms around his waist, bringing myself tightly up against him. I rested my ear over his chest, just like I had craved to do, and pressed it there, seeking out the sound I so badly needed.

He gave it to me without even trying. The rhythm of his heart echoed through his chest and filled me up. My eyes slid closed as I stood there, wrapped around him, listening to the proof that we had survived, that we really were alive.

One of his arms came up, hovered over my back, and then descended, wrapping around me with strength and purpose. He took a deep breath and my ear rose with his chest, his heartbeat getting just a little bit closer.

“I really thought we were going to die.” I confessed.

“I’d be lying if I said I didn’t think that too.”

He hugged me just a little bit tighter and I felt his cheek press against the top of my head. I winced, sharp pain cutting into our moment.

“I need to look at you,” he murmured, pulling away gently.

He handed me the first-aid kit and then grabbed one of the fallen plane seats and righted it, motioning for me to come and sit down. I did and he stood over me, his fingers gently probing my head.

“You have a piece of shrapnel stuck in your head,” he muttered.

He continued to search around for a moment and then squatted down before me, turning the kit in my lap and then clicking it open and rummaging through its contents. He came out with a pair of tweezers, and I cringed.

“I’ll be gentle,” he promised.

I figured the pain couldn’t be any worse than falling from the sky in a plane so I nodded and gave him full access to my wound. It didn’t take him long to pull out the scrap of metal, my teeth grinding together as he did. It stung. It felt like it was a mile long, and I sensed every single inch as he yanked.

“Hold out your hand,” he said, and when I did he dropped a fairly sizeable piece of the plane into my palm. It was smeared with rust-colored blood and was probably two inches in length.

Then he abandoned the tweezers and quickly reached for a thick wad of gauze, pressing into my scalp. “You’re bleeding again,” he said grimly.

I didn’t say anything because there wasn’t anything I could say that would make the blood stop flowing.

“Hold this,” he instructed, and I reached up to apply pressure to the wound. I could feel the warm liquid already soaking through the gauze to coat my fingers. Vaguely, I wondered how much blood I already lost, how much more blood I could afford to lose.

Nash was searching through the first aid kit, which thank goodness was a good size and stocked full. He lined up a few items on the top of the pile and then looked up.

“Do you trust me?”

“Yes.” How could I not trust a man who tried to save us and when it became obvious he couldn’t, he still covered my body with his?

“I’m going to clean your wound and then stitch it closed. It’s going to hurt. I’m sorry.”

The bottom dropped out of my stomach. “Have you ever stitched up someone’s head?”

“You’re my first.”

“Words every girl longs to hear,” I quipped.

He grinned. It made me forget for just a moment that I was bleeding profusely from my scalp.

“We gotta get this bleeding stopped,” he said gently, reaching up and pulling away my hand. The gauze came with it. It was completely soaked in red.

“Don’t look at it,” he said, tossing it aside and ripping open some kind of wipe or something. He swiped it across my head and I gave a shout of pain.

“Shit!” I yelled. “That hurts.”

“I like it when women talk dirty to me,” he said, continuing the torture.

“I’ll just bet you do,” I muttered darkly.

He chuckled and reached for another wipe. My heart pounded and my vision became a little blurry.

“You’re doing good,” he would say every few minutes.

Then he reached for a needle and some black thread. I thought I might pass out. I started shaking uncontrollably, my teeth chattering together like we were sitting in an igloo in shorts and T-shirts.

“Ava,” he said. He sounded so far away.

Then his warm hands were gripping my chin and he was turning my face up so he could stare down into my eyes. “Don’t you dare pass out on me.”

I just kept shaking. He cursed.

And then he climbed into my lap.

That was one way to get a girl’s attention.

His weight settled over me like a heavy blanket. His warmth was like a sauna and my skin soaked him in like a blooming flower on the first day of spring. His thighs were huge and they rested on each side of my waist, the core of him meeting my middle and his body pinning me back against the seat.

“You’re going into shock,” he explained. “Just breathe.”

I thought his weight might seem crushing, but it wasn’t. It was security; it was something solid in a tentative world. My hands twisted in the hem of his shirt and held on, their shaking slowing to a fine tremble.