Page 24 of A Bloom in Winter

“Okay, let’s get off—” He gritted his teeth. “I mean, can you take your—remove—”

“There’s a bathroom back in that hall? Could you go get a towel for me, please? I don’t want to bleed all over the sofa.”

“Absolutely.”

He was back in a jiffy, paying no attention to anything other than his mission. And after he returned, he held the towel under her glove as she took care of the hand job—

Wincing to himself, he edited that thought:As she removed her glove.

They both let out a sigh of relief. The cut between her thumb and forefinger was almost surgical, it was so clean, and though it had bled a lot, the injury was, in the manner of vampires, already starting to close.

“Thank God,” he said under his breath as he put the ruined ski glove on the fireplace’s footing and wrapped her hand in the towel. “But we’ve also got to check your ankle.”

With a nod, she lifted up her leg, cocked it around on the sofa—

No, not cocked. Shemovedit around on the sofa so she could inspect the ragged rips in the snow pants.

God, this was hard—

“Fuck.”

The female’s head came up with a snap at the curse. “No, no. I think all the Gore-Tex and layers stopped the bite. See?”

Oh, he was seeing things all right. Mostly how fucking ridiculous he was being.

Now wasnotthe time to think about sex.

Pulling himself together, he said with an authority he didn’t have, “Let’s just get the boot off and check what’s going on.”

Hey, at least he hadn’t “tugged” himself together, okay? He could do this.

Shifting down the sofa, he measured the teeth marks on the snow pant leg and tried not to think about what they would look like in her smooth skin. And then when he went to pull up the bottom of the pant leg, she flinched and he froze.

“No, it’s okay.” She redid her ponytail like the wrenched-around tie had been pulling at her hair. “I was just expecting it to be painful.”

Mayhem stared into her eyes. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

As she looked away, he could have sworn her flush got deeper. “Of course you won’t.”

Except the fucking pants were going to make that difficult. They were downhill-ski-grade, with two layers at the bottom: the outer, which was a pain in the ass because it was stiff, and the inner, which was a pain in the ass because it had an elastic band that locked in tight to the laced-up tops of her boots. Which he could also tell were going to be a pain in the ass.

Then again, she could have been barefoot, wearing loungewear, and preloaded with Tylenol—and he still would have been wincing the whole time.

“Oh, thank God,” he murmured as he got a gander at her mid-calf laces.

Okay, that also sounded dirty. But there were no syllable substitutes.

“It’s all right, yes?” she said.

As she sat up, he leaned back so she could see. “Yup, the boot saved you.”

Man, those teeth marks in the leather upper were a horrifying dental impression if he’d ever seen one.

“So they didn’t break through,” she murmured.

“Nope, they didn’t.”

Though he’d kind of guessed that because there wasn’t a scent of blood from her leg, but he hadn’t trusted himself—because he’d so wanted her to be uninjured.

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