Avenging Angel by Tara Janzen

in the other direction, there was no way for her not to see him and his struggle. He was still decently covered in his briefs and T-shirt, but she knew that condition wouldn’t last long.
    She watched, mesmerized, as he inched the T-shirt up his torso, careful of whatever wound had caused all the blood. His back was smoothly muscled, well defined, a slowly revealed line of sweat-sheened skin from waist to shoulder. She had touched him there once, she remembered again uneasily, laid her hand on his shoulder and felt the muscles bunch and slide beneath her fingers as he’d moved her closer.
    He swore and swore again, softly and vehemently, as he pulled the shirt over his head. When it was off, he let it fall into the bathtub with a splash and leaned forward into the spray, looping his wrists over the shower head. A low, masculine groan rumbled up from his chest as he bent his head under the water and let it sluice off his hair and face.
    He suddenly looked vulnerable and in dire need of protection, this man who was paid to protect. From the amount of pink reddening the water at his feet, she guessed his underwear was as stuck to his body with blood as his T-shirt had been. Therefore, logic told her it was a mere matter of time before he took those off too.
    Less time than she’d thought, she realized, when he hooked one thumb into the side of his underwear and began pushing down. She should look away now. Prudence required it. Decency insisted. She ignored both.
    Dylan felt her gaze the way he’d always felt it, like a hot touch on his skin. He’d realized his mistake the first time he’d moved the shower curtain, He could have cut her free and repositioned her, but like he’d said, he wasn’t shy, and he would have bet a thousand dollars against her looking.
    So he’d lost a figurative thousand dollars. Just looking at him wasn’t likely to shock her, and she was unlikely and unable to do anything that might shock him. She could always look away, whereas his options were a damn sight narrower. He needed to get himself cleaned up and doctored, and he needed to do it before he fell asleep on his feet or passed out.
    With his goals firmly in mind, he clung to the shower head and doused himself with the little bottle of complimentary shampoo. He picked up the neatly wrapped bar of soap and used his teeth to rip the package open. He spat the paper out, and it fluttered to the bottom of the bathtub. Wincing, he ran the soap across his chest and down over his belly. He had a few more bruises than he’d thought, and a shallow cut under his right arm. His groin was fine. His butt was in pretty good shape, too, except for feeling flat as a pancake from two days of hard driving across the heartland.
    Carefully re-anchoring himself to the shower head with his left hand, he lifted his left leg and soaped his thigh and calf.
    “ Damn ,” he muttered, coming across another nick in his skin. That little bastard, Johnny, had managed some quick work with his knife.
    Dylan found another cut on his right thigh. All his small pains had kind of melded together into one big ache. Now he knew what was where. The big cut, the deep slash on his chest, had maintained a personality all its own throughout the last two days.
    Finished with his body inventory, which had included another cut low on his right shoulder, he ran a hand through his hair, shampooing and checking for damage at the same time. The inevitable bruises surfaced as lumps, nothing of concussion quality. He was pretty damn hardheaded.
    He turned around to rinse the shampoo out of his hair. Then he remembered she was watching. Squinting against the water running down his face, he met her surprised gaze. Her hazel eyes were wide and startled from the fast trip they’d made up his body.
    He grinned despite the effort it took. “We’re gonna have a problem here, if you’re not careful,” he drawled.
    Johanna was speechless, trapped on her end of the shower rod with a guilty