Avenging Angel by Tara Janzen Page A

blush streaking across her cheeks. When he turned back around, she dropped her head into the cradle of her arms and groaned softly.
    Dylan heard the muffled sound and was surprised to find himself physically reacting. Who would have thought he could be stirred to arousal in his condition? His warning her about “problems” had been more along the lines of a joke or a hope. He wasn’t the man of steel. Yet she’d made a soft sound, and he’d instantly equated it with a response he could draw out of her with his mouth on her body, anywhere on her body, though certain particular parts did come to mind.
    In the seconds it had taken him to register her embarrassment and capitalize on it, he had noticed plenty about her anatomy. Silk T-shirts had a way of clinging all on their own. Adding steam and humidity made them wonderfully indecent. Her breasts were full and beautifully shaped, curved to fit the palm of a man’s hand. Her bra was lace. Her damp skin shone like cream-colored satin.
    He realized he was feeling better and better, a condition he would have thought impossible five minutes earlier. The woman was a tonic, her presence a soothing balm on his aches and pains.
    A grin eased its way across his face. He had saved her life. She was alive because of him. He was winning.

Five
     
    Johanna rubbed her wrists with her freed hands. The skin wasn’t chafed or sore—he’d been too careful for that—but the action kept her from wringing her hands. She hadn’t quite recovered from his shower—she doubted if she ever would—and now he was proposing something even more outrageous. She nodded as he explained what he wanted her to do, even though she had no intention of complying.
    “I think three or four stitches ought to do it,” he said, looking at her from under raised eyebrows, as if she were a child he was trying to convince to eat her vegetables.
    She nodded again, all the while thinking she was an attorney, dammit, not a paramedic. Didn’t he know that?
    After his shower, he’d left the bathroom with a towel wrapped around his waist and returned dressed in a pair of dove-gray jeans and nothing else. He’d brought his duffel bag, all the first-aid supplies, and the sewing kit back in with him. He’d brushed his teeth, shaved, and combed his hair before releasing her, each action making him more of the man she remembered.
    Dane Erickson, Dylan Jones, it didn’t matter. He wanted her to do the impossible with the small package of needles and thread.
    “I think if you just set your mind to it and do it fast and clean, it’ll be a lot easier on both of us.” He kept talking, his gaze shifting from her to the needle he was sterilizing, and she kept nodding.
    “Leave yourself plenty of thread on each end to tie off. Make every stitch separate.”
    “Right.” There was no way on earth she was going to stick a needle into his flesh. Her gaze drifted down his chest, past the cut slashed below his collarbone. He was beautiful, more so than she’d once imagined, all sleek muscles and golden skin. But there were signs of a hard life, nicks and bruises—and that awful knife wound. She couldn’t do it.
    “Don’t worry about hurting me. I’m not going to scream or knock you over or anything.” Dry laughter accompanied his statement.
    “Okay.” Her voice was bleak, her heart pounding an erratic rhythm.
    “I don’t suppose you have any penicillin on you? Or anesthetic?” He laughed again, a soft, gravelly sound she doubted he ever got beyond. She knew he was trying to relax her so she could do the job that needed doing. He was the one who was hurt, but she was the one shaking like a leaf.
    “No. No anesthetic.” She responded automatically, without any attempt to match his wry humor. She didn’t have even the smallest smile to offer him.
    He had kidnapped her, dragged her through the night with a gun at her head, and she hated him for that. He had embarrassed her beyond the ends of the earth during his