Page 70 of Devious Madness

He places his heavy hand on my shoulder.

“You’ll do fine. Let’s go in the kitchen. The lighting is better there.” He stalks off ahead of me, drops of blood trickling onto the floor with his movement.

“This is insane.” I wash my hands in the kitchen sink, throwing a look over my shoulder at him sitting at the table.

A pained scowl settles on his lips as he peels the fabric away from the wound on his shoulder. Even from where I’m standing, it looks bad. Blood still leaks from the deep wound.

I swallow hard, settling myself.

“The kit should have everything you need.” He drops his bloodied shirt to the floor at his feet and pushes the first aid kittoward me.

“Does it have a medical degree in there, cause that’s what I really need right now.” I survey the contents inside.

“You can do it. You’ve sewn up a hole in your jeans, you can do this.”

I snap my attention to him. “How do you know that?”

“I told you. I was watching you for a while. You tore your jeans at the diner one morning, and you had stitched it up before your night shift at the Dive Bar.”

“Stitching fabric isn’t the same thing as skin.” I sort through the kit, pulling out the gauze first. “You’re still bleeding.”

“It will stop soon. Just put pressure on it, and it will stop.”

“You don’t want to do it?” I offer him the folded-up gauze.

“You can’t hurt me, Mira. Just do it.”

I move closer to his left shoulder and gently lay the gauze over the wound. It’s an ugly thing, but it’s the only unsavory part of this man.

Well, that’s not the sort of thinking I need right now. I should be focusing on getting him cleaned up and stitched up, so he’ll stop bleeding all over his house.

“I need to press harder,” I mutter to myself, laying my hands over the dressing and pushing down on his shoulder.

He grits his teeth but makes no sound as I put more pressure on the wound. After a moment, I peel back the gauze to gauge my progress.

Nope. Still bleeding.

I rise up to my toes, pressing harder onto the wound.Rurik shoots me a heated look, his jaw flexed. His nostrils flare as his breath gets heavier.

“It stopped.” I blow out a relieved breath several minutes later and drop the bloody gauze to the table beside the kit.

“You need to clean it. There should be a bottle of saline solution in there; use that.” He inspects the wound, poking gently at the edges. “It’s going to need at least four stitches.”

“Four?” I was hoping just butterfly Band-Aids would do, but after inspecting it more closely I know he’s right.

After I flush the wound, cleaning off the dried blood around it, I grab the iodine I found in the kit.

“You don’t need that,” he says.

“Oh, you wanted it to get infected?” I hold the swab over his sliced flesh.

He eyes darken. “Fine. Do it.”

There’s a small flinch when the iodine touches his injury. It probably stings like all hell, but it’s his own fault for getting shot and having me do this in the first place. After I dab the antiseptic around the wound, I pick up the suture kit.

“This is gonna hurt. Even with the numbing they did, it still was uncomfortable when they stitched my head.”

Reminding him of my own wound probably isn’t the best course. His face pulls tight into another scowl as he lifts his gaze to my own stitches.

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