Page 56 of Ride Hard
Chaser
Isaton the edge of the bath, wincing as I peeled off the sticky gauze on myarm.
Pain wasn’t something that usually bothered me. I’d learned how to manage it a long time ago while out on a job. Shit happened like getting shot, knifed, concussed, and bruised and beaten. People did stupid things when they were desperate and on the edge of losing everything. They attacked, sometimes in the worst possibleway.
I had my fair share of scars and thensome.
Sloane was moving around in the other room, and I glanced up, peering through the crack in the door. She’d put her clothes back on—most of them, anyway. Her black panties hugged her ass, and her tight nipples peaked against the cotton of her American eagle T-shirt.Damn.
When she sensed me staring, she turned and padded across the room and nudged open the bathroomdoor.
She was mad at me, but it was nothing new. She was always enraged about something. That something almost always being my refusal to steal her away like some motherfucking hero in a romancenovel.
“Has it fallen off yet?” she asked, leaning against thedoorframe.
“My cock is just fine. It could do with a lickthough.”
“Hilarious.”
I smirked, wishing I hadn’t put on my boxers and jeans. She hadn’t sucked my dick…yet.
“All men are the same,” she said with a smile. “They’re always on the hunt for something warm to stick their wickin.”
I snorted and tossed the used sticky gauze into the trash. Twisting my head, I checked the stitches in my arm. They were intact for now. After what we’d just done to one another, it was a fucking miracle they hadn’t tornopen.
“When will you take them out?” she asked, sitting besideme.
“In a couple ofdays.”
Sloane sighed and picked up the washcloth I’d dampened in the sink. Dabbing my skin, she cleaned the tear the bullet had opened across my arm like she was some Goddamned sexynurse.
“Have you been shot before?” she asked. “I noticed a scar on yourside.”
“Yeah, I’ve been shotbefore.”
When I offered no more commentary, she scowled and tossed thewashcloth.
“I’m not like them,” I said, tensing as she put another wad of sticky gauze on myarm.
Her eyebrows rose. “I’m not so sure aboutthat.”
I glanced at her, but her eyes were downcast, her hair shielding most of her expression from me. She’d let out a lot of heavy shit today so I couldn’t blame her. Still, some long-dead part of me was beginning to wake up and give acrap.
“Sloane…”
“There,” she said, forcing a smile. “Allbetter.”
I didn’t know what I was going to say. Was I going to comfort her? Tell her everything was going to be fine? I couldn’t do that. Even if I said it aloud, she would see right through me. Sloane was more switched on than sherealized.
I couldn’t promise her a happyending.
I couldn’t promise her anything atall.
