Page 26 of Catch of a Lifetime
It was a happy moan, not pained.
Mostly happy, anyway.
I’d take it.
He lay there and had the time of his life as I slowly wiped him down from head to toe, cleaning away the sand, splashes of mud, and road grit that had stuck to his naked body as Jerry and I had dragged him up to the house.
I carried the tub of dirty water into the en-suite bathroom, dumped it into the bath and refilled it, adding more antibacterial soap and switching to a clean facecloth. When I returned, he hadn’t even opened his eyes.
“Are you awake?” I whispered as I perched beside him on the other side and started the whole process over again.
He made a soft sound at the back of his throat, but kept his eyes closed.
I worked quickly, trying not to feel too desperate. Once he was clean, I used the last facecloth to pat the skin around his cuts dry, and applied the antibiotic ointment I’d dug out from my first-aid kit.
My efforts with the Steri-Strips were unsuccessful, as the fiddly little bastards wouldn’t stick to his skin. I’d been overenthusiastic with the ointment, perhaps. While I really wanted to close the wounds up, I decided that if I had to choose, it was better to zap the bacteria with the ointment and leave the wounds exposed for a while than to skip the ointment in favour of taping him up, which would seal the bacteria in and let it chow down.
I finished up, carried the tub with dirty water and cloths back into the bathroom, and washed my hands at the sink. I stared into the mirror.
I looked like shit.
My face was drained of colour, my jaw was knotted with tension, and the harsh red of my salt-inflamed eyelids made my grey eyes really pop.
“He is fine,” I said to my reflection. Firm and no-nonsense. I pointed at myself. “He’s here and he’s fine. This is a hiccup. He’s?—”
He gasped, something thunked, and I shot into the bedroom in time to see him shifting again, his huge tail thudding off the end of the bed.
“Dave,” I growled. “Why?”
He panted at me and flexed the end of his tail, curling one side of his fluke around my waist. I caught it and held it. Whenhe passed out, I scrabbled to keep holding the heavy weight. I was not successful. It hit the floor with a wallop.
Something creaked alarmingly at the foot of the bed.
I’d had the super kingsize frame custom-made by a local carpenter out of solid oak, and he’d guaranteed it up to five hundred pounds. Before I’d done the research, I hadn’t even known you could get beds that sturdy. There were even some that could bear a tonne.
It had withstood Dave’s weight and his athleticism up to now, but that had been in his human form. I was resigning myself to downgrading to a mattress on the floor for the foreseeable future when Dave shifted back.
I rushed over and crawled onto the mattress beside him. He blinked his eyes open, barely, and gave me a smug smile.
“What’s that for?” I snapped before running an assessing gaze down his body. “Oh.Oh.”
I skimmed my fingers down to the tightly muscled waist, where the worst bruise had surrounded the worst and most ragged of the cuts, which looked as if something had bitten down and wrenched back, hard.
He hadn’t lost control of his form, had he? He’d done it on purpose, just like getting into the house when Jerry and I couldn’t manage it for him.
Like getting up the stairs when we couldn’t manage it.
I hadn’t noticed then, being so focused on getting him somewhere safe where he could rest. Now that I looked properly, it seemed as if each time he shifted, the wounds got a little better.
Not a lot. But a little.
“Oh, thank god.” I slumped forward and pressed my forehead to his shoulder.
His stomach groaned.Loudly.
I straightened and he gave me a pointed look.
“Yeah,” I said, and patted his chest. “You probably need to fuel all that shifting, don’t you? I’ll get you some food. And some ice for those bruises.”
