Page 37 of The Hero Within
When had she begun to turn into this person?
Eden clearly startled him by taking the whiskey flask off him and wiping the rim of it with her sleeve.
"Hey, I need that. It's good for my...." His protest died off when she tipped it to her own lips and swallowed heartily. "But you can share if you like. Just didn't think you'd be the type."
Fire burned down her throat and Eden let it wash away the hate. If she wasn't careful, she'd tie herself in knots with it. It was already forging her into someone she didn't know—and didn't like.
"Type?" she rasped, lowering the bottle. "Why? You don't think I like a good drink?"
He bared his teeth in a pained smile. "You seem more the type who's all work and no play...."
It wasn't the first time a man had told her that. Eden's eyes narrowed. Nothing wrong with having a sense of duty. She could have a good time.
"You look like you want to say something bad," he said, grimacing. "Permission to swear at me, Miss McClain."
"Strip." She ignored his suggestion.
Colton shot her a somewhat dirty look as he tugged the hem of his shirt up, revealing the chiseled perfection of his abs. "You want to get me down to bare skin, angel, all you've got to do is say the word. But I don't need to take my shirt off."
Normally those were fighting words—especially coming from this man—but Eden's breath caught as she saw the damage. Claw marks raked across his abdomen, slashing down to his hip. The top of them was dangerously close to his sternum. She'd seen enough of Adam's wounds in the past to know this should have healed by now but the edges were grayed, the raw flesh a paler pink than she'd have expected. Tiny threads of darker gray highlighted the faint capillaries under his olive skin, as if the poison from the wound worked its way slowly through him. Sepsis, perhaps. Or something else?
"Jesus," she whispered, touching the puffy flesh lightly. Heat burned beneath her fingers, and suddenly she was moving, reaching for the medical kit she carried everywhere she went. "Hold still."
If he were human, she'd have to clean that flesh out, perhaps even surgically remove some of it. She'd have given him as much antibiotics as she dared—before she ran through her entire supply when the plague hit—and she'd have put him on a drip and spent the next couple of days monitoring him.
But he wasn't human, and she didn't have access to her surgery.
And the last thing they had was time.
"I'll live," he told her gruffly, clearly reading her expression. "Won't be the worst wound I've ever taken. Just bandage it up."
"I know we were joking about it earlier, but shirt off." Her eyes met his. "And that is not a suggestion."
"I'm fine."
"Careful," CJ warned. "She'll wrestle you into submission if you're not careful and sit on you to get what she wants. She only looks like she's small and sweet-tempered, but she's like a trapped wolverine when she wants to play doctor."
"Mierda." Colton tipped the bottle of whiskey to his lips again, and took another healthy swallow. Then he reached over his shoulder and hauled his shirt over his head, wincing a little as muscle flexed in his abdomen, pulling at his wound. "And I don't think I ever thought she was sweet-tempered."
"Sheis right here," Eden growled, glaring at her comrade over Colton's shoulder. A folded piece of paper slid out of his pocket. Eden frowned and went to grab it, but Colton beat her to it.
"That's private," he muttered.
Behind him, CJ sucked in a sharp breath. Colton shot him a narrow-eyed look she couldn't quite decipher, but the claw marks swiftly had her full attention.
Eden cleaned the ragged edges of the wound with a gauze pad soaked in the liquor, as Colton leaned back against the rock he was sitting on. She bit her lip when he hissed. "Normally I wouldn't bother stitching something like this—not with a warg anyway—but I don't like the look of it."
"Heat my knife," he told her, tugging it out of the sheath at his hip and flipping it so he could hand her the hilt. "Burn the poison out and I'll heal. It will just be a little slower than I'd like."
Eden turned toward the small fire CJ had made. It wouldn't have been her first choice. But Colton was right. Whatever had coated the shadow cat's claws, it was working its way through the wound. No point stitching it, and all of her herbal washes would cleanse the wound, but little else.
Which left fire.
Eden slowly heated the blade in the flames. "Are you ready?"
Colton tugged his belt through the rasp of his jeans and folded it. He set it between his teeth, his fist flexing around the neck of the flask. "Rea-rry."
Eden rested her hand on his shoulder and looked at CJ wordlessly. This would hurt and it didn't matter how conflicted she felt about Colton, she hated having to do this to him.
