IN MY SKIN Excerpt (713 words)

Copyright © 2018 Shannon McKenna

Dani got back to work. Focusing on caring for his body.

Not that she could have focused on anything else if she wanted to. Even wounded, with his breath rasping painfully in his massive chest, the guy was a mouth-watering super stud. Close proximity to him was distracting even before she got his clothes off.

And when he was half naked, the sheer breadth of his heavily muscled shoulders and chest stopped her breath.

Not good.

Concentrate, LaSalle. Do your nurse thing. Breathe. Your brain needs oxygen.

But he threw off so much heat. It made her sweat. Her face felt fiery as she dabbed on antibiotic ointment with a piece of folded gauze. Trying not to be so acutely conscious of the taut, steely belly muscles before her eyes. So lean and ripped. The dark treasure trail tapering down, sliced through here and there by the scarring.

She tried desperately not to think about the kissing interlude in her laundry closet, which now seemed like a crazy dream. One that couldn’t possibly have been real.

Her eyes rested on his rock-hard thighs splayed out in front of the bench, his huge quad muscles bulging against the blood-stiffened black fabric of his pants, remembering how it felt to straddle them and hang on for dear life, her chest plastered against his bullet-proof vest while his hand cupped her ass and, slowly rocking and pulsing the yearning ache between her legs against the hard, thick bulge at his crotch.

Stop it. You are working. Fuck’s sake. The man just got stabbed.

Good thing he wasn’t looking at her. He hunched over, head down and shaking fingers clenched, white-knuckled, on his own knees as she finished taping the gauze over the wound at his side.

There was blood on his face, too. Or what she could see of it, with his head lowered. Sweat shone on it. Big drops standing out. She rose to her feet, alarmed by the heat radiating off his body, and reached out to feel his forehead—

He pulled sharply away, then went still. He looked up at her, eyes cautious.

“Sorry,” he said gruffly. “I’m on edge. You took me by surprise.”

“I was just, uh, checking,” she said. “You’re so hot.”

He glanced up, with a look that was almost like a smile.

Her face flamed. “I mean … I just want to see if you’re running a fever.” Crap.

“I’m not,” he said softly. “But go ahead.”

She was so flustered, she was no longer tracking. “Huh? Go ahead and what?”

He put his hand on the gauze taped to his side. “Touch me,” he said simply.

Another awkward silence, while Dani’s mouth worked. “Ah …”

“If you want to check my temperature, I mean.” He grinned at her. The very first smile she’d seen on his otherwise grim face.

Oh, God. Dimples? It was too goddamn much. Everything they said to each other sounded like a blatant come-on to her now.

“Well. I’ll just, um, find a thermometer,” she mumbled.

“Don’t have one.” His voice was thick with exhaustion. “Never needed one.”

“OK, whatever.” That was an argument for another day. She pulled out a piece of folded gauze and dabbed antibiotic ointment on it. “Let me take care of those scrapes on your face.”

He didn’t make a sound, just closed his eyes as she swabbed and dabbed. Which left her free to study every detail up close. His face had scars, too. More recent injuries on top of older ones. Bumps on his nose from being broken more than once.

“I hope you have a bed around here, because you look like you’re ready to get horizontal,” she told him.

“There’s a bed in the other room, but you can take it,” he said. “I’ll sleep on the floor.”

“Yeah, right. Like I would let you do that.”

“You’re the boss,” he said.

“Hardly,” she said. “I can’t make you clue me in about what’s going on. You just keep saying you’ll tell me everything later. And I’m really hoping that tell me everything includes explaining those scars, and who the killer robots are, and how the demon Porsche drives itself.”

“I’ll do my best,” he promised.

Dani harrumphed. “You’re a piece of work, Luke.”