Dark Sins and Desert Sands by Stephanie Draven Page B

put both hands over her mouth. Two things had shocked her. The first was that this time, she was able to identify his gun on sight. It was a Makarov semiautomatic pistol. The second thing that shocked her was the calm way in which he promised to kill someone. Ray was a soldier. Maybe killing came easy to him. Yet, the idea that he might kill for her, to protect her, was more comforting than she wanted to admit.
    She’d stay here with him, then. Just until morning.
    He seemed to realize without her having to say so that they’d come to some kind of truce and he took off his bloody shirt, dropping it in a disorderly heap on the floor. Then she watched him plod over to the sink and turn on the faucet. She drew closer, marveling at what she’d done to him. He looked as if he’d been clawed by a wild animal. Both exhilarated and sickened by the deep gouges she’d scratched into his arm, she drew closer. “Here, let me help you,” she said, reaching for the soap.
    He tried to shrug her off, but then their hands twined in the warm, sudsy water. He stilled, then looked away as she cleaned his wounds. His silence only emphasized the sound of their breathing. His deep and sonorous, hers quick and airy. She’d only intended to help slough the blood off his arms and fetch him a towel, but her efficient lathering slowed until his hands joined with hers. Then they were washing together.
    Before this place and time, she hadn’t known if he was a guilty man. For that matter, neither did she know if she were an innocent woman. In this moment, something changed between them.
    Their shoulders touched, but it was more than that. She was leaning against his bare chest as if she’d been running lost through a wilderness and finally come to rest against the base of a mighty tree. She’d been so frightened, for so long, and against all reason, she felt safe with him. In the warm flowing water, his big thumbs caressed her palms, stroking her with a gentleness that belied the animal savagery she’d seen before. It was as if the sins of their past were washing away down the drain with the blood and dirt.
    When he tangled her tawny fingers with his darker ones and held them…she let him. She’d never had anyone hold her hands like that. Like the lines of her palms could tell the story of her soul. And she wanted to linger here, with the scent of soap in her nostrils, poised in that perfect moment where she felt like the darkest parts of her were finally starting to come clean. But Ray was still bleeding, and she couldn’t bear that he was in any more pain. “I need to find something to bandage your arms….”
    “It’s nothing.” He shrugged as if he’d suffered so much that he’d grown detached from his flesh.
    “Maybe there are some Band-Aids or something in here,” she said.
    He reached for a towel. “I said it was nothing. You don’t need to play nursemaid.”
    It might be nothing to him, but she wanted to bandage him. Heal him somehow. Prove to him that she’d changed. “Please just let me do something for you.”
    He worked his jaw, as if the decision didn’t come easy. “There’s a first-aid kit in my pack.”
    She fetched it, trying not to think too hard about the other things she found inside—like duct tape and bourbon. When she returned, he extended his arms to her but it was several moments more before the tension left his shoulders and he fully surrendered, which made it easier to rub salve into the lacerations and bandage him. He watched her as she worked, lowering his head so that their foreheads almost touched, and something tightened in her throat. “I’m sorry I did this to you, Ray. You grabbed me. You frightened me.”
    He still couldn’t look at her. “I know.”
    “I just wanted to get free….”
    “I understand.”
    She supposed he, of all people, would. She taped the bandages in place around each wrist and stepped back to admire her handiwork. That’s when he reached for her again. “Now let