Page 32 of Coyote

I shut my mouth.

Sierra tied off the last stitch and covered the whole thing with a waterproof dressing. He checked the puncture high on John's thigh next. That one had held. So had the wrapping on his forearm, though blood from the shed had soaked through the outside of it.

"No soaking," Sierra said. "No spring. Wash around this and keep it dry."

"I know," John said.

"I know you know. I'm saying it anyway."

John pushed himself upright. Sierra put a hand against his shoulder and shoved him back into the chair.

"You get dizzy?"

"No."

"Would you say so if you did?"

"Probably not."

Sierra kept his hand on John's shoulder. "Sit another minute."

I stayed where I was, trapped between John's knees. His hand remained on the back of my leg. He rubbed his thumb once over the tendon behind my knee, a slow pass that made something inside me pull tight.

Sierra caught me looking down at it.

"Take him to wash," he said. "Before you bite through your own tongue."

I wound Nimue around my neck and took John to the bathhouse.

John sat on the dry cedar bench while I filled a basin. Nimue settled at the far end, away from the water, and raised her head to watch us.

I started with John's hands.

Blood had dried in the creases of his knuckles and beneath his nails. I took each finger separately, working the cloth over the skin until the water in the basin turned pink.

His hands… those big, gentle hands that spanned half my back when he held me, had blood on them, and I hated the sight of it with everything in me. Bruises ringed one wrist where somebody had grabbed him. Finger marks stood out along his throat. A dark stripe crossed his cheekbone from the pistol.

I scrubbed harder. Too hard, probably, but I had to get off more than the blood. They'd tainted him, and I couldn't leave even a hint of their scent on my man.

I dragged the cloth over his forearm, digging dried blood out of the hair. His skin turned red. I moved up to his shoulder, then his throat, rubbing over the bruises until his jaw tightened.

Every dark smear showed me another place they had touched what was mine.

I pressed the cloth against his cheek, and he flinched. "Hold still."

"Little one."

"It's not off yet."

"It is."

I scrubbed the same place again.

John caught my wrist. I tried to pull free, and his hand closed tighter.

"Let go."

"No."