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“I said how bad is it? I mean…I mean…” Her face colored. “Going over that dead tree the first time, you know, sort of, uh, sort of scooting across it… I thought I might have picked up some splinters.”

“No. No splinters.”

“Good.”

Better than good. Bad enough he had to look at her thighs. Touching them might have been an embarrassment to them both.

“Here,” he said briskly. “Take this wipe. Use it. Then smear on some of this antiseptic.”

She nodded, did as he’d told her, and when her fingers disappeared between her thighs, he damn near groaned.

Sweet Jesus, Akecheta, what in hell is wrong with you?

Tanner swung away, made himself look busy going though the backpack.

His long recovery had kept him out of STUD action for months, but not out of female action. The units hung out at a bar half a dozen miles up the coast from Camp Condor. Women hung out there, too, the kind attracted to men who served in Special Ops. Meaning they were, for the most part, ready, willing, beautiful…and hot.

His involvement with Red had ended badly, but it hadn’t dulled his sexual appetite. All it had done was remind him that sex was sex. Take what’s offered, give back what you can, enjoy each other for as long as it lasts, end of story.

There hadn’t been a scarcity of women in his bed while he was rehabbing. If anything, there might have been more of them than usual and no, he didn’t need a shrink to point out the obvious, that when you had to sit back while your brothers were out in the field, proving yourself still capable of sex assured you that you were still a man.

Still, he hadn’t been with a woman for a while. Two, three weeks. He’d been too busy concentrating on trying to get his body back in shape to do much partying.

Okay.

That explained what he was feeling now. It had nothing to do with Alessandra Wilde Alessandra Bellini, whatever name she called herself. It had to do with having an itch that needed scratching, and as soon as he got back to California…

“You can turn around now.”

He took a deep breath, expelled it, and then turned to face her. No problem. All he saw was a woman he needed to take care of.

“Roll over,” he said briskly. “On your belly.”

The backs of her legs were cut and bruised, but not as bad as the rest of her. He applied antiseptic to the small wounds quickly and impersonally, dabbed on ointment the same way.

The crisis, or whatever it had been, was over.

“All done,” he said.

She sat up. He dropped the pale blue scrub pants beside her.

“They’ll be big, but at least they’re clean.”

She nodded. “Thanks.”

“After you’ve changed,” he said, “I’ll bury or burn your old stuff. I’m pretty sure we’ve lost Mutt and Jeff, but why take chances?”

“You mean, Stubby and Skinny.”

“Yeah.” He flashed a quick smile. “Nice names.”

“Hey,” she said brightly, “nice guys deserved nice names.”

He had to give her points for how she was handling this. Experience had taught him that humor always helped, even in the worst situations.

“Did you ever actually hear their real names?”

She shook her head. “No.” She paused. “Do you think they’re still looking for us?”