Page 15 of Kept in the Dark (Hitmen of Ulysses #2)

I watch as he continues tapping on the screen, silently waiting until he finishes his message.

It makes me think of the beaded bag still sitting upstairs by the sink.

I need to hide my work phone somewhere. There’s very little chance Kyle could track me using a decade-old, shared hospital cell phone that isn’t registered to me, but just in case, I’ll keep it turned off.

Seeing that I’m ready, he pockets his cell phone, twists his torso, and leans on his hand, and I have to steel myself as my stomach flutters in response to the overtly sexual picture it paints.

I’m a nurse; he’s a patient .

But even if he’d come into the hospital off the street and we’d never met before, I don’t know that I would have been able to keep from staring at the pale expanse of skin on display. Maybe it wouldn’t have been professional of me, but I would have looked. And appreciated the view.

I sit facing him. Then, I snap on a pair of disposable gloves from the kit and gently remove the pad he had pressed to his side.

It’s like a bucket of cold water being thrown all over my interested perusal of his body.

I can’t believe he was sitting up and moving around normally.

He’s got a gash about four inches long just below his hipbone, and it’s inflamed, oozing, and looks deeper than the butterfly bandages in his first aid kit can handle.

“You really should consider going to a hospital,” I murmur, getting a full view of the damage.

“Out of the question,” he snaps, predictably.

I look around with a grimace at the space. “This environment isn’t clean, and this kit doesn’t have a face mask. You’re going to get an infection. You need stitches, something to control the pain, antibiotics—”

“It is not so deep. The bullet did not penetrate far into the subcutaneous tissue.”

I’m a little surprised at his use of a word I wasn’t sure regular people knew, then I remember he isn’t a regular person. He must have learned it the hard way. “Even so—”

“There is a threaded needle here. The kit has disinfectant and antibiotics”—right, because it’s the best-stocked first aid kit in the whole fucking world—“and you said you can do stitches, da ?”

“What about pain meds? It’s going to hurt, and if you flinch—”

His face is stony. “I will not flinch.”

“Okay, but I might, sewing someone without so much as a local anesthetic. ”

“Enough, Nicole. Do it or give me the needle. I did not ask for your help.”

I bite my lip, looking down at the redness of his skin again. Deep down, I knew some of those scars were the result of self-inflicted stitches.

Oh well. It’s his staph infection; all I can do is my best.

“Fine.”

I fish around in the kit to find the sterile packages. After cleaning the area with saline, I see the wound is still bleeding sluggishly, so I apply pressure with a gauze pad.

As I press, I try to avoid his gaze, since this is the closest we’ve been—while conscious, anyway.

And the way I’m facing him, sitting with my knees splayed and effectively straddling him, is remarkably intimate.

My silky dress, now dirty with God knows what and wrinkled beyond what even a dry cleaning could fix, pools in the triangular space between my thighs and reveals the total naked length of my left leg.

Well, whatever. If he gets a flash of nude shapewear, I’m sure it’ll be the highlight of his day.

The Spanx are wildly uncomfortable, tight, and I sorely wish I could take them off, along with the boob tape that’s been stuck on for so long that it has probably fused to my skin.

But there are more pressing matters, and being around him without underwear… well, I might as well be stark naked.

My face feels hot under his intense stare, but I try to ignore it as I check the cleaned wound area. “It’s not as deep as I thought. You’ll have another scar for your collection, and it needs, like, 15 stitches, but you were lucky.”

“I was caught off guard,” he corrects stiffly, lifting a brow at me.

I narrow my eyes, but choose not to ask a question I don’t want the answer to. I hope he’s not blaming me for this mess. “Lean back for me, so I can have a better angle.”

He does, and I gather my supplies and readjust myself over him, pretending not to notice as his muscles stretch and lengthen, giving him a new, different kind of definition.

He digs one elbow into the mattress and props his head on a fist so he can see what I’m doing, a posture that’s almost casual.

I watch him like a hawk as I apply antiseptic spray and then iodine, but true to his word, he’s totally immobile, barely reacting to what I know stings like the devil—just a slight bob of his Adam’s apple.

While that dries, I unwrap the needle and place my hands gently on his skin, probing the area lightly.

He doesn’t jump or react in any way, and I allow myself to hope that he really will not flinch when I start sewing him back together.

“This is really going to hurt,” I warn again, when everything is in place and I’ve got the curved needle between my gloved fingers.

“Just do it. I am ready.”

For once, I really do believe that.

He’s still as I begin, barely breathing. His muscles spasm under my hand when I get the needle in, but I know that’s involuntary. The scar on his face pulls, deepening into a line that slashes through his pained grimace, and he lets out a shaky breath through his teeth.

“You good?”

“ Da .”

Stitching falls into a rhythm after the initial stick, and now is when I would normally start asking a patient questions, like what happened. For insurance purposes, sure, but also because it helps put them at ease sometimes to tell the story. Kind of unnecessary this time, since I saw it happen.

But talking during this kind of thing helps—I’ve been told my voice is soothing—and patients don’t seem to care what I say. So, I created a habit of saying everything I’m thinking out loud.

“If I had a nickel for every time someone attacked me… well, I’d only have three nickels, but it’s not great that it’s happened at all, you know? You’d probably have a whole dollar or two, though—”

“Who attacked you?” His brows snap together .

I’m not expecting to be interrupted, so I startle. “What?”

“I assume once was Kyle, last night. Who were the others?” he asks, voice strained. Probably from the pain.

Not sure why he cares, I shrug. “Both times were years ago—earlier in my career.” I shift forward so he can see the scar above my elbow, then move my hair aside to show the other at the nape of my neck.

“This guy half my size came at me with a stolen scalpel in Portland, and a woman tried to jump me for some pain meds in Austin. It happens more often than you think. I’ve gotten a lot better at anticipating patients’ moves. ”

I concentrate hard for a second, pausing in my stream-of-consciousness while I tie off a stitch, then glance up for his reaction since he said nothing. He’s staring at me through heavy-lidded eyes.

Bedroom eyes.

“You are taking this all very well, Nicole,” he observes quietly.

“Me?” I repeat, surprised by the assessment. I eye him pointedly as I draw the thread up through his skin. “I’m not the one having an abdominal wound stitched with no pain control in a place teeming with germs.”

His brows twitch, lowering slightly. “It is not the first time for me, and I doubt it is the last. But you are not like me.”

True enough. And I think I get his point—most normal people wouldn’t be able to handle such a high-pressure situation. Most people have never had to. “Well, I do work in the emergency room, and it’s not because I’m bad under pressure,” I mutter.

“You imply that being a nurse is the reason you are acting unusually?”

That suspicion is back, only this time it’s irritating instead of reassuring. I shake my head. “Scoff all you want, but I’ve seen a lot.”

“Such as?” he challenges, lifting a brow.

Sometimes I love how predictable people are—everyone loves a good medical gore story.

“Gunshots, stab wounds, accidents with nail guns and circular saws… I’ve seen a man with a three-inch piece of glass sticking ou t of his cheek sit there for an hour because we were too busy to see him right away. ”

I glance up at him, but he doesn’t so much as twitch at that. Okay… going to have to try a little harder to faze him, I guess.

“I’ve seen a fistfight break out in the waiting room that got someone thrown through a plated glass window before security could break it up.”

Still no reaction. Oddly, it starts to excite me—I get to bring out the big guns that I normally hold back.

“People have come in with bones poking through flesh, and organs literally spilling out.”

Not even a small flinch.

“I’ve seen severed limbs—one guy brought in a hand packed in a fishing cooler with a fish still in it. One guy shot his own dick off.”

That’s the one that finally cracks the stony facade. Dimitri grimaces, as all men do at that story.

“ Mudak ,” he mutters.

“I’ve seen a lot. Okay? Maybe I’m acting unusually , but the only way I could do what I do and possibly sleep at night was to learn how to compartmentalize.”

He apparently has nothing to say to that.

As I make more slow, careful, methodical stitches, he does his best impression of a hunk of marble, though the effort is drawing a cold sweat to his forehead. I need to distract him again, I think. “So how long are we going to hide out here?”

“We need answers to several questions before we can return to land.”

“Like what?”

“We need to know what is in your stomach. If it is drugs, we will dispose of them. You saw the Narcan in here,” he adds, nodding down at the bag. “We also need to know if Kyle is alive. I have contacted some people I know, who will notify me if he appears in a hospital or jail or the morgue.”

It almost makes me shiver. He knows people who have access to morgue and hospital records? Those are the kinds of resources cops have, but I know he’s not talking about law enforcement. “Then what?”

“It depends on whether he is alive.”

Bile rises in my throat. If Kyle is dead, he’s not a danger to me—I’ll just need to figure out how to convince Dimitri to let me go. “What if he’s alive? He’s going to come after me, right? He wants this back,” I point to my stomach. “And I’ll bet he’s involved in some really dangerous stuff.”

When Dimitri doesn’t respond, I hazard a glance up. He’s staring thoughtfully. “Are you sure you want the answer to that?”

I don’t like the implications of his question, so my response is a knee-jerk, “Not really.” I sigh. “But I already know some things, so I might as well have the complete story.”

“Some things,” he repeats, an implied question.

“I know you didn’t want to go to the police when most normal people would.

I know that the shooting was probably related to Bratvas ,” I add as an afterthought.

I’m not sure if I’m helping or hindering my cause, but I have to hope that if I show him I can keep quiet about stuff, that will help. Right?

“What do you know about the Bratva ?” he asks, voice sharp.

“Only what the internet tells me,” I sniff defensively. “And that my third cousin might have just married into one, if the guest list at that wedding is any indication.”

He says nothing to that, but makes a grunting noise that could be anything from an acknowledgment to a pain response to gas. “You cannot un-know things, Nicole. Are you certain you wish to know?” he presses.

“No. Fuck,” I curse, turning my head. “Just… tell me one thing. Is there a chance we make it out of this and I don’t have to look over my shoulder for Russian guys with guns for the rest of my life? ”

He keeps doing that—looking at me with that strange expression. I can see him in my periphery. “ Da .”

“ Da. Okay. Then I can hold on to that, and it can be enough for now.”

Even though I still want to know what the hell is going on, I let it drop so I can focus all my attention on the task at hand. I make the extra effort to be sure my stitches are no bigger than necessary and perfectly parallel.

“Done,” I announce finally, my breath whooshing out as I straighten.

I crack both sides of my neck, work a small stretch through my back and shoulders, then collect the bloody gauze and needle and pile everything into a double-thick bag from the kit for medical waste.

The second I stand, my gloves come off, and I rub my closed eyes under the lenses of my glasses.

He’s sitting up when I turn back around, examining the stitches with his head tilted to the side. He looks impressed, and it makes my face feel warm.

But that sense of pride melts back into the now-familiar unease as he stands. I fall back a step. Somehow, I forgot how huge he was when he was prostrate. Even with his head tilted forward, he’s a full head taller than me—that’s never not going to be weird for me. My heart kicks me in the ribs.

He stoops, wincing a little at the pulling on his side, and grabs the shirt from where he placed it next to him on the bed. We both stare at the ruined state of what was once a very nice button-down, and I can’t hold back an amused exhale through my nose.

“Shame. Looks tailored,” I tsk, taking in the red-brown stain and large hole.

“It was,” he agrees.

“You’ll never get dried blood out of silk. Believe me, I’ve tried,” I say, my eyes dropping to the wound.

A stirring at the lower edge of my vision catches my attention, and my mouth goes dry as I realize where it’s coming from. His sweatpants have plenty of give and room, and I can see a sizable bulge forming and growing.

My eyes widen, then fly up to meet his as my pulse races. He’s… he’s getting hard? Now? After the pain I just inflicted on him? Medically, I know people can’t always control their body’s reactions, but personally… a guy I’m insanely attracted to is getting hard right in front of me.

Oh my God, what do I—

The corner of his mouth twitches, like my obvious panic amuses him. “Thank you for this, my med.”

Oh, we’re doing cute nicknames based on our occupations? What am I supposed to call him, killer? The possessive pronoun makes my heart leap, but… it’s good, right? Who would want to hurt their medic?

“You’re welcome,” I manage.

“You should go take a shower. Do not use too much water—it is all we have until we can stop to refill the tank. There are clothes here in this closet that should be sufficient.”

I don’t need another excuse. I tuck tail and run.