Lace & Lead

He opened his mouth, about to ask for help, but the words stuck in his throat. He wasn’t asking for help from her. Not from a blue-blood.

Tomorrow. Tomorrow he’d take it easy.

He took a deep breath and kept stretching, knowing it was just a matter of time before he’d be able to hit the clasps. He could feel the skin straining around the staples, the warning signs that it was ripping a little. Sweat beaded on his brow.

Just a little farther—

The clasp suddenly went but he hadn’t reached it yet. He looked over his shoulder and saw Emmaline standing behind him, her slim, delicate fingers undoing the entire seam.

“Thanks,” he muttered.

She just nodded and focused on her task.

The familiar split in the armour is what told him he was finally home. With a sigh of pleasure, he took the chest piece off, making sure to wipe down the inside with a rag before storing it on the shelf. Emmaline had held onto the back plate and for a split second he wondered if he liked the silence that came when it didn’t fall to the floor.

The sign that he was no longer alone.

She handed it to him without a word, eyes lingering over the tight white tank that fit like a second skin. He ignored her reaction and repeated the wiping process. When it was finally stored, he took a breath and peeled off the tank, throwing it into a corner of the room.

Her shocked gasp hurt, but he didn’t try to hide as he dug a fresh tank out of his drawers. She was going to see the scars at some point.

Chapter 4

Today was full of new lessons.

Lesson one: Peirce Taggart had absolutely no sense of comfort or décor.

Lesson two: He was fastidious to the point of OCD.

Lesson three: Watching him unload the tools of his trade had done strange things to her, things that made her want to try some moves she was pretty sure were illegal in the Republic.

Lesson four: Taggart in a tank top had given her a hot flash.

Lesson five: Taggart without a tank top was even hotter.

Then she was distracted by the scars.

They crisscrossed his body, some so faded from time they were nearly gone, others so fresh they looked as though they’d just finished closing. The pockmarked indentations of bullet holes. The sweeping lines of knife wounds. Across the left side of his ribcage, three bite marks with such a radius she was sure some prehistoric creature had inflicted the damage.

The scars were so prominent, she almost didn’t notice the tattoo—the Lawmen’s crest—sitting on his hip, running parallel to the blonde hair that trailed down the muscular slabs of his abdominals into the top of his pants.

She would have ogled him longer, but he turned away from her to his drawers, dragging a clean white tank top out. He didn’t grimace when he put it on, even though she could see him favouring his injured shoulder.

That newest bullet wound fit into the canvas well, despite the blood weeping from his overexertion. She frowned at the sight, noting the growing stain on the white fabric. “Do you have a towel you don’t mind getting bloody?”

He raised an eyebrow at her, but motioned toward the bathroom. It was small, but all the basics were there. On the inset shelves near the sink were nearly all the trappings of a med-centre. Her gut pitched to see that many of the supplies were clearly used on a regular basis.

It’s all part of the job, she told herself firmly. He knows what he’s doing.

She found a washcloth and got it wet. Taggart had joined her by now, leaning his uninjured shoulder against the doorframe as he watched.

“Turn around,” she told him.

He did, but cautiously. She ignored his clear mistrust and began dabbing at the wound.

“What are you doing?” He sounded confused.

“It was bleeding again.” She dug out a large square of gauze from the shelf supplies and taped it down over the gunshot. “There.”