Driven by Fire (Fire 2)

“If you think you’re wrapping that around my arm, you can guess again,” he drawled. “It’ll still be filthy.”

“It’s the cleanest cloth I have.”

“I think we should use your panties.”

She looked at him in shock, certain he was kidding. He wasn’t. “They’re relatively clean, and considering their proximity to holy virgin territory they’re probably supernaturally blessed. You can count the instant healing as your first step toward a miracle.”

“I wasn’t a virgin.”

“Well, you fuck like one.”

The words were so cruel they took her breath away. She turned her face so he wouldn’t see how he affected her, and muttered, “I’m not taking off my underpants to bandage your arm.”

“Softhearted, aren’t you?” He pulled a handkerchief out of his back pocket and presented it to her. “Then use this. I won’t enjoy it half as much, but then, I’m not in a very good mood.”

“I know you don’t give a damn, but if your bad mood has anything to do with me then I’m sorry,” she said, feeling stupid.

“You mean when you accused me of trying to murder you? I’m hardly going to get all butt-hurt over something like that—I don’t give a flying fuck what you think of me.” He leaned back, most of the blood gone from his arm except for the fresh rivulet beginning to slide down.

She took the handkerchief from his hand and examined it briefly. If it had been dirty she actually would have considering taking off her underwear, but it looked clean enough, and she wrapped it around his bicep as far as it could go. “Your muscles are too big,” she grumbled.

His laugh wasn’t entirely devoid of humor. “First time I’ve been told that.”

She pressed the handkerchief hard against the wound, expecting him to curse in pain, but he didn’t even take a deep breath. He was watching her out of those blue eyes, wolf eyes, she reminded herself. The eyes of a predator who feels nothing, not mercy, not sorrow, not love.

She peeled off a strip of duct tape and wrapped it around his arm, holding the handkerchief in place, then followed it by rows and rows of the stuff. “There,” she said, sitting back to admire her handiwork. “You look steampunk.”

He gave her a look of disgust. “Just in case I get shot again, if you’re not going to donate your panties, then you can always close a wound temporarily with just the duct tape.”

“You’d end up looking like the Tin Woodman in The Wizard of Oz.”

“If I only had a heart,” he said briefly, and the knife in her stomach twisted again. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

“How far is it to Puerto Claro?”

“Depends on what route we take, how many stops we make, whether we have to hide out for a while. We can’t drive main roads, people will be looking for us. Sooner or later I’m going to have to find us something to eat or we’ll never make it, and this thing is going to run out of gas. So we’ll get there when we get there, sweetheart.” The endearment was a cynical slap in the face, and she wanted to kick him. “So shut the hell up and let me drive.”

It must have been later than she thought. Even though it was the middle of the summer, shadows began closing in around them in another hour, and the temperature began to drop. She was starving, she had to pee, and she was freezing to death in her thin cotton cargo shorts and braless T-shirt, but the last thing she was going to do was complain. Sooner or later he was going to have to answer nature’s call—despite all evidence to the contrary, he was only human—but he seemed content not only to keep driving but also to hit every bump imaginable. It was almost dark when he turned off the barely recognizable road and drove the jeep into the underbrush.

“We’re stopping here for now,” he announced.

She looked around her. “No Motel 6?” she inquired sweetly.

“Sorry, gorgeous, but we’re roughing it. Go find yourself a tree—you’ve been squirming in your seat for the last hour.”

She was past the ability to be embarrassed. “If you knew I had to go, then why didn’t you stop sooner?”

“You didn’t ask,” he said simply.

Jenny made a growling noise in the back of her throat. At least the post-twilight shadows afforded her more privacy, and she didn’t have to go too far from the jeep. By the time she came back he’d grabbed a duffel from the back and dumped it on the ground in a clearing a ways off from the jeep. She tried hard to control her shivers, but as usual Ryder was ahead of her, tossing her his blood-soaked jacket.

“Put that on,” he ordered. “You’re freezing to death.”

“It’s not b . . . b . . . bad now that we’ve stopped driving,” she said, trying to disguise her chattering teeth.

“We’re not having a fire, so you’re going to have to figure out some other way to warm up. You can have my jacket or me.”

She grabbed the jacket. “You think the rebels would see the fire?”