Shiver

at the moment, injured as he was and with Veith and half the Zeta cartel and God knew who else hot on his trail, sex was the last thing on his mind.
    The pain in his leg was bad. The sad thing was, Danny knew that it was about to get about a thousand times worse. But he was already past the fifteen-minute limit he’d allotted himself on the tourniquet. Much longer, and he risked doing serious damage to his leg, if not losing it altogether. And now that it was starting to look like he had a real shot at making it out of this alive, he was going to do his best to keep all his body parts attached and functional. On the theory that later they might come in handy.
    The girl—Sam—was looking at him like he’d just grown horns.
    Oh, right. He’d told her to take off her shirt. The couple of seconds it had taken him to remember why she was giving him that look worried him. His thought processes were starting to go fuzzy, he realized, which was never a good sign. He blinked and scowled, trying to keep sharp. It was hard when his leg burned like somebody had shoved a hot poker through it, and he was feeling more light-headed with every passing second.
    “I need something to cover this wound,” he explained, because her expression made it clear that thoughts of having her bones imminently jumped were dancing through her head. Which, with him in his current condition, was laughable just on the face of it. He must be doing a better job than he’d thought of pretending that he wasn’t on the verge of total collapse if that was what was worrying her. “I’d use mine, but it’s too damned dirty.”
    Relief shone from her eyes. Her face was easy to read, her expressions transparent, her thoughts visible in the curve of her lips, the quirk of her eyebrows, and, of course, her wide blue eyes. Jesus, she was pretty. And young. Too damned young to be caught up in something that could easily get her killed, but there was nothing he could do about that: through no fault of his, or hers, she was well and truly in this thing with him now. Anyway, the impression she gave of vulnerability lost something when he remembered that she’d just coolly shot Torres and Thug Two with the Smith & Wesson revolver she’d been packing. That he had not seen coming. Briefly it occurred tohim to wonder what a girl, let alone one who looked like her, was doing carrying a gun, but speculating on extraneous things took brain power that he didn’t have to spare just then, and anyway he had other fish to fry. Like trying to survive.
    “Do it.” When she continued to look at him without making a move, he frowned at her. Her lips tightened, and her whole expression turned way less than friendly, but to his surprise she didn’t argue. Instead she unbuttoned the loose blue cotton shirt she wore, pulled it free of the cord he’d made her tie around her waist, and handed it over, all without a word. Beneath that boxy uniform shirt, she was wearing a snug white tank that, he saw as she stripped the uniform shirt off, clung to her slim, supple shape like a second skin; he’d caught glimpses of it in the V of her neckline earlier. For such a slim girl, she had nice breasts, not too big, but firm and round as Florida oranges, which it was almost a relief to realize he still was functional enough to notice. Still, he had expected at least some discussion on the subject of taking off her shirt. So far in their acquaintance, she’d argued about everything. But not now.
    Again, he didn’t have time to worry about the whys and wherefores. In all kinds of hair-raising ways, he was running out of time.
    And options.
    “What I’m going to do is loosen this tourniquet on my leg.” Even though she hadn’t asked, Danny spelled it out for her as he folded her shirt into a rectangular pad. The shirt was cotton, soft from what he guessed were repeated washings, hopefully absorbent, certainly cleaner than anything he was wearing.He kept talking because, like planning his next moves, talking helped him stay focused. “Then I’m going to pull my jeans down. I’ve got on boxers, so don’t freak out. When the wound is exposed, I want you to put this over the hole and apply direct pressure to it. That means press down hard with both hands. When I tell you. Be prepared for blood. A lot of it.”
    Her eyes narrowed as she glanced at his leg. He followed her gaze: the area around the belt was black with blood and looked—and felt—so swollen that his jeans could