Alien Knight Blind Date Disaster

think.” She took a few more deep, calming breaths, then poured a bit of hydrogen peroxide into the wound, expecting him to cry out. He did not move. Not an inch. Not a single twitch of muscle.
She dipped the end of her largest pair of tweezers in rubbing alcohol and covered her hands with the liquid as well. “Ready.”
“You smell good, Bella,” he murmured. “Everything in here smells like you. Vanilla. Oranges. Very exotic.”
Isabella snorted. Only he would think vanilla and oranges were exotic. Still, she was pleased that he liked the way she smelled. Her heart melted just a little. Maybe he wasn’t such an ass after all.
She watched him grin into her pillow like he was drunk. Maybe that maju water had gone straight to his head. Maybe it had a pain-killing effect. She didn’t know. All she knew was that small bottle had cost her a fortune and the man who’d sold it to her said it would heal literally anything short of the dead. Can’t bring anything back to life. That’s what he’d said, anyway. But she hadn’t really believed him about the miracle water’s healing properties. Of course, she hadn’t tried any either.
“I’m going to dig for the bullet now.”
His response was noncommittal, barely a sound of acknowledgment. Shaking her head, she held the wound open with two fingers of her left hand and went digging with the oversize tweezers in her right.
He was unconscious when she finally got the bullet out of his back. Dead to the world, unaware of everything she was doing to him. Which meant he didn’t see her hands shaking or hear her sigh of relief or see the tears that sneaked down her cheeks when it was over. She hated blood. Like, puke-up-her-guts, gag-for-hours hated. But he’d needed her, and she’d held on, dug that bullet out of him so now he could heal.
She gathered her supplies, rubbed the blood from his skin with a wet cloth soaked in hydrogen peroxide and carried the small cookie tray she’d been using as a medical tray back to the tiny kitchen. She washed up quickly. When she turned around to look for bandages in the bathroom, she saw the jar of maju paste.
“Almost forgot.” He’d said the paste would help the injured flesh heal on the outside. And since he was asleep and the bullet was on his back, she was going to have to rub the paste into his skin for him.
He’d said not to touch it, but it wasn’t like he could do it. And that bullet hole looked nasty. She’d heard on the street that the paste healed all kinds of wounds, so it couldn’t be bad. Right? She had talked to several people, humans, who had used the paste themselves and raved about how amazing it was. So why hadn’t he wanted her to touch it? That seemed overly cautious. Paranoid.
“Whatever.” His wound was open, and it would get infected. She didn’t have stitches or staples or even butterfly bandages to try to close it. So the paste was really her only option.
Seeing him stretched out on her bed, the wound open but not bleeding, she could imagine what he might look like fully naked. Healthy. The lines of his muscles bulging as he held himself up over her, slowly sliding inside her wet core, covering her body with heat and man and hot, sweaty sex.
Stop it. Lusting after an unconscious man was not her style. Hell, lusting after any man was not her style. This one just got under her skin somehow. Like a tick. But that wasn’t fair, either. And it was a lie.
Falden got to her like sunshine on bare skin or the bliss of slipping into a warm bath. Heat. Comfort. Pleasure. He made her want to forget anything and everything but him. Which was stupid because she’d known him all of a few hours.
Hurrying to his side, she opened the small silver cylinder to find the paste was a mixture that looked like a liquid prism, reflecting a rainbow of colors and sparkling like diamonds. It was odorless. “Maju paste. Focus, Isa. Focus.” Dipping her fingers into the jar, she scooped a small amount onto her fingertips and rubbed it around the wound, avoiding the center. Shocked, she watched as the flesh slowly began to knit together.
“Wow.”
One application and the wound was already smaller than it had been before. Her fingers tingled, the sensation amazing. She rubbed the little bit she had left all over her hands and went back for more. Dipping into the jar again, she took out a more generous portion and rubbed it all over his shoulder area, then leaned back to watch the wound knit together a bit more.
“Holy shit. This stuff is worth a fortune.” And since he’d already promised to replace what she used, she rubbed more on him, and if some made its way onto her forearms, she wasn’t going to complain. The tingling sensation made her feel good. Great, actually. Which beat the heck out of scared and exhausted. The skin around his wound also looked healthier, taking on a brighter sheen than before. Maybe he was tingling, too. With a smile, she absently rubbed some on her cheeks. Her lips. Her neck.
God, this stuff was amazing.
A few seconds later she looked back down at Falden and gasped.
“Your markings.” They were changing. Lighting up from the inside. The white crystalline swirl she’d noticed earlier on his temple was different from the markings covering his back, shoulders, arms and neck. Everywhere she spread on the paste, the strange swirls in his skin now glowed with an inner pearlescent blue fire.
Eager to see more, she coated his back and shoulders, his arms. His neck. When she ran out of skin, she gently lifted his head and turned his face to the opposite side, coating him there as well. And when that was done? The wound was nearly closed so she placed a large sticky bandage