“Definitely.”
“Good. Let’s tend those wounds.” He motioned to the seats.
Ava sat and watched him retrieve first aid paraphernalia from the bag. “I sprayed them all twice, just to be sure.”
Nodding, he knelt beside her and inspected the gash on her arm. “I’m surprised this stopped bleeding so quickly.”
Ava made a noncommittal sound. She would eventually have to explain what had happened to her, tell him all the ways the Gathendiens’ viral concoction had changed her. But she just didn’t feel up to it at the moment.
He sprayed his hands with the magic foam and wiped them on her towel. Then he palmed a much smaller canister—one about the size of a tube of lipstick—and aimed it at the cut.
“What’s that?”
“Imaashu. It’s a pain deadener that will also kill any bacteria that may enter the wound.” He sprayed it.
Her eyes widened. The throbbing ceased almost immediately. “That’s amazing.”
Smiling, he covered the cut with a white bandage just long and wide enough to hide the wound. Then he grabbed a third canister and sprayed. A clear substance coated the white fabric, extending an inch or so beyond its edges. Beneath Ava’s astonished gaze, the bandage fitted itself to her wound as though suctioned to it and remained there without Jak’ri having to tape it or wrap bandages around and around her arm to hold it in place.
“That is so cool.”
Jak’ri moved on to the gash in her leg.
Ava grimaced. It was so deep she didn’t look at it too closely, afraid she’d see bone. Those spikes the Gathendiens wore on their tails were as sharp as freaking razor blades. But like the other wound, it no longer bled.
Jak’ri didn’t say anything while he ministered to it. The burn on her other arm received the same careful treatment. “Now your foot.” Sitting back on his heels, he drew her foot onto his lap and studied it. “This one’s still bleeding.”
Jogging on it probably hadn’t helped.
His brows lowered. “It looks worse than the others.”
Worse than her thigh?
That wasn’t good.
He sprayed it with the pain suppressor, providing instant relief.
“Best invention ever,” she murmured.
He looked up. “What is?”
“That spray.”
“You don’t have anything like it on Earth?”
Something you could spray on a deep wound and instantly eradicate all the pain? “No.”
He carefully bandaged the wound as he had the others.
“Thank you.”
He patted her ankle. “How’s the pain?”
“Gone.” Or mostly gone. Her abdomen still hurt. But she didn’t think spraying the pain deadener on the surface would alleviate the pain beneath it where they’d done who knew what to her organs.
“Good. I’m going to give you a silna to speed the healing.” He placed the canisters back in the medic bag and withdrew something shaped like a small handgun.
Ava eyed it curiously as he searched for something else. “Tell me again: What’s a silna?”
“It boosts your immune system and enhances your body’s ability to repair itself.” He found a small vial filled with a clear liquid.
She stopped him before he could insert the vial into the autoinjector thing. “I’m going to pass on that, thank you.”
His face lit with surprise. “You don’t want it?”
“No.”
“Are you sure? It’s been tested on multiple alien races and has performed its expected function in every one of them.”
“I’m sure. The virus the Gathendiens infected me with has already altered my immune system. I’m afraid to alter it any more.”
Lowering the vial, he stared at her. “You think a silna might harm you?”
“Yes.”
“If the Gathendien virus weakened your immune system, it may slow the healing of your wounds and leave you vulnerable to infection.”
The Gathendien virus hadn’t weakened her immune system. It had completely obliterated it and replaced it like a symbiotic organism.
“Trust me. I’ll be fine without the silna.”
At last, he nodded. “As you wish. I just want you to be well, Ava.”
“I know. And I am. My wounds feel much better. Thank you for tending them.”
Nodding, he tucked everything except the canister of foam back in the medic bag. “Would it be all right if I cleaned up a bit?”
“Of course.” She hadn’t noticed until then that his chest and shorts bore bloodstains and streaks of dirt, too. Her brows drew down. “Are you injured?” Why the hell had it taken her so long to ask that?
He glanced down. “No. I think most of this rubbed off on me when I held you. I could wipe it off with a sani-towel but really just want to wash away my stay on the ship.”
“I totally understand.” She felt much better now that she didn’t bear the Gathendien’s stink.
Without waiting to see if he’d ask her to, Ava turned her back.
“I don’t blame you for looking away,” he commented wryly. “I wouldn’t want to see me naked either.”
Appalled that he would think that, she spun around. “No! That’s not why I looked away. You’re—”
He grinned at her.
Laughing, she swatted his arm. “Tease.”
He shrugged. “I just wanted to see you smile.”
She turned away once more.
“I like that I can understand your words better now,” he said.
She wrinkled her nose. She’d been speaking English since he’d upgraded his translator. “My Alliance Common isn’t great, is it?”
“Not great,” he confirmed, no condemnation in his tone, as clothing rustled. “But not bad either. How long have you been studying it?”
“I studied it for three and a half months before the Gathendiens caught me.” She heard him spray the foaming liquid and tried not to imagine him rubbing it all over his body. “I was actually on the Kandovar for four months, but spent the first couple of weeks oohing and ahhing over all the advanced technology and tripping over the fact that I was traveling through outer space.”
“I don’t think tripping translated correctly.”
“Why? What did your translator say it means?”
“Stumbling.”
She laughed. “It does sometimes mean stumbling. But in this sense, it means… marveling, I guess.”
“Is Lasaran technology more advanced than that on Earth?”
“It’s much more advanced. So is Gathendien technology.” She glanced around at the pod. “Akseli, too.”
Jak’ri shifted behind her, then strode into view as he headed for the lav.
Eyes widening, Ava got a good long look at his bare, muscled ass, then hastily closed her eyes. Heat seeped into her cheeks.
“Apologies,” he said as he walked past again. And she almost wished she’d kept her eyes open so she could see all of him. “I forgot I’d need a towel.”
“No worries,” she mumbled.
In no time at all, he was clean and garbed in a pair of pants that fit loosely like sweatpants but were thinner.