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mistakenly believed he had to incapacitate me again. So he—”
    “Shot you in the ass?”
    “As I was already in motion, his second shot missed and entered my thigh, but I believe he was aiming for the buttock.”
    She waited for him to laugh. Or at least crack a smile. But her attempt at humor had missed the mark for Tyler was counting beneath his breath. He’d only reached three when he hissed from between tightly compressed lips, “Show me.”
    Jay blinked. Even though there was no possibility she had heard wrongly, perhaps she had misunderstood some essential subtext in that brief statement. She decided it was imperative to request clarification. “Show you my buttocks?”
    “Yes.”
    No misunderstanding then. How… unexpected.
    “Now?”
    He released her and stepped back, dropping his hands to his sides. His hands clenched and unclenched. Clenched again. Crimson blotches mottled his neck and throat. “And your chest, too. I need to see what he did to you.”
    He noted the gaze she shot toward the door and swiveled on his heel. “Now, Jay,” he threw back at her as he locked the bedroom door to insure their privacy.
    Jay healed with inhuman speed, and the wounds had been what she termed minor injuries. In mere days, there would be no evidence of the five wounds she’d taken during her encounter with Sixer to distress Tyler. However, perhaps seeing the evidence firsthand, knowing absolutely that she had taken no lasting harm, would help him to shed whatever misplaced guilt and anger he harbored over his inability to protect her.
    “Very well.”
    She shucked her t-shirt, kicked off her sneakers, and shimmied out of her jeans. She hadn’t bothered with a bra this morning so that was one less item of clothing to remove. The leg of her underpants could easily be tugged up to reveal the healing wound on her buttock, and after a quick internal debate, she could see no harm in leaving them on. There was no reason to remove her socks—that portion of her anatomy had not been injured. And so she stood there in her underpants and socks, waiting for Tyler to do… whatever it was he needed to do.

Chapter Three
    Tyler approached her as a human would approach some wild creature that might bolt at the slightest provocation. “Is something wrong?” she asked.
    He waited until he stood directly before her, half an arm’s length away, before responding with, “Does it hurt?”
    And then, before she could formulate a response, he reached out, skimming his fingertips over each slightly raised disc of newly formed dermis. The first atop her left pectoral muscle… the second opposite the first… the third atop her left internal abdominal oblique. Sixer had been precise with his aim, and the projectiles had been designed to lodge in muscular tissue rather than rip through organs and splinter bone—not that Jay’s skeletal structure could be damaged by such small projectiles.
    Each touch of Tyler’s fingertips left behind a tingling trail of heat. Jay inhaled, willing her racing pulse to calm, but as her diaphragm expanded, Tyler moved closer. His palm flattened over her abdomen. “Tell me,” he said, using the clipped tone that indicated he would accept no prevarication on her part.
    “If you refer to the wounds inflicted to my torso region, then no, they don’t hurt.” He was already aware that she didn’t experience pain as humans did, but Jay believed he wouldn’t appreciate the reminder at this particular moment. “The projectiles entering my body caused negligible physical damage,” she told him. “The damage caused when Sixer digitally extracted them was more severe, however it is healing well. In a few more days, the areas where the dermis has re-grown will be imperceptible to the human eye.”
    His
eyes appeared to darken a few shades—a fascinating phenomenon that Jay would have liked to test further, but this was hardly an opportune moment to propose an experiment.
    “
Sixer
dug the bullets out