by J. R. Ward
Stockholm. Stockholm. Stockholm—
“I would love a bath,” he said. Then he tacked on, “Please.”
Jane cleared her throat. “Okay. Right.”
She went through the medical supply duffels, found a large bedpan, and headed for the bathroom. After she filled the basin full of warm water and grabbed a washcloth, she went back out and set herself up on the bedside table on the left. As she wet the little towel and squeezed off the excess, water chimed through the silent room.
She hesitated. Dipped the washcloth again. Squeezed.
Come on, now, you opened up his chest and went into him. You can do this. No problem.
Just think of him as the hood of a car, nothing but surface area.
“Okay.” Jane reached out, put the warm cloth to his upper arm, and the patient flinched. All over. “Too hot?”
“No.”
“Then what’s with the grimace?”
“Nothing.”
Under different circumstances she would have pressed, but she had her own problems. His bicep was damn impressive, his tan skin revealing the very cords of the muscle. The same was true of his heavy shoulder and the slope leading down to his pectoral. He was in sublime physical condition, not an ounce of fat on him, lean as a Thoroughbred, muscular as a lion.
When she crossed the pads of his pecs, she paused at the scar on the left one. The circular mark was embedded in the flesh, as if it had been pounded in.
“Why didn’t this heal smoothly?” she asked.
“Salt.” He fidgeted as if encouraging her to get on with the bath. “Seals the wound.”
“So it was deliberate?”
“Yeah.”
She dipped the cloth in the water, wrung it out, and awkwardly leaned over him to reach his other arm. When she drew the cloth downward, he pulled away. “Don’t want you near that hand of mine. Even if it’s gloved.”
“Why is—”
“I’m not talking about it. So don’t even ask.”
Okaaaay. “It nearly killed one of my nurses, you know.”
“I’m not surprised.” He glared at the glove. “I’d cut it off if I had the chance.”
“I wouldn’t advise that.”
“Of course you wouldn’t. You don’t know what it’s like to live with this nightmare on the end of your arm—”
“No, I meant I’d have someone else do the cutting if I were you. You’re more likely to get the job done that way.”
There was a beat of silence; then the patient barked out a laugh. “Smart-ass.”
Jane hid the smile that popped up on her face by doing another dip/rinse routine. “Just rendering a medical opinion.”
As she swept the washcloth down his stomach, laughter rippled through his chest and belly, his muscles going rock-tight, then releasing. Through the terry cloth she could feel the warmth of his body and sense the potency in his blood.
And suddenly he wasn’t laughing anymore. She heard what sounded like a hiss come out of his mouth, and his six-pack flexed, his lower body moving under the bedding.
“That knife wound feeling okay?” she asked.
As he made a noise that sounded like an unconvincing yes, she felt bad. She’d been so concerned about his chest, she hadn’t paid much attention to the stabbing issue. Lifting the bandage at his side, she saw that he was fully healed, nothing but a faint pink line showing where he’d been injured.
“I’m taking this off.” She peeled the white gauze free, folded it in half, and dropped it into the wastepaper basket. “You’re amazing, you know that? The healing you can do is just…yeah.”
While rerinsing the washcloth, she debated whether she wanted to head farther south. Like, way south. Like…all the way south. The last thing she needed was more intimate knowledge about how perfect his body was, but she wanted to finish the job…if only to prove to herself that he was no different from any of her other patients.
She could do this.
Except when she went to move the covers lower, he grabbed the duvet and held it in place. “Don’t think you’re going to want to go there.”
“It’s nothing I haven’t seen before.” When his lids dropped and he didn’t reply, she said in a quiet voice, “I operated on you, so I’m aware that you’re partially castrated. I’m not a date, I’m a doctor. I promise that I have no opinion about your body other than what it represents to me clinically.”
He winced before he could hide the reaction. “No opinion?”
“Just let me wash you. It’s not a big deal.”
“Fine.” That diamond gaze narrowed. “Suit yourself.”
She pulled the sheets away. “There’s nothing to be—”
Holy shit…! The patient was fully erect. Massively erect. Lying straight up his lower belly, stretching from his groin to above his navel, was a spectacular arousal.
“No big deal, remember?” he drawled.
“Ah…” She cleared her throat. “Well…I’m just going to keep going.”
“Fine with me.”
Trouble was, she couldn’t precisely recall what she was supposed to be doing with the washcloth. And she was staring. She was seriously staring.
Which was what you did when you got a gander at a man who was hung like a Louisville Slugger.
Oh, God, did she really just think that?
“Since you’ve already seen what was done to me,” he said in a dry voice, “I can only guess you’re checking my navel for lint.”
Yeah. Right.
Jane got back with the program, running the cloth down his ribs. “So…how did it happen?”
When he didn’t answer, she glanced at his face. His eyes were focused across the room, and they were flat, lifeless. She’d seen that look before in patients who’d been attacked, and knew he was remembering a horror.
“Michael,” she murmured, “who hurt you?”
He frowned. “Michael?”
“Not your name?” She took the washcloth back to the bowl. “Why am I not surprised?”
“V.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Call me V. Please.”
She brought the cloth back to his side. “V it is, then.”
She tilted her head and watched her hand rise up his torso, then slide down again. She was stalling, not going lower. Because in spite of his distraction with the ugly past, he was still erect. Totally erect.
Okay, time to get moving downward. Hello, she was an adult. A physician. She’d had a couple of lovers. What she was witnessing was just a biological function that resulted in a pooling of blood in his incredibly large—
That was so not where her thoughts needed to go.
As Jane took the cloth down over his hip, she tried to ignore the fact that he shifted as she went along, his back arching, that heavy arousal on his belly pushing forward, then falling back into place.
The tip of it wept a glossy, tempting tear.
She looked up at him…and froze. His eyes were on her throat, and they were burning with a lust that wasn’t just sexual.
Any attraction she might have felt for him disappeared. This was a male of another species, not a man. And he was dangerous.
His stare dropped to her hand in the cloth. “I won’t bite you.”
“Good, because I don’t want you to.” This she was clear on. Hell, she was glad he’d looked at her like that, because it had jarred her back to reality. “Listen, not that I want to know personally, but does it hurt?”
“Don’t know. Never been bitten myself.”
“I thought you said that—”
“I feed off females. But no one has ever fed off me.”
“Why?” As his mouth closed up tight, she shrugged. “You might as well tell me. I’m not going to remember anything, right? So what will it cost you to talk?”
As silence stretched, she lost her nerve with his pelvic region and decided to try to work her way up from his feet. Down at the end of the bed, she ran the cloth up his soles then over his toes and
he jumped a little like he was ticklish. She moved on to his ankles.
“My father didn’t want me to reproduce,” the patient said abruptly.
Her eyes shot to his. “What?”
He held up the hand that was gloved, then tapped the temple that had the tattoos around it. “I’m not right. You know, normal. So my father tried to have me fixed like a dog. Of course, there was also the happy correlation of it being one hell of a punishment.” As her breath left her on a compassionate sigh, he pointed his forefinger at her. “You show me any pity and I’m going to think twice about the no-bite vow I just gave you.”
“No pity. I promise,” she lied softly. “But what does that have to do with you drinking from—”
“Just don’t like to share.”
Himself, she thought. With anyone…except maybe Red Sox.
She gently eased the cloth up his shin. “What were you punished for?”
“Can I call you Jane?”
“Yes.” She redipped the cloth and eased it under his calf. As he went silent again, she let him have his privacy. For now.
Under her hand, his knee flexed, the thigh above it contracting and releasing in a sensual flow. Her eyes flicked over his erection and she swallowed hard.
“So do your reproductive systems work the same as ours?” she asked.
“Pretty much.”
“Have you had human lovers?”
“I’m not into humans.”
She smiled awkwardly. “I won’t ask you who you’re thinking of now, then.”
“Good. I don’t think you’d feel comfortable with the answer.”
She thought of the way he looked at Red Sox. “Are you gay?”
His eyes narrowed. “Why do you ask?”
“You seem rather attached to your friend, the guy in the baseball hat.”
“You knew him, didn’t you. From before, true?”
“Yeah, he looks familiar, but I can’t quite place him.”
“Would that bother you?”
She ran the towel up his thigh to the cut juncture of his hips, then skirted away. “You being gay? Not at all.”
“Because it would make you feel safer, right?”
“And because I’m open-minded. As a physician, I have a pretty good grip on how no matter our preferences, we’re all alike on the inside.”
Well, the humans at least. She sat down on the bedside and pushed her hand up his leg again. As she got closer to his arousal, his breath caught and the hard length twitched. While his hips swiveled she looked up. He’d bitten down on his lower lip, his fangs cutting into the soft flesh.
Okay, that was really…
None of her business. But, man, he must be running a really hot fantasy about Red Sox right now.
Telling herself this was just a garden-variety sponge-bath situation, and not believing the lie for an instant, she drew her hand over his abdomen, up past the swollen head of him, and down the other side. As the very edge of the washcloth brushed up against his sex, he hissed.
So help her, God, she did it again, going slowly up and around him and letting the erection get stroked just a little.
His hands tightened on the sheets, and in a low rasp he said, “If you keep this up, you’re going to find out just how much I have in common with a human man.”
Good Christ, she wanted to see him—No, she didn’t.
Yes, she did.
His voice dropped deeper. “Do you want me to orgasm?”
She cleared her throat. “Of course not. That would be—”
“Inappropriate? Who’s going to know? Just you and me in here. And frankly, I could use some pleasure right about now.”
She closed her eyes. She knew on his side none of this was about her. Plus it wasn’t as if she was going to jump on the bed and take advantage of him. But did she really want to know how good he looked as he—
“Jane? Look at me.” As if he controlled her eyes, they rose slowly to meet his. “Not my face, Jane. You’re going to watch my hand. Now.”
She complied, because it didn’t occur to her not to. And as soon as she did, his gloved palm released its death grip on the bedcovers and fisted his thick arousal. In a rush, the patient’s breath left him, and he ran his hand up and down his shaft, the black leather a stark contrast to the deep pink of his sex.
Oh…my…God.
“You want to do this to me, don’t you?” he said roughly. “Not because you want me. But because you wonder what it feels like and what I look like when I come.”
As he kept up with the stroking, she numbed out completely.
“Don’t you, Jane.” His breathing started to quicken. “You want to know what I feel like. What kind of noises I make. What it smells like.”
She wasn’t nodding her head, was she? Shit. She was.
“Give me your hand, Jane. Let me put you on me. Even if you’re only clinically curious, I want you to finish me off.”
“I thought…I thought you don’t like humans.”
“I don’t.”
“So what do you think I am?”
“I want your hand, Jane. Now.”
She didn’t like being told what to do by anyone. Men, women, didn’t matter. But when a husky command like that came out of a magnificent male animal like him…especially as he was lying sprawled before her, fully aroused…it was pretty damn close to undeniable.
She’d resent the order later. But she would follow it now.
Jane put the washcloth in the bedpan and couldn’t believe she extended her hand toward him. He took what she offered, took what he’d demanded she give to him, and pulled it forward to his mouth. In a slow, savoring draw, he licked up the center of her palm, his tongue a warm, wet drag. Then he took her flesh and put it to his erection.
They both gasped. He was rock hard and hot as flame and wider than her wrist. As he kicked in her grip, half of her wondered what the hell she was doing and the other half, the sexual part, came alive. Which made her panic. She clamped down on the feelings, using the displacement honed by years of being in medicine…and kept her hand right where it was.
She stroked him, feeling the soft, fine skin move over the stiff core. His mouth broke open as he undulated on the bed, and the arching of his body took her eyes on one hell of a ride. Shit… He was pure sex, totally undiluted by inhibitions or awkwardness, nothing but a gathering storm of orgasm.
She looked down at where she was working him. His gloved hand was so damned erotic as it lay right below where she handled him, the fingers lightly touching his base and covering the ridges of scar tissue.
“What do I feel like, Jane?” he said hoarsely. “Do I feel different than a man does to you?”
Yes. Better. “No. You’re just the same.” Her eyes went to his fangs as they cut into his full lower lip. The teeth looked as if they’d lengthened, and she had a feeling sex and feeding were linked. “Well, you don’t look like them, of course.”
Something flickered across his face, some kind of shadow, and his hand slipped farther down between his legs. At first she assumed he was rubbing what hung below, but then she realized he was shielding himself from her eyes.
A lick of pain went off in her chest like a match strike, but then he moaned low in his throat and his head kicked back, his blue-black hair feathering over the black pillow. As his hips flexed upward, his stomach muscles tightened in a sequential rush, the tattoos at his groin stretching and returning to position.
“Faster, Jane. You’re going to do it faster for me now.”
One of his legs shifted up and his ribs began to pump hard. Across his luscious, fluid skin, a flush of sweat gleamed in the dim lamplight. He was getting close…and the closer he got, the more she realized she was doing this because she wanted to. The clinical-curiosity thing was a lie: He fascinated her for different reasons.
She kept pumping him, focusing the friction at his plum-sized head.
“Don’t stop…. Fuck…” He drew the word out, his shoulders and neck straini
ng, his pecs tightening until they threw sharp edges.
Suddenly his eyes flipped open and glowed bright as stars.
Then he bared fangs that had fully dropped and shouted his release. As he came, he stared at her neck, and the orgasm went on and on until she wondered if he’d had two. Or more. God…he was spectacular, and in the midst of his pleasure that glorious scent of dark spice filled the room until she breathed it instead of air.
When he was still, she released him and used the hand towel to clean his belly and chest off. She didn’t linger on him. Instead she got to her feet and wished she could have some time to herself.
He watched her through low lids. “See,” he said gruffly, “just the same.”
Not by a long shot. “Yes.”
He pulled the duvet over his hips and closed his eyes. “Use the shower if you want.”
In an uncoordinated rush, Jane took the bedpan and the washcloth to the bath. Propping her hands against the sink, she thought maybe some hot water and something other than scrubs on her back would clear her head—because right now all she could see was what he’d looked like coming all over her hand and himself.
Overwhelmed, she went back out into the bedroom, got some of her things from the smaller duffel, and reminded herself that this situation was not real, not part of her reality. It was a hiccup, a tangle in the thread of her life, like her destiny had the flu.
This was not real.
After he finished with class, Phury went back to his room and changed from his teaching clothes of a black silk shirt and cream cashmere trousers into his fighting leathers. Technically he was supposed to be off tonight, but with V flat on his back they needed an extra set of hands.
Which worked for him. Better to be out on the streets hunting than getting involved in that sitch with Z and Bella and the pregnancy.
He strapped on his chest holster, slid two daggers in, handles down, and popped a SIG Sauer on each hip. On his way to the door he pulled on his leather coat and patted the inner pocket, making sure he had a couple of blunts and a lighter with him.
As he hit the grand staircase at a fast clip, he prayed no one saw him…and got busted just before he made it out of the house. Bella called his name as he stepped into the vestibule, and the sound of her shoes crossing the foyer’s mosaic floor meant he had to stop.