“Except the dog,” Officer Hockey Stick finished. “That attack dog’s a crispy critter.” The skinny cop gives me a sympathetic look. “Without the dog, ma’am, you’ll probably have to have all those rabies shots whether you like it or not. Good luck to you, Miss—“
“Smith,” I stammer. “Lisa Smith.” All at once I feel sicker than I have in years.
“I’ll let you get some rest, Miss Smith,” Officer Hockey Stick says, his voice softening around the edges. “I can finish talking to your friends out in the hall.”
Syr Phillip reappears with a nurse and young doctor in tow. The doctor starts spraying something cold and stinging on my ankle. The freckle-faced nurse—prettier and nicer than the nasty pink-haired one we met earlier—smiles down at me and puts a damp cloth on my forehead.
“I’m just gonna give you a couple IVs, Lisa,” says the nurse. “One’s an antibiotic and one will help you sleep. There’ll be a little stick—”
I feel a pinch on the inside of my left elbow, and an acid warmth creeps up my arm. All at once, visions of house fires, knights in shiny pickle-barrel armor, and blue velvet princess gowns all float before my eyes, and just as quickly melt together into a single, blue-violet swirl, slowly blending darker and darker together until everything goes black.
Chapter 13
I wake up in a dark, semi-private hospital room. I don’t know what time or even day it is, but I do know that I am feeling a lot better than I did when I lost consciousness. At least, most of me does. There is a slightly tender spot on my belly that is marked in the center with a small red dot resembling a strawberry mole, except it has a tiny scab on it. I suppose it’s from the rabies shots.
I sit up and glance around the room. My shredded blue gown and velvet slippers are nowhere to be seen; neither are my purse and backpack. The room is empty save for the slumped-over figure of Syr Phillip in a plastic chair. He has changed into cutoff jeans and a polo shirt and is sleeping with his head hanging forward, mouth wide open. Tiny ribbons of drool run down both sides of his mouth, meeting in two perfect circular paths to a little rivulet just underneath his chin. I notice that he has tied my hot-pink polyester favor, now frayed and showing rust-stains from the Ohio Caverns, around the leather Gap belt holding up his cutoffs.
My knight has spent the night. My very own, favor-carrying, devoted, rippled-chest knight has spent the better part of a day and a half (at least) watching over me and giving me protection. My very own, favor-carrying knight is the first sight I see when I wake up in a strange place with bandages on my ankle and strange tiny scars on my belly.
My very own, favor-carrying, rippled-chest knight isn’t afraid to fall asleep and drool right in front of me.
How romantic.
In one Lysol-scented hospital instant, all the reservations and doubts I’ve built up around Syr Phillip throughout the previous evening melt away. I sit up in bed a little too quickly and start feeling dizzy. I tiptoe past my sleeping knight towards the bathroom to pee, and trip over a tall metal contraption that is joined to my arm by tubes and wires—the IV tower. Try as I might to stop it from happening, metal pole, plastic tubing, and electronic dosage monitor all fall right onto Syr Phillip’s head in rapid succession, very nearly ripping the IV needle out of my arm in the process.
I scream.
Syr Phillip jerks awake. “Wh-wha?”
“Sorry,” I stammer, not sure if I should detangle Syr Phillip from the medical equipment or make a beeline for the toilet before my bladder bursts. Before I can decide, Syr Phillip not only rights the toppled IV tower, he resets the dosage machine and inspects my elbow to see if the needle is still attached.
“You should be more careful about your IV drip,” he whispers, gently stroking my forearm. “You don’t want to rip the needle out. It’ll leave a nasty bruise that way, and you don’t need anything marring up that gorgeous skin of yours.” Syr Phillip raises the pit of my elbow to his lips and kisses the tender skin just above my IV site. The electricity generated by his firm lips on that delicate, tender spot is very nearly enough to make me wet my pants.
“I ummm, really need to pee,” I mutter.
“I’ll bet you do. They’ve been pumping a lot of fluids into you for the past thirteen hours.”
“Thirteen hours? Have I really been here that long? What time is it? What day is it?”
“It’s late Sunday evening. You’ve been unconscious since last night. Here, let me help you to the bathroom. You’ll need to take your dance partner along with you,” Syr Phillip chuckles, nodding toward my IV.
I manage to relieve myself without Syr Phillip’s help. As soon as my bladder is emptied, I notice a different kind of urgency is very much present between my legs. A ‘you’re-a girl-and-he’s-a-boy-so-let’s-just-get-going’ kind of urgency. I glance down at my body and notice for the first time that I’m wearing nothing but a decidedly un-sexy paper hospital gown—which is open at the back, and therefore I must have just given Syr Phillip an unobstructed view of my ass when I bolted for the john. I hope against hope that he liked what he saw.
When I emerge from the bathroom, Syr Phillip is waiting for me in the doorway.
“How are you feeling, Lisa?”
“Okay I guess.” I notice my voice sounds husky, and the urgency between my legs is fast evolving into a soft, wet musk. “Actually, I think I’m feeling better right now than I have in a long time.”
The deep blue pools of Syr Phillip’s eyes lock with my own and hold me close to him, even if he hasn’t laid a hand on my body yet. “I’m very glad to hear that, Lisa,” he says, his voice taking on the same husky, musky quality as my own.
“I—I’m glad that you’re glad to hear it,” I sputter.
I think that has to be the lamest thing ever to come out of my mouth.
I struggle to think of something more substantial, more romantic to say, but Syr Phillip doesn’t give me much chance to think. His aquamarine eyes pierce mine with an intensity I’ve never felt before. He leans forward, slips his broad hands underneath my paper gown and slides them around my waist until they rest squarely on the small of my back. Instinctively, I lean into him, and our lips meet in a slow, long, feathery kiss. His tongue juts lightly on the outside edge of my lower lip, then dances across my teeth and into my mouth, where my own tongue meets his in a sloping embrace. We stay entwined this way—our tongues exploring and Syr Phillip’s hands caressing— for a full minute.
A tiny cry escapes my throat and my knees nearly buckle. Syr Phillip holds me up, never taking his hands off the small of my back. Our tongues keep dancing with each other, faster and faster, our bodies closer and closer, until the sound of an elderly man clearing his throat just behind us jerks us apart.
It’s Dr. Kavanaugh.
“Looks like you’re feeling a lot better, Lisa.” Dr. Kavanaugh’s voice is smug, but pleasant. “But from now on, you guys probably shouldn’t make out right in the doorway.” He gives Syr Phillip a friendly punch in the arm. “Nice to see you back in the saddle, Phil.”
Syr Phillip clears his throat loudly and shifts on his feet. “Uh, yeah, Doc. Lisa here has certainly brought back me to, ahhhh, life.” Syr Phillip’s words sound forced. Is he just recovering from our moment of kissing and heat, or is he hiding something?
Dr. Kavanaugh glances at me and seems to notice my discomfort. “It’s been quite a while since old Phil here found true love,” he says, giving me a toothy old-man grin.
“Right,” I say weakly.
Dr. Kavanaugh puts his stethoscope to my chest and listens for a moment. “I’ve got some good news for you, Lisa. Your latest blood work came back with a reduced white count, which means your IV antibiotic knocked out the infection. And from what I can hear, your heart seems to be working just fine.” The grizzled old doctor chuckles. I notice for the first time that Syr Phillip’s recent tongue-dance has set my heartbeat to approximately the rate of a hummingbird’s.
“I was gonna arrange to have you di
scharged this evening, Lisa,” Dr. Kavanaugh continues. “Unless, of course, you and Phil here have an urgent need for that bed there.”
I feel my face go hot. “I think I can be responsible for Lisa’s health and safety from here on out,” Syr Phillip offers.
Dr. Kavanaugh signs something on a clipboard. “All right then, Phil. Lisa, you can go ahead and pack up your things. A nurse’ll be up to wheel you out right after she gives you the last dose of painkillers. I’ve written up some instructions for administering your rabies shots at home—you’ll need to complete those as a precaution. Just do me a favor and steer clear of ahhhh, swordplay for a week or two, okay?” Dr. Kavanaugh gives Syr Phillip another playful jab to the arm, and if I’m not mistaken, he makes a subtle gesture towards Phillip’s crotch.
Swordplay?
Now it’s Syr Phillip’s turn to blush.
PART TWO
Chapter 14
“You’ve only got one sick day left this year, Lisa,” Brad, my boss at the Delco plant, hisses at me as I finally drag my rabies-shot-weary body back into work on Wednesday morning. “Which is pretty bad, considering it’s only May.”
“I know, I know. I’m sorry,” I whine, rubbing the sore spot on my belly. “But between the hospital stay and the rabies shots, I just haven’t been feeling myself lately.” I already used four of my seven annual sick days in January after coming down with what I thought was SARS, but turned out to be garden-variety flu. And I just burned sick days number five and six recovering from the Blood and Roses Tournament.
“Whatever you say, Lisa,” Brad mumbles, smirking. “Although I hear from Pegeen that you were up to a lot more than just getting rabies over the weekend.”
I catch a glance of Pegeen’s cargo-panted behind over by the punch clock. She’s leaning over to retie her new suede Sketchers instead of keeping an eye on the transistor assembly line like she’s supposed to.
“I’m sure Pegeen told you a lot of things,” I chuckle at Brad. Although I still have a couple of bones to pick with her over ditching me at the tournament, overall I’m pleased as punch Pegeen dragged me to my first SCA event. After all, I wouldn’t be Syr Phillip’s official new make-out partner in both the medieval and the mundane worlds if she hadn’t.
Unfortunately, I am still only Syr Phillip’s make-out partner. We haven’t had the opportunity to progress to being sexual partners yet. But I’m working on that. For now, I’ll just have to content myself with daydreaming about Syr Phillip’s gorgeous blue eyes and razor-cut biceps. . .
Brad taps his shift clipboard on my forehead. “Lisa? Hello? You in there?”
“Huh? Yeah. I’m here, I’m here.”
Brad sighs and shakes his head. “You look like you just took a trip to Mind-Fuck City.”
“Well, not exactly.”
Need-To-Get-Laid-Right-Now City is more like it.
“Anyhow Lisa,” Brad says, tapping his shift clipboard with a pencil, “I’m gonna fill you in on what you missed around here during your little medieval vacation.”
“Brad, for the last time, it wasn’t a vacation. I was legitimately ill.”
“Yeah, whatever. Anyway, we had a parts changeover while you were out, so you’re gonna have to change all your inspection procedures. Get a new procedures binder together and bring it to me for review before you take your next coffee break. You and I will go down the line and supervise all the new assembly tasks together after lunch.”
“Great!” I shriek, feigning excitement.
Brad gives me a clicking-pistol gesture and laughs. “I thought you’d be glad to hear that,” he says, and then disappears into his opaque-glass office.
There is nothing about my crappy line forewoman’s job at AC Delco Assembly I loathe more than changing my inspection procedures. My dyslexia makes the task of matching up the old procedures column with the new one pure torture, and Brad knows it. Brad is single, over forty, bald, and fat as a partridge. I have discovered that single, over-forty bald fat men consider it their personal responsibility to torture single women in their twenties like me at every opportunity as a kind of payback for their own failures with women. And Brad has been giving me that payback in various forms almost every day since I started working at AC Delco six years ago.
I trudge over to my desk and start flipping through my procedures binder. I pick up a pencil stub and chew it a few times in agitation. Before I get a chance to make a single note though, Pegeen saunters up.
“Howdy, stranger,” she says. There is a slight edge to her voice.
“Hi,” I murmur, not looking up from my procedures binder. I tear out the now-dated procedure pages and grab some blank ones from the stack I keep in my top drawer.
“Lisa, I just wanted to tell you that I’m really sorry about everything that happened over the weekend.”
“Why?”
“Well, you did just barely miss getting killed in a house fire, plus you got attacked by that dog, not to mention—“
“Pegeen, it’s okay, really. Even considering the whole rabies scare and missing two days of work, I had a really great time doing all that SCA stuff.”
Pegeen brightens. “Seriously?”
“You bet. I never thought I’d say this, but I had a lot of fun getting dressed up and hanging out with a bunch of strangers in weird outfits. Not to mention the fact that I hooked up with a major hunk of burning knight.”
Pegeen’s eyes fly wide. “Don’t tell me you slept with Syr Phillip already!”
“I haven’t.”
Now Pegeen’s eyes get even wider. “Well, why the hell not?”
“Pegeen, I have been a little under the weather for the past couple days. Plus, he lives in Columbus. That’s over two hours away. Realistically, I’ll only get to see him on weekends.”
“That’s no excuse! Even considering how frigid you usually are, with the electricity you two were generating at the event on Saturday, you guys should have done it at least six times by now.”
I clear my throat. “By your standards, maybe. However, most women in the world are not out-of-control nymphos like you, Pegeen.”
Pegeen rests a hand on my left shoulder. “I’m telling you this for your own good, Lees. You need to do the nasty with Syr Phillip ASAP. While you still can.” Pegeen’s tone is grave.
I blink a couple of times. “What the hell do you mean?”
“I mean, Lisa, that Syr Phillip has never exactly been the monogamous type. At least that’s what everyone says. You’ve gotta strike while the iron is hot, otherwise he’ll go stick his iron into someone else. Know what I mean?”
“Not really.”
Pegeen sighs and shakes her head. “Don’t be blind. The signs are all there if you’re willing to look for them.”
I slam my binder shut. “You’re just saying that because you’re jealous.”
Pegeen laughs. “Why would I be jealous when I have Arundel?”
“If Arundel’s like any of your other boyfriends, he’ll only last another week or two,” I snarl.
Pegeen pulls up a folding chair and sits down. “Lisa, we’ve been best friends for practically our entire lives. Can we just stop arguing for two minutes, please? I’m trying to tell you something really important here.”
I fold my hands onto my dirty desk blotter and stare at her. “Shoot.”
Pegeen gazes at me carefully, then stares at her hands for a moment. I notice that her palms are sweating. “Lisa, I know that you and Syr Phillip are just starting to get to know each other right now, and that you’re very attracted to him. And that’s great. I’m thrilled to see you having fun with a man for a change, especially after what happened between you and Jacob. But I just want to warn you that while it’s fine to have fun with a guy for a little while, I know that’s not usually the way you operate. You tend to get really—well, attached.”
“Pegeen, this may be news to you, but there’s nothing wrong with trying to have an actual relationship with a guy. There’s more to men than blo
wjobs and free cellphones, you know—“
Pegeen holds up her hand. “Let me finish. All I’m trying to say here is, go ahead and have some fun with Syr Phillip for a while. Just don’t get too attached.”
I feel the bile of defensiveness rising in the back of my throat. “Why not? What the hell do you know about it?”
“Not too much. But I think I know enough to tell you that Syr Phillip isn’t the kind of guy you should get too attached to.”
“Pegeen—“
“Just watch your back, okay? I’m telling you as your best friend.” With that, Pegeen goes back over to her end of the factory floor.
I stare at the blank pages of my procedures binder and grind my teeth a little. Syr Phillip warned me that others would speak ill of him, would tell me to steer clear of him, would tell me that he was a womanizer and a cheat. Duchess Danyel even made playboy remarks about him right in front of me, although I thought she was just being facetious at the time. And then there’s the fact that Syr Phillip seems to generate a mysterious sensuality whenever he’s in Duchess Danyel’s presence, despite the fact she’s at least twenty-five years his senior. Does the old Duchess know Syr Phillip in a way that I don’t? Even worse, does she know him in the deep, intimate way that I desperately wish I did?
Of course not. That’s ridiculous.
I think back to the moment back at Ohio Caverns when we were together holding sweaty, anticipating hands in a damp, rust-covered cave. The exact moment when Syr Phillip told me that one of the many consequences of being his favored lady would be bearing the brunt of nasty rumors about him and his romantic history, his tendency to love and leave.
Didn’t he? Didn’t he tell me this would happen?
Didn’t he also tell me not to listen?
Of course. Of course Syr Phillip wouldn’t want me to listen to anything that reflected badly on him. That’s human nature, of course. But why was he so sure that it would happen at all? And why warn me about it in the first place? Truth be told, I never once met a man who even went so far as to admit he dated anyone seriously before he went out with me. All my past boyfriends—the very few that there are—liked to pretend that while they weren’t exactly virgins, the possibility of them ever having any sexual feelings for any woman besides me at any point in their lives was as remote as a desert gas station. Small wonder I never figured out Jacob was married until the last possible second.
Knights and Kink Romance Boxed Set Page 63