by Lilly Atlas
The swelling in his face was nearly nonexistent, revealing the strong line of his jaw. Most of the discolored facial bruising had faded as well. On his head, the shaved hair was filling in nicely. It looked soft and enticing. A tingling started in her fingertips, as though they were itching to slide through the short strands.
He wasn’t classically handsome. There was something too harsh about his features to make him model-worthy, but he sure as heck was sexy. There was an air of danger around him that unfortunately drew Amanda. And his eyes. Those gray eyes conveyed a sharpness, a crisp intelligence that had been muddled by medication and pain weeks ago. Now, they were clear, but cold and uninviting.
“Let’s get this over with. I need out of here as fast as possible. You gonna disappear after one session again?”
That voice. Oh my God, that rough, raspy voice was pure sex. She swore she could actually feel the words scraping across her suddenly sensitive skin. But like the eyes, it was void of social pleasantries and that get-to-know-you feel. Didn’t detract from the erotic quality one bit, however.
Very appropriate and professional, Mandy.
She made a mental note to spend some time with her vibrator that night. Maybe a self-induced orgasm would help her keep her head in the game and get her to stop drooling over a patient who in all reality was probably a criminal of some sort. Who else was found beaten and shot up at the bottom of a ravine?
She pasted on a smile that was hopefully open and friendly without conveying any kind of invitation beyond the desire to help him regain full function. “I only work at the community hospital one weekend each month. But, you’re stuck with me five days a week now. I hope you’re ready, because I’m gonna be pretty rough with you.”
Did she really say it like that?
“Fine. What are we waiting for?”
Apparently, the double meaning of her words was lost on him. Unless he just chose to ignore it. He was going to be a tough nut to crack. It was funny, she’d built up this fantasy personality for her mystery patient over the past few weeks. All based around his muscles and quick save with Dr. Michaels. In reality, she didn’t have a clue what the man was like. He hadn’t been able to speak and now it appeared he wasn’t anything like she’d imagined.
Stoic, unfriendly patients were the hardest to work with. Over the next few weeks, they were going to spend a significant amount of time together. Amanda preferred patients who would fire back witty banter and joke around with her. Silence and apathetic personalities made for a boring day.
His words may have been standoffish and unwelcoming, but his stare had grown lust-filled and heated. And there went her body reacting to the masculine energy pouring off him. Thank God for baggy scrubs and their ability to hide her hardened nipples.
She cleared her throat. “Um, just, ah, give me five minutes to check through your chart and see how the last few weeks have gone. I’ll be back to wheel you down to the therapy gym in a few minutes.”
“No need, I can meet you there.” He rolled toward her and she couldn’t help but smile. The man was motivated. That she could work with.
“Sounds good. See you in five minutes.”
His chart showed a pretty standard hospital course except he’d seemed to progress faster than anticipated. A snort escaped her. It shouldn’t have surprised her. The man commanded obedience, probably from his own body as well as from others.
After grabbing her clipboard, she wandered into the gym and found him rolling around the room inspecting the various machines and equipment. With a deep breath, she approached him and began her evaluation.
Twenty minutes later, she knew nothing more about the man than she did three weeks ago aside from the fact that his strength, range of motion, and balance had improved considerably. He’d evaded any questions about his personal life and remained stoic and closed off throughout the evaluation.
According to the chart, he was homeless. She didn’t buy it. Not for one second. The man was full of secrets, dark ones if her guess was correct, but he was not a homeless drifter as he claimed to be. It shouldn’t matter. Her job was the same regardless of his buried secrets: get the man back to full function, or as functional as possible given his injuries. Not everything was fixable.
Not knowing where he’d be going after discharge made her job a bit more challenging, but if he made as much progress as she expected he would, the discharge destination didn’t really matter. He’d be successful no matter what environment he returned to.
“All right. I’d like to see if we can get you standing and have you take a few steps. You up for it?”
“I’m always up,” he said.
Had the man just made a joke?
She couldn’t tell by his stony expression, but that had to be an innuendo. Or maybe was she just turning into a sex-starved pervert.
As if having a mind of its own, her gaze landed in his lap before she had the wherewithal to focus on his face. The granite expression remained without so much as a hint of a crack, but his eyes weren’t nearly as flat as she’d judged them to be. They now sparkled with a mirth he hid everywhere else. Nick Gould seemed to enjoy flustering her.
This could end up being a very interesting few weeks.
Without acknowledging the slight tension between them, she steered him to the back of the room between a set of metal parallel bars. They were used to provide substantial support for patients who were regaining the ability to ambulate.
“Let’s see what you got,” she said after positioning him between the bars. A fierce look of determination stole across his face, so intense it was almost intimidating. Using the armrests for leverage, he pushed himself to a stand then grabbed the parallel bars. The tremble in his arms betrayed how heavily he relied on them to remain upright. Not surprising for someone who’d been in the hospital five weeks and had taken a few bullets.
Still, he was stable and didn’t appear to be in too much pain. “Ready to try to take a few steps?”
“Fuck yeah,” he said.
She chuckled. He didn’t apologize for the word choice or ask if he offended her with his vulgarity. Probably just everyday language for him. Amanda wasn’t much of a swearer. She could let loose if the situation really and truly warranted it, but she found few that did. That being said, his harsh language didn’t offend her in the least. It fit him.
Once he was up, she unlocked the wheelchair, switching her hold to keep one stabilizing hand on him at all times. In a complicated tangle of limbs she’d mastered over the years, Amanda managed to support him and hook her foot behind his leg, dragging the wheelchair behind him as he stepped forward. The chair needed to be close in case his knees buckled and he had to sit without warning.
The position put her front flush with his. If he fell forward she’d accept his weight with her body and propel him back to the chair. In contrast if he fell backward, she was there to control his pace as he lowered to the chair. How many times had she done this through the years? Countless, with hundreds of patients.
Yet never once was she aware of a strong, pounding heartbeat beneath her ear. Never once had she realized the position pillowed her breasts against a patient’s chest. Never once had she felt—
Holy shit!
Never once had she felt the bulge of an erection cushioned against her stomach. And a generous bulge at that. She stiffened. How the hell was she supposed to react? Ignoring it seemed the wisest course of action.
After ten impressive steps, he was sagging and leaning heavily against her. Ignoring it became impossible. She’d have to be dead or completely insensate to have missed the rock-hard shaft captured between their bodies.
On the next step, his left leg buckled and she assisted him back to the chair.
“Um…about uh…” Could she be any more mortified? “It happens. Proximity and all that. No worries.” Her face had to be the color of a ripe tomato and it burned like the sun.
“Do I look worried?”
“Um, no?” He looked as in
different as ever.
“Never apologized for having a boner in the past. Not gonna start now. You gonna apologize for rubbing your sexy tits all over me?”
For the first time in her career, Amanda was completely flustered and without response. It was sexual harassment, right? She shouldn’t take that. She should stand up for herself and put him in his place. She’d done it before.
What should not be happening, is the nipples on said tits should not be beading in awareness of his attention. They should not be aching and desperate for the man’s touch.
Ready to blast him for his inappropriate comment, she took one look at his face and clamped her mouth shut. The stone face she’d been staring at all morning had been completely transformed by a genuine joking smile.
If he’d been attractive before, the crack in his ice put him over the top. Instead of lambasting him, she chuckled. “Fair enough. I’ll see you again this afternoon. We’ll start on some exercises.”
She stared at his retreating form as he wheeled back to his room. The smart thing to do would be transfer him to another therapist. A male preferably. And Amanda was usually pretty smart.
Not today apparently. Because not only did she keep him on her caseload, but she spent the next hour thinking of ways to get him to smile at her again.
Chapter Seven
The next ten days passed in a somewhat Groundhog Day fashion. An unappetizing institutional breakfast was delivered to Snake’s room by seven thirty. At eight, he met Amanda in the gym for his first session. For every exercise she had him do, he added at least ten reps. For every five minutes, she assigned on the exercise bike, treadmill or other torture device, he added another few minutes.
She’d tried to slow him down at first, but quickly gave up when he ignored her instructions and plowed on ahead. For the first few days, she tried to make conversation, engage him in inane chatter, or bait him into an argument.
Small talk and making friends wasn’t his thing. Getting stronger and regaining function so he could return to Arizona and annihilate Casper was all he gave a shit about. It didn’t take her long to abandon her plan to engage him in social niceties. After he shot her down a few times, she’d dish out the next round of physical torment, then step away and leave him to his task. She was never far, in case he got in over his head, but the lack of conversation must have been too much for her, so she didn’t sit with him as she had in the beginning.
Funny thing was, at some point he started to miss her chipper rambling. Time passed faster when she was yakking away in his ear. But the silence had a purpose. Plotting revenge on Casper took time and considerable thought.
By now, he’d also worked out a way to get his money. There was one person from back home he could trust. One person he’d kept separate from the club. One person who’d always tried to draw him to the straight and narrow.
Putting his sister in Casper’s sights was not something he should do, or wanted to do, and there was some inherent risk in calling her. But it was minimal. Casper had no idea Snake had a sister and the money wasn’t hidden anywhere near the clubhouse. There should be no real risk to her safety.
Still, if there was another way, he’d have taken it. But without money, he was completely ineffective. Traveling was out of the question, sleeping on something besides a park bench would be impossible, and hell, all he had to wear were donated hospital scrubs. He needed the cash and he needed it soon.
She picked up after the second ring. “Hello?”
Snake paused, struck mute by a sudden and unfamiliar emotion. Damn, it was good to hear her voice. She was his opposite in every way. Sweet and innocent despite their upbringing. Those were the main reasons he limited his contact with her. She was the one thing in his life that wasn’t dark, wasn’t tainted, wasn’t about power and corruption. It’d be a shame to dirty that with his way of life.
He cleared his throat. “Hey, Cece.”
“Oh my God!” Her voice was thick with emotion. “Nicky?”
“It’s me, kid.”
She burst into choking sobs, so brutal he could barely understand her. “Nicky…where? It’s been so l-long. Thought…something happened.”
“Shh, calm down Cece. I’m alive and I’m fine. I need you to focus for a minute. I’m in a rehabilitation hospital and I borrowed a cellphone from another patient so I don’t have much time. It’s important.”
A broken breath shuddered through the phone. “O-okay. I’m l-listening.”
“Thanks, kid. First off, this conversation is not happening. You have not talked to me. Not today, not last week, not in the past two years. Understood?”
“You’re in trouble.”
He rolled his eyes. This was not the time for a save Nick lecture. “Cece, I just need you to listen. This is for your own safety. No one should come asking about me, but just in case, it’s been two years since you’ve seen or talked to me. Got it?”
“Nicky—”
“Got it, kid?” He hardened his voice.
Her huffed sigh made him smile. “I got it.”
“No matter who. The cops, my club, the pizza delivery guy. Two years.”
“Yeah, yeah. I’m not stupid, Nicky. Two years. Got it.” After the initial shock of hearing his voice, some of her spunk was coming back.
“I’m safe and away from the club. In fact, I’m out of the state. But I need a favor.”
“Anything.” Her answer was immediate and he didn’t miss the thread of hope at hearing he was away from the MC. Sure, it made him a bit shitty for leading her to believe he was away permanently when he fully intended to demolish anyone who betrayed him and resume control of the club. It was his life. What the hell else was he supposed to do?
“You remember that spot the old man used to take us to when we were kids? Way out in the desert?”
She snorted. “You mean the place he used to hide money he’d stolen from the MC? Yeah, I remember.”
“You knew what he was doing?”
“Oh please, Nicky, I was young, but, as I said, I’m not stupid. I’m well aware of who Dad was and what was happening despite how you two tried to shelter me.”
Snake’s father had been president of an MC in California until he was murdered by a rival club. Cece was seven at the time and being twelve years her senior, Snake had always tried to shield her from life’s uglier side. After their father was killed, she went to live with an aunt and Snake took off, ending up in Sandy Springs, AZ with the Grimm Brothers MC.
Their mother left when Cece was just a toddler, sick and tired of her husband’s cheating ways. All his life, Snake’s father slept with any and every club whore he could get his hands on regardless of his relationship status. Most of the men in his club did. And he never bothered to hide it from Snake. In fact, he used it as a standard of what made a man a man. So many times throughout his childhood, Snake heard his father drone on about a man having the right to as much pussy as he could handle.
He had way too many memories of his mom crying over his father and his infidelities. She grilled him endlessly on her husband’s activities, especially when the old man started bringing him around the clubhouse as a teen. Remaining loyal to both his mother and father was impossible given what he’d witnessed at the clubhouse, and he’d always felt like he’d chosen his father over her. But really, what choice did he have? The old man wouldn’t have tolerated anything less. Eventually his mother couldn’t take it anymore and she left.
With his mother in the wind and his father dead just two years later, Cece was the only reason to stick around. He sure as hell couldn’t take care of a child, so he’d sent her off to live with an aunt. He left Nick behind and took on the identity of Snake. A cold motherfucker who had no time for women beyond a good fuck. What the hell did he need a steady one for anyway? He could eat at the clubhouse and wash his own damned clothes.
“You think you can find the money if I give you map coordinates? I know it’s a good few hours from you.”
Silence
reigned for few seconds. “I’m sure I can handle it. You have money there, don’t you?”
No point in lying. He was one step away from begging for her help and if he knew his little sister, she’d be snooping through the money bag no matter what he told her. “Yes. A lot of money. And I need it.”
“Okay. I have to work this afternoon, but I can drive out there tomorrow morning.”
That was Cece. No bullshit and she’d lay down her life for family.
“Where do I send it?”
He rattled off the address of the rehab hospital. A receptionist had told him they accepted packages on patients’ behalf all the time so it would be no problem for him to have something sent there. The problem would be the duffle bag with upwards of seven hundred thousand dollars unguarded and unprotected in his hospital room. Not to mention trying to send that through the mail. No, she’d have to send it in multiple small batches over time.
Less than ideal, but unavoidable.
After indulging his sister in a few more minutes of chatter, he hung up with a promise to keep her updated. Not that he would. The more time he spent contacting her, the higher the chances someone would find out about her. And if that someone was Casper, well they’d all be fucked.
He swung his legs onto the hospital bed with a groan of pain. The left was gaining strength each day and he could now walk the length of the hall with a walker like an old man, but the thing ached like a son of a bitch. He’d tried weaning off the pain medication, but with the way he’d been pushing it in therapy, it just wasn’t possible.
Once in a tolerable position, he rested his head against the pillows and relaxed for the first time in over a month. Cece would send the money. After he was discharged, he’d be in the perfect position to come at Casper with everything he had.
Knock knock.
“What?” He didn’t bother to open his eyes. Probably a nurse on a mission to check his blood pressure for the tenth time that day.
“Mr. Gould. Long time no see.”