by J. R. Ward
When she caught sight of Z, she finished with the board and turned the machine off. “Hey!” she called out as the din faded. “You ready to have that cast removed?”
“Yeah. And clearly you’re good with a saw.”
“You better believe it.” She grinned and gestured toward the hole. “So, you like my interior decorating?”
“You don’t fool around.”
“Masonry hammers rock, what can I say?”
“I’m ready for the next board,” V hollered from the lecture hall.
“It’s ready.”
V came out wearing a tool belt hung with a hammer and several chisels. As he went over to his female, he said, “Hey, Z, how’s your leg?”
“Gonna be better once Doc Jane takes this deadweight off.” Z nodded across the way. “Man, you guys are going to town.”
“Yeah, we should be able to take care of the framing tonight.”
Doc Jane handed her male the board and gave him a quick kiss, her face becoming solid as contact was made. “I’ll be right back. Just going to take off his cast.”
“Don’t rush.” V nodded at Zsadist. “You look tight. I’m glad.”
“Your female’s a miracle worker.”
“That she is.”
“Okay, enough with the ego stroking, boys.” She smiled and kissed her mate again. “Come on, Z. Let’s do it.”
As she turned away, V’s eyes followed her body . . . which no doubt meant that as soon as Zsadist was out of their hair, the new clinic wasn’t the only thing that was going to get worked on.
When Doc Jane and Z got to the PT suite, he went over and hopped up onto the gurney. “Thought maybe you’d want to use that table saw on me.”
“Nah. You already have one person in your bloodline missing a leg. Two would be overkill.” Her smile was gentle. “Any pain?”
“Nope.”
She rolled over a portable X-ray machine. “Put your leg up—perfect. Thanks.”
As she came back at him with a lead drape, he took it from her and settled it over himself.
“Can I ask you something?” he said.
“Yup. Let me get this done first, though.” She arranged the eye of the machine and took a picture, a short, humming burst rising up into the room. After checking a computer screen across the way, she said, “On your side, please.”
He rolled over and she moved his leg around. After another quick hum and a check of the monitor, she said, “Okay, you can sit up. Leg looks great, so I’m just going to get rid of this outstanding plaster job I did.”
She handed him a blanket and turned her back as he shucked his leathers. Then she brought over a stainless-steel saw and carefully went to work on his cast.
“So what’s your question?” she said over the buzzing as she worked.
Z rubbed the slave band on his left wrist, then extended his arm toward her. “Do you really think I could get these taken off?”
Jane paused with the saw still running, no doubt collecting her thoughts not only from a medical standpoint but a personal one. She made a noise, a little huh, and quickly finished shucking the cast.
“You want to clean your leg up?” she asked, bringing over a damp washcloth.
“Yeah. Thanks.”
After he made quick work with the tidy business, she gave him something to dry off with.
“Mind if I take a closer look at the skin?” she said, nodding to his wrist. When he shook his head, she bent over his arm.
“Laser removal of tattoos in humans is quite common. I don’t have the technology here, but with your help, I have an idea how we could give it a shot. And who could do it for you.”
He stared down at the black band and thought of his daughter’s little hand on that dense black ink.
“I think . . . yeah, I think I want to try.”
When Bella woke up and stretched in her mated bed, she felt like she’d been on vacation for a month. Her body was refreshed and strong . . . as well as sore in all the right places. And in spite of her earlier shower, Z’s scent remained all over her, and wasn’t that just perfect.
Going by the clock on the bedside table, she’d been out like a light for about two hours, so she got up, put on her robe, and brushed her teeth, thinking a check on Nalla and maybe a snack was a good thing. She was on her way into the nursery when Z came through the door.
She couldn’t help beaming at him. “Your cast is off.”
“Mmm-hmmm . . . come here, female.” He walked over to her, wrapped his arms around her, and bent her backward so she had to grab onto his arms to stay upright. He kissed her long and slow, rubbing his lower body and his huge erection into the juncture of her thighs.
“I missed you,” he purred against her throat.
“You just had me only two hour—”
His tongue in her mouth silenced her, as did his hands, which ended up on her butt. He carried her over to one of the windowsills, propped her up on the molding, unzipped himself, and—
“Oh . . . God,” she groaned with a smile.
Now this . . . this was the male she knew and loved. Always hungry for her. Always wanting to be close. As he started to move slowly inside of her, she remembered back in the beginning, after he’d finally opened himself up to her. She’d been surprised by how much he wanted to be cozied against her, whether it was during meals or when they were hanging with the Brothers or during the day when they slept. It was as if he’d been making up for centuries of not having warm, nurturing contact.
Bella wrapped her arms around his neck and put her cheek to his ear, the baby-soft brush of his skull trim caressing her face as he moved.
“I’m going to . . . need your help,” he said as he surged forward and slid back.
“Anything . . . just don’t stop. . . .”
“Wouldn’t . . . dream . . . of it—” The rest of what he said was lost as the sex took control. “Oh, God . . . Bella!”
After they were finished, her male pulled back a little, his citrine eyes sparkling like champagne. “By the way . . . hi. I forgot to say that when I walked in.”
“Oh, I think you greeted me just fine, thank you very much.” She kissed his mouth. “Now . . . help?”
“Let’s get you tidied up,” he drawled, the light in that yellow stare of his telling her that the cleaning might well lead to more messiness.
Which it certainly did.
When they were both satiated and she’d had yet a third shower, she wrapped herself up in her robe and started toweling her hair. “Now, what do you need my help with?”
Z propped himself against the marble counter next to the sinks, rubbed his palm over his skull trim, and got dead serious.
Bella stopped what she was doing. As he stayed quiet, she backed up and sat down on the edge of the Jacuzzi to give him some space. She waited, hands clenching and releasing in her lap.
For some reason, as he sat there collecting his thoughts, she realized that they had done a lot in this bathroom. It was here that she’d found him throwing up after he’d aroused her for the very first time at that party. And then . . . after he’d rescued her from the lessers, he’d bathed her in this tub. And in the shower across the way she’d fed from him for the first time.
She thought of that rough period in their lives, her just out of her abduction, him struggling with his attraction to her. Glancing over to the right, she recalled finding him on the tile beneath an ice-cold spray, scrubbing at his wrists, believing himself unclean and unable to feed her.
He’d shown a lot of courage. Getting over what had been done to him enough to trust her had taken a lot of courage.
Bella’s eyes went back to him, and when she realized he was staring at his wrists, she said, “You’re going to try to get them removed, aren’t you.”
His mouth twitched into a half smile, the side distorted by the tail of his facial scar lifting. “You know me so well.”
“How will you get it done?” When he finished telling her, she nodded. “E
xcellent plan. And I’ll go with you.”
He looked up at her. “Good. Thank you. I don’t think I could do it without you.”
She stood up and went over to him. “You’re not going to have to worry about that.”
NINE
Dr. Thomas Wolcott Franklin III had the second-best office in the St. Francis Hospital complex.
When it came to quality administrative real estate, the pecking order was determined by your revenues, and as chief of dermatology, T.W. was behind only one other department head.
Of course, the fact that his department was such a good earner was because he’d “sold out,” as some of the academic stalwarts maintained. Under his leadership, dermatology not only handled lesions and cancers and burns in addition to chronic skin conditions such as psoriasis, eczema, and acne, but there was a whole subdivision that did only cosmetic procedures.
Face-lifts. Brow-lifts. Breast enhancements. Lipo. Botox. Restylane. A hundred other improvements. The health care model was private-practice service delivered in an academic setting, and wealthy clients loved the concept. The bulk of them came up from the Big Apple—at first making the trip for the anonymity of getting first-class treatment out of the tight-knit plastics community in Manhattan, but then, perversely, for the status. Getting “work” done in Caldwell was the chic thing to do, and, courtesy of the trend, only the chief of surgery, Manny Manello, had a better office view.
Well, Manello’s private bathroom also had marble in the shower, not just on the counters and walls, but really, who was counting.
T.W. liked his view. Liked his office. Loved his work.
Which was a good thing, as his days started at seven and ended at—he checked his watch—nearly seven.
Tonight, though, he should have already been gone by now. T.W. had a standing racquetball game every Monday night at seven p.m. at the Caldwell Country Club . . . so he was a little confused as to why he’d agreed to see a patient now. Somehow he’d said yes and had his secretary find a replacement for him on the courts, but he couldn’t for the life of him remember the whys or whos of it all.
He took his printed schedule out of the breast pocket of his white coat and shook his head. Right next to seven o’clock was the name B. Nalla and the words laser cosmetics. Man, he had no recollection how the appointment had been made or who it was or who’d given the referral . . . but nothing got onto that grid of hours without his permission.
So it must be someone important. Or the patient of someone important.
Clearly he was working too hard.
T.W. logged on to the electronic medical records system and ran a search, again, for B. Nalla. Closest match was Belinda Nalda. Typo? Could be. But his assistant had left at six, and it seemed rude to interrupt her while she was having dinner with her family with just a what-the-hell-is-this?
He stood up, checked his tie and buttoned his white coat, then picked up some work to review while he waited downstairs for B. Nalla or Nalda to show.
As he headed out of the department’s top-floor stretch of offices and treatment areas, he thought about the difference between up here and down in the private clinic. Night and day. Here the decor was done in hospital non-chic: low-napped dark carpet, cream walls, lots of plain cream doors. The prints that were hung had spare stainless-steel frames, and the plants were few and far between.
Downstairs? Top-tier spa land with concierge services delivered in the kind of luxury the very rich expected: the treatment rooms had HD flat-screen TVs, DVDs, couches, chairs, tiny Sub-Zero refrigerators with rare fruit juices, food that could be ordered from restaurants, and wireless Internet for laptops. The clinic even had a reciprocal agreement with Caldwell’s Stillwell Hotel, the five-star grande dame of lodging in all of upstate New York, so that patients could rest overnight after receiving care.
Over-the-top? Yes. And was there a surcharge? Absolutely. But the reality was, reimbursements from the federal government were down, insurers were denying medically necessary procedures left and right, and T.W. needed funds to fulfill his mission.
Catering to the rich was the way to do it.
Thing was, T.W. had two rules for his doctors and nurses. One, offer the best damn care on the planet with a compassionate hand. And two, never turn a patient away. Ever. Especially the burn victims.
No matter how expensive or how long the course of treatment for a burn was, he never said no. Especially to the children.
If he was seen as a sellout to commercial demand? Fine. No problem. He didn’t make a big deal about what he did on the free-care side of things, and if his colleagues in other cities wanted to portray him as a money-grubber, he’d take the hit.
When he got to the elevators, he reached out with his left hand, the one that was scarred, the one that was missing a pinkie and had mottled skin, and pressed the button for down.
He was going to do whatever he had to to make sure folks got the help they needed. Someone had done it for him, and it had made all the difference in his life.
Down on the first floor he hung a right and walked along a stretch of corridor until he came to the mahogany-paneled entrance of the cosmetics clinic. In discreet lettering that was frosted into the glass were his name and the names of seven of his colleagues. There was no mention of what kind of medicine was practiced inside.
Patients had told him they loved the exclusive, members-only-club vibe.
Using a pass card, he let himself in. The reception room was dim, and not because the lighting had been turned off after main business hours were through: Bright lights were not becoming on people of a certain age, either pre- or postoperatively, and besides, the calming, soothing atmosphere was part of the spa environment they were trying to create. The floor was tiled in soft sandstone, the walls were a comforting deep red, and a fountain made from cream and white and tan rocks twinkled in the center of the area.
“Marcia?” he called out, pronouncing the name MAR-see-uh, in the European fashion.
“’Allo, Dr. Franklin,” came a smooth voice from the back where the office was.
When Marcia came around the corner, T.W. put his left hand in his pocket. As usual, she looked right out of Vogue with her coiffed black hair and her tailored black suit.
“Your patient is not here yet,” she said with a serene smile. “But I have the second lasering bay set up for you.”
Marcia was a perfectly touched up forty-year-old who was married to one of the plastics guys and was, as far as T.W. knew, the only woman on the planet except for Ava Gardner who could wear bloodred lipstick and still look classy. Her wardrobe was by Chanel, and she’d been hired and was paid well to be a walking testimonial to the outstanding work performed by the staff.
And the fact that she had an aristocratic French accent was a bonus. Particularly with the nouveau riche types.
“Thanks,” T.W. said. “Hopefully the patient will be here soon and you can go.”
“So you do not need an assistant, no?”
This was the other great thing about Marcia: She was not just decorative; she was useful, a fully trained nurse who was always happy to assist.