by J. R. Ward
As the sound of silk moving against flesh rose up from the exam table, Ehlena made busywork going through his chart, double-checking things that were absolutely correct.
From what she’d heard, he didn’t do this stuff with the other nurses. He barely talked to her colleagues, and that was part of the reason they were nervous around him. Her, though? He talked too much and always about things that made her think . . . very unprofessional thoughts.
“I’m ready,” he said.
Ehlena turned around and kept her eyes pinned on the wall next to his head. His chest was magnificent, a warm golden brown, the muscles defined even though his body was relaxed. Each of his pecs had a five-pointed red star tattooed on it, and she knew he had more ink. Because there had been a couple of occasions when she’d looked.
Stared was more like it.
“Are you going to examine my arm?” he said softly.
“No, that’s for the doctor.” She waited for him to say, “Pity,” again.
“I think I’ve used that word enough around you,” he murmured dryly.
Now her eyes shifted to his. It was the rare vampire who could read his own species’ minds, but somehow it didn’t surprise her that he was among that small group.
“Don’t be rude,” she said.
“Sorry.” But he wasn’t, given the way his lip curled up on one side.
God, his fangs were sharp. Nice and white, too.
Ehlena slipped the cuff around his bicep, plugged her stethoscope into her ears, and took his blood pressure, the little piff-piff-piff of the balloon followed by a long, slow hiss.
The patient was staring at her. He always stared at her.
Ehlena took a step back from him.
“Don’t be frightened of me,” he whispered.
“I’m not.”
“Liar.”
This was the nurse he liked, the one Rehv hoped he would get each time he came in. He didn’t know her name, so in his mind he called her luhls because she was lovely all the way around, serious and pretty, smart.
With a good deal of “fuck off” radiating out of her. And how hot was that.
In response to his “liar,” her toffee-colored eyes narrowed and she opened her mouth like she was going to snap his chain. But then she gathered herself, her professional veneer returning.
Pity, indeed.
“One sixty-eight over ninety-five. That’s high.” She ripped the cuff’s lip free with a quick jerk, no doubt wishing it were a strip of his flesh. “I think your body’s trying to fight off the infection in your arm.”
Oh, his body was fighting something off all right—but it had fuck-all to do with whatever was cooking in his injection sites. With his symphath side overpowering the dopamine, the impotent state in which he usually existed had been knocked right out of the park.
His cock was stiff as a bat in his slacks.
Shit, maybe it would have been better to have another nurse in here. It was hard enough to be around her when he was “normal.”
Tonight he was anything but.