When Laine tilted her head and looked at him, he smiled.
“You don’t believe me.”
She swallowed hard and drew in a deep breath. “No, I do. I’ve just never experienced anything close to that. To me, pain hurts. Plain and simple. I have a hard time seeing it any other way.”
He hitched his hip onto the table. “To most people pain does hurt. And in any other instance, I’m sure Holly in there would agree with you. But at that moment, with all those other sensations she was experiencing… Well, it’s different.”
“Different,” Laine repeated.
“Very,” he said. “But the vibes I’m getting from you tell me that you might lean a little more toward the psychological side. Which,” he said, standing, “has its mind-blowing qualities as well. For a lot of people, it’s the combination of the two that gets them going. All I’m asking is for you to not completely discount it.”
Mentally, she got it. She couldn’t argue with his reasoning or experience. But physically? She wasn’t so sure she wanted to try out that particular aspect of this lifestyle for herself.
“Come on,” he said, dropping the subject and moving on. “There’s one more area being used tonight. After you see that, then you can make the decision as to whether or not Euphoria is a place you’d like to visit.”
Mac took the lead, but as he came around the edge of the last curtained area, he stopped dead in his tracks and glanced back to her. “Okay, this one here might be more intense than what you’re looking for.”
“What is it?” she asked, coming up beside him and peering around the curtain.
The scene that greeted her also shocked the hell out of her. In the center of the space stood a woman—tall, dark and intense, and despite wearing a shiny red skirt and halter top, she was also very goth-looking—holding what appeared to be a six-inch-long upholstery needle, only thinner and way sharper. Next to her, lying back wide-legged in an old metal chair, was a bald-headed, shirtless man. He had to be in his late twenties, fit and muscular, with a tattoo of a swirly demonic creature of some sort covering his left shoulder.
He seemed calm, almost eerily so. But when Laine glanced down at the man’s chest, she didn’t understand how he wasn’t clutching the sides of the chair while shrieking at the top of his lungs.
More of those same needles, a half-dozen or more, were pierced through both of the man’s nipples, creating a starburst design. Blood ran in thin rivulets down the man’s stomach, disappearing under the waistband of his tight, black spandex shorts as he panted in and out through clenched teeth.
“God,” was all Laine could manage.
“Take a breath,” Mac said.
“He’s…” She looked at Mac, who placed his hand at the small of her back. “He’s bleeding. Badly.”
He nodded, swirling his hand in tiny circles mere inches above her ass. “It’s under control. Camille, she’s got it under control.”
Laine glanced back, soaking in the way the man gazed up at the woman spearing him. “He likes it.” Was she trying to talk herself into that statement, or was it fact?
“Lai—I mean, Sara.”
She ignored Mac whispering at her ear. She couldn’t look away from the scene in front of her. Not until he gentled a finger under her chin and forced her to look up into his stare.
“Look at me. It’s okay.” He slipped his hand in hers, breaking apart the fist she’d clenched at her side. “Jesus, you’re shaking.”
He tugged on her hand, pulling her away from the scene and dragging her toward the back of the room. The black paint covering the wall and the matching dark carpet on the floor cast such a deep shadow, one that to Laine seemed neverending. The ongoing blackness would swallow her up whole, she just knew it. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t breathe.
She couldn’t think.
Not until she closed her eyes and forced herself to suck back a breath. “I’m okay,” she finally said, sounding unconvincing even to herself. “I just didn’t expect… Oh God. I’m such an idiot.”
Her heart sank straight to her feet. Despite her apprehension, she’d been so excited, so clued in to what she truly wanted see here. But everything she saw tonight was a complete one-eighty spin from her idealistic—oh hell, her simplistic—dream.
She hadn’t expected any of this. Where was the loving compassion she hoped to find? The searing heat between lovers? The romance she so craved? She’d been so sure she’d get a glimpse of that. She’d been so sure she’d see lovers sharing mental games of teasing, of denial. That she’d see men and women playing with touch and taste and, yes, sometimes even sound. She desperately wanted to hear those noises—the wet smack of lips, or the wispy release of a breath expelled during an uncontrolled moan.
She didn’t expect the blood. The hisses spit out because of pain. Nor the grunts or groans or shouts these people spewed out seemingly unbidden.
“I think I made a mistake,” she said, more to herself than to Mac.
Mac only slid his hand over her elbow as he quietly led her past the onlookers toward the curtains and back out into the common area. When he had her in his office and steered her toward the chair to sit, that’s when he spoke. His compassion—the compassion she hoped to see in those scenes tonight—flowed from him in easy waves.
“First things first, you didn’t make a mistake by coming here. Everyone’s expectations are different. As different as what they’re into. Don’t let what Camille and Jesse enjoy negate what you have envisioned for yourself. You’ll find it, and on some nights, you might find it here. Just not tonight.”
Laine took another deep breath, suddenly feeling foolish. “God, I’m sorry. I know that. I guess I was just hoping…” She smiled a little as he cocked his head gently to the side and waited for her to finish.
“For?” he prompted.
She glanced down to her hands in her lap, then peered back up at him. “For everything. I want it all. The passion, the pleasure. To be taken care of, to be able to take care of someone else. To hand over my needs to a person who understands exactly what those are, and to recognize what it is they need in return.”
Mac’s facial features softened.
“Naïve, huh?”
He cleared his throat. “Not in the least. I can’t think of a single person who doesn’t want the same thing.”
She hoped that was true.
“Can I get you something,” he asked. “Water? Juice?”
She shook her head. “No. I’m fine. Really,” she added when he lifted an eyebrow. “I just need to absorb all this, let it soak in and see where I am.”
“I understand.”
She reached behind her on the seat for her purse and dug inside for her car keys. “Thank you so much for the tour, Jack. For showing me around.”
He stood when she did and came around the desk. “You’re more than welcome. I hope you find what—or more to the point, who—you’re looking for. And if you ever want to give Euphoria another try, just let me know. Our doors are always open.”
She shook his offered hand, holding on to it a moment longer than necessary as she smiled up at him and studied his eyes. An understanding shined in them, along with an almost sentimental respect. He knew what she was looking for, and she wondered for a moment if his understanding was because he might be looking for the same thing himself.
“Thank you. I’ll keep that in mind.”
He sat on the edge of the desk and crossed his arms and ankles, giving her an easy nod as she turned to leave. A tingle burst inside her then, an almost uncomfortable itch that had her wanting to bolt for the door. But she kept her composure intact, burying her disappointment deep down while chastising herself for feeling any sort of regret in the first place.
As she pushed through the outer door and stepped out into the night, she knew Mac had been right. So tonight wasn’t her night. So she didn’t see everything she wanted to see. So what. There were other nights, other places. She’d find what she was looking for, eve
ntually.
The lift that thought gave her as she crossed the street and made her way down the block toward her car eased her mind somewhat. She basked in how the tension that had been holed up inside her for the better part of the last half hour began to slip away with each step she took. She felt better, and surprisingly, as she stood beside her car door and fumbled with the Audi’s fob on her key chain, she felt more secure.
Until she reached for her car door handle.
A huge man came out of nowhere and closed in on her from behind. A hot, rank breath blew into her hair as he growled out a nasty “Bitch” close to her ear.
Her stomach twisted. Panic threatened to freeze her solid.
She couldn’t let it. She had to do something. Run. Fight.
Survive.
She grappled with the door handle. He was too close. Too big. She had no idea how she would get away, or even if she could. Blood shot like fire through her veins. Her heart never beat so hard. A scream grew inside her chest, rushing up from deep within her throat.
It never had the chance to make it past her lips.
Chapter Two
The slap of each footfall as Sheriff Tye Carter stormed down the hallway reverberated like gunshots breaking through that eerie middle-of-the-night silence. The creepy noise, and the way the pale blue hue from the overhead fluorescent lights painted the drab walls with a sickening milky glow, only added to the dread already taking hold in his gut.
Jesus, he hated hospitals. Strange for a guy in his position, he knew, and it certainly wasn’t something he went around talking about. But it wasn’t like he had a choice in being here tonight. He had to come. He had to make sure, had to see for himself, that she was all right.
As he bolted past exam room after empty exam room, the phone call that had woken him from the first deep sleep he’d fallen into in weeks replayed in his head.
“Sheriff Carter?”
Groggy, it took him a moment to respond. “Yeah, who’s calling?” His voice came out thick, and more than likely a bit too gruff.
“Sheriff, it’s Elena. From down here at the ER?”
He propped himself on an elbow in bed, a hair more alert now, and flicked on the bedside lamp. Two-fucking-fifteen, the clock read. Great.
“Elena? What is it?”
“Sir, it’s Ms. Morgan. Paramedics brought her in about a half hour ago.”
Panic ripped through his sleep-clogged brain. He sat straighter in the bed. “Laine?”
“Yes, sir. Tom asked me to call you. Said you’d want to know.”
“What the hell happened?” He tossed the covers off and planted his feet on the floor, trying like hell to wrap his brain around what Elena was telling him.
Laine. Hurt. Damn it to hell.
“No one’s sure. Tom said that he and Chuck received a call about an injured woman found in the alley behind Pete’s Tavern.”
“Pete’s place?” Flashing images of her sprawled out on the cold, wet pavement, of her body battered and broken in the alley behind that godforsaken dump, had him forcibly swallowing back a lump of bile rising in his throat. “How badly is she hurt?”
“I’m sorry, I don’t know the details. Dr. Seaver’s in the trauma room with her now.”
“I’m on my way,” he bit out. “You tell Tom not to move an inch. I want a full report the second I get there. Understood?”
“Yes sir. I’ll let him know, sir.”
He slammed the phone into its cradle and reached for his jeans. Jesus, Laine. Hard-headed, stubborn Laine. He’d warned her so many times against stopping off at that damn bar if she worked late. Pete’s was known for its rowdy crowd, especially closer to closing time. Lord only knew what kind of trouble she could’ve gotten herself into at this time of night.
With his heart still racing the pace of a marathon runner, he dressed, grabbed his gun belt, tossed his Stetson on top of his head and bolted for the door. He made the twenty-five-minute drive from his little ranch at the edge of town to the hospital in less than fifteen. After screeching to a halt in front of the ER doors, he scrambled from the driver’s seat of his custom Ford Super-Duty only to stop mid-stride once he cornered the front bumper.
Jesus, Tye, get a fucking grip. Nothing good would come from him running in there like some kind of lunatic. Tom had Elena call him not because of what Laine meant to him—hell, no one knew about that—but because of the position she held. When the Public Defender gets attacked, people sure as shit were going to sit up and take notice. He’d have to dig deep and tamp down any sort of outward emotion where his personal feelings for her came into play. Concern was one thing, but it wouldn’t do to let this aching panic inside his chest get the better of him. Not now.
One deep breath, and then another, and he regrouped enough to calmly walk through the automatic doors and wind his way past all the empty exam rooms to find the ER’s nurses’ station.
“Elena?”
The dark-haired nurse behind the desk paused mid-munch on a handful of microwave popcorn and lifted her chin to indicate behind him.
“Sheriff?”
He spun at the sound of his title, toward a pretty redhead wearing dark blue scrubs. She stood a few feet away with her foot hitched on the lower shelf of a computer cart. As she stepped around it, the serious strain on her face wrenched his gut even further.
“Where is she?” He held his voice steady instead of barking out the question, which surprised even himself.
“This way,” she answered.
“How is she?”
“Let me show you to her room, Sheriff, then I’ll get Dr. Seaver for you. He’ll be able to answer any questions you may have.”
As she led him to Laine’s room, he passed by Deputy Tom Wyland standing sentry outside the exam room door. A sheriff couldn’t ask for a more dedicated deputy. Tom, along with his partner Chuck Sayers, fit that bill and then some, and Tye was damn glad they were on his side. Even so, there was no room for niceties tonight.
“Don’t go anywhere. I want the full story, down to the tiniest detail, when I come back out of there.”
“Sir,” Tom said with a nod.
Elena yanked back the floral curtain covering the doorway of the glass-walled room with a quick, practiced tug. His heart fell to his feet as he followed her into the cramped space.
“We have her stabilized for now,” she said, “Her vitals are good, but she’s been drifting in and out of consciousness. So far, she hasn’t been able to say anything more coherent than a few mumbled words.”
The tiny room was dark, so Elena flipped the light switch behind the bed. More of the sickening fluorescent glow spread across the walls and the bed as a strong medicinal stench assaulted his nostrils.
“I’ll just run and get Dr. Seaver for you.”
He nodded to her and lifted the Stetson off his head to place it on the empty bedside tray table.
Laine lay still as death with a stark-white sheet tucked under her arms. One was covered with IV tubes taped here and there, the other had a BP cuff secured to her biceps and a glowing pulse-ox monitor attached to her slender finger. A palm-sized bandage seeping with red took up the left side of her head, while a plastic mask hid a good portion of her face. An eye—purple, blue, and a million different shades in between—was slightly rounded and swollen, and a small cut had been taped closed with a butterfly bandage at the arch of her bruised cheek. But it was the deep red marks circling her neck and wrists that made the edges of his vision darken with rage.
“Ah, God. Laine.” He directed the whispered, nearly growled words to her motionless body as he leaned in closer to stroke the hollow of her cheek—gently, as tenderly as he could—with the back of his index finger. He knew he shouldn’t be touching her, but he couldn’t stop himself. The need to feel the warmth of her skin, to feel for himself that she was alive, pushed him to the limits of his control.
In the year he’d known her, he’d never touched her like this. There’d been very little physical contact
between them, nothing more than a few professional handshakes early on or an easy palm lingering at the small of her back as he’d hold a door open for her more recently. He supposed she had a pretty good idea he wanted more though, since he’d never kept his desire or willingness a secret from her. He loved flirting with her, and loved even more those little telltale signs that he might finally be getting to her, too.
But he’d never pushed the issue, not once. Guys like him just didn’t do that. Free will was top priority, and meant way too much.
Dr. Seaver stopped at the doorway and only entered when Tye finally looked up and met his concerned stare. Tye took one step away from the bed and shoved his hands in the back pockets of his jeans.
“How bad is she, Jim?”
Jim Seaver leafed through the papers clipped to her chart as he stepped closer to Laine’s bedside. “Honestly, not as bad as she looks. Most of this,” he indicated the bruises on her face, “is superficial and should heal relatively quickly. The eye socket is intact and the cut on her cheek is small enough it shouldn’t need anything more than that butterfly, but I’ve called in plastics to look at the laceration along her hairline.
“She does have a concussion, though. Most likely from the blow to the side of her head that caused the deep cut. It’ll take a few days for the pain from that to ease up.”
“And those marks?” Tye barely choked out the question. Of all her visible injuries, those were the ones that concerned him the most. They were too similar to the ones found on the four victims attacked outside a hush-hush sex club two counties over almost five years ago. But the sheriff there, Jack McKay, he had nailed that guy. The perp ended up sharing a cozy cell in the state prison facility, serving ten to twenty while praying he never accidentally dropped a bar of soap.
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