by Lexy Timms
“Long story,” he explained, and lay down in the hammock. He was obviously not used to hammocks, as his grasp on the sides was white-knuckled. But his penis was standing firm again. With more determination than she realized she had, Mel slipped through the netting and straddled him, her knees on either side of his hips and settled herself over him. This was for her. This was taking back the control she’d lost at the pool and showing him who she was, daring him to look away.
She rode him then, hammock swaying, her chest…her chest on display to him, one pert and sexy breast, the other a lump of scars. She defied him to look, to make good on his description of “beautiful.”
He reached for them both, holding them, holding her hips where the skin was puckered and some of the muscle torn away. He ran his hands up her thighs, over the damaged hip, up her ribs. When she came around him again, his hands grabbed her breasts and held her as wave after wave of pleasure ran through her.
His orgasm came at the end of hers, and he pulled her down hard, trapping her lips, fingernails sinking into her flesh and marking her back as she’d marked his only a short time before.
She collapsed on him, spent, sated, still shivering from the force of her orgasm. Her breath coming out in silent gasps. It slowed, as did the rushing rhythm of her heart.
This was it, the moment of truth.
She tilted her face up, staring him in the eyes. Waiting for him to say some fool thing like, Joke’s on you, or laugh or dismiss her now that he’d come twice.
Surprisingly, his arms wrapped around her as though she was his sole point of stability, and it was he who clung to her.
It felt…
Vulnerable.
Chapter 11
Stunned wasn’t a strong enough word. This wasn’t at all how he’d expected the day to go. For that matter, it wasn’t how he’d expected any of his time in Belize to go. He was leaving…wasn’t he?
What the hell had just happened?
“I’m too heavy for you,” she said, and lifted her head. He could fall into those eyes. Soft. A hint of panic lurking in the corners. Fear that he would reject her, he realized.
Tread carefully, boy.
“No, stay here,” Brant murmured. It was good to feel her weight on him, now that he was fairly sure the hammock would survive their combined weight. Besides, if she moved, the damn thing would start swinging again.
Still, feeling her nakedness press against him was arousing. Again. If he hadn’t spent himself—twice a smug part of his brain added—he’d have been at it again.
Apparently, a part of him still wanted to try.
Okay, reality check. He was exhausted, in that wonderful post-coital way that made him want to stay right where he was forever. A warm and generous woman in his arms, a reasonably comfortable place to lay…you’d think a person would get some rest after a thing like this.
Only, his mind refused to cooperate.
So, there he lay, with his brain spinning one idea after another through his head.
He’d spent his entire professional career since residency perfecting the human body. Tummy tucks, liposuction, all the vanity and vainglory that were so often associated with cosmetic surgery, all that was true. Being able to fix a cleft pallet, being able to let a child breathe unobstructed, was an important part of it, too. But working in Beverly Hills wasn’t exactly conducive for the do-good kind of practical medicine. The truth was, there just weren’t all that many truly needy clients who passed through his doors.
So now, when he should be focusing on the woman in his arms, he was worrying about Maria in Room 10.
How often do I get to do something real?
Most of his practice was vanity. Most—okay—virtually all of it now.
He’d examined the girl earlier and the results ran through his mind. Her burns were healing nicely; she could soon begin surgery to cover the scars. Not that they would ever be fully erased, but a significant reduction in damaged tissue would let her flex and smile and chew without binding the skin.
Maybe he couldn’t stop thinking about the little girl who was his patient because he was embracing another who’d suffered so badly for her scars.
He glanced down at Mel, his gaze tender and soft. He thought of the two of them running naked through the jungle like two kids, and he smiled. Okay, so her left breast was gone. Did it really matter? It didn’t bother him, actually. Which sort of surprised him. Someone had rebuilt a semblance of what should have been there using implants, stretched skin. They’d even made some attempt to replace the nipple. It kept her from looking lopsided, or like an Amazon from myth that carved off a breast to not interfere with the throwing of a spear. So, yes, she’d had cosmetic surgery of a sort. And in its own way, it was vanity.
Yet, when he’d looked at it, the raw crisscrossed scars, the angry red lines that would never fade, he’d caught his breath. In a terrible, horrifying way, it was beautiful. The horror came from the pain she must have felt, the loss, the anguish. But there was a grace to it, an elegance of survival, of strength. Her entire body screamed, “I survived this. I lived through what should have killed me!” He’d wanted to trace the lines, mark their passage against her skin. In a world of vanity and imperfections that were wiped out ruthlessly and without mercy, hers was a testimony to a deep core of strength. A desperate will to survive.
It was glorious to see.
“What’re you thinking?” she asked, her mouth half buried in his chest.
“Enjoying the moment.” It was the truth. One hand traced the curve of her back. “Wondering how long before the hammock spins and flips us both onto the floor.”
She laughed quietly. “I’m sure it’ll hold.” Then she giggled again and he found he liked the sound of it. “Though I haven’t fallen out of it yet.”
“Ah,” Brant countered, “that’s because you’re graceful and light, whereas I still need training wheels.”
She lifted her head and looked at him. Her smile was breathtaking. “What makes you think you’re the only klutz who’s been in my hammock?”
“Because you naturally waited all your life just for me?” He grinned and she smacked him lightly, but in a very tender location. His legs crossed and the sudden movement set the hammock swinging. He grabbed the sides in a flat-out panic and held on, trying to balance for them both.
She chuckled, giggled, at his discomfort. “Truthfully,” she admitted slowly, “I haven’t shared this hammock before.” She was talking to his chest again. “I haven’t…shared a hammock for a very long time.”
He stroked her hair and waited. Partly because he wasn’t sure what he was supposed to say to that. And partly because he knew she needed to say something. If there was any good that came from dating his ex-girlfriend, Stephanie, it was that he’d learned a couple things. One, when a woman needs to talk, shut the hell up; and two, never, ever date a psychotic mess like Stephanie.
Her fingers began tracing absent circles on his chest. “It’s been five years since I was with someone.” He had to strain to hear her. “I’ve never been able to…let anyone…see…”
Fingers clenched. It was all he could do to keep from making a fist. Whoever had hurt her deserved a good solid punch to the face. The thought surprised him, as typically he was the first to say violence never solved anything. He swallowed hard, shoving down the inner caveman before he said or did something that would scare her away completely. “That’s a shame,” he said carefully, wishing he wasn’t talking to the top of her head.
“That I haven’t had sex?” she asked, raising her eyes to his.
“No, that so many men have never had the opportunity to discover the beauty I have.”
She inhaled, and he could feel her entire body tense.
“No!” He grasped her chin lightly between thumb and forefinger, so that he could look her in the eye. So that she would have to see that he meant every word. “I’m very serious. I see the marks. I know the pain you went through, though I can’t imagine it. I�
��m not being facetious or lying, or whatever else you think I’m being. I see beauty there.”
She rose on one elbow, breasts hanging free over him. The hammock protested, and swayed dangerously.
He was aware of her solemn gaze, but the damn swaying threw him every time it happened.
“I’ve seen the effect that ‘beauty’ has had on men, Doctor. I’ve seen the fallen smiles, the sudden inability to look, the mad dashes out the door. Please don’t say that word anymore, not about me. Not about this.” She waved her free hand in the direction of the breast and the scars on her hip. “I’m a doctor. I know what I’m looking at, I see it every day. I’m glad you like it, for whatever strange reason, but ‘beautiful’ is inappropriate.”
He lay there, unable to respond, not sure what he would say, what he could say to that.
She turned away from him and crawled out of the netting, standing on the dusty wooden floor. She didn’t turn toward him, but she didn’t cover up either. “If you don’t mind, please, I would like to get some rest,” she said to the far wall. “Please, go to your quarters, or the clinic. Whatever you prefer.”
It was rejection, pure and simple.
And damn it, it hurt like hell. Brant wasn’t sure where he’d gone wrong. Nothing he’d said was a lie, nothing was meant to deceive. She was a beautiful woman. And the scars…they only accented her wonder. Like a mole on the cheek might highlight the lips.
Only, she wouldn’t look at him.
“Why…?” He refused to move.
“PLEASE!” Her entire body was rigid. Was she crying? It was impossible to tell from this angle. “Please, just…just let me get some rest.”
It was the break at the end of the sentence, the pleading tone to her voice that did it. He wasn’t wanted here. And only an asshole would press the point right now.
Brant swung his legs over the side of the hammock and caught himself just before it dumped him out. He gathered up his clothing and pulled the pants on, carrying the rest. He hesitated in her doorway, trying to think of the thing to say that would salvage the situation, but quite honestly this was out of his league. He’d never been so thoroughly kicked out of a woman’s bed before.
And he sure as hell hadn’t expected that kind of rejection to hurt this much. Not from Dr. Melissa Bell.
So, he left.
When the door closed behind him, it was shutting off a world he’d only just realized he could have been a part of.
He stood for a long time on the porch before returning to his own lonely cabin. Somehow, the jungle had become a very cold place.
* * *
Brant not only spent the entire night in his room, but he actually slept. In the hammock. The snake that’d taken residence under the toilet had moved on, and for several hours Brant searched the small room from top to bottom. The only thing worse than having a snake in your room was losing a snake in your room.
However, no snakes or other creatures awaited discovery, no points of access presented themselves, and terror only keeps the adrenaline going for just so long. Between the bus wreck that started the day, the wild sex with the mercurial Dr. Bell, and the prolonged snake search, Brant fell into the hammock. After a moment of seasickness, he somehow managed to fall asleep.
He woke as the light of dawn came through the open windows and the jungle increased in volume like an alarm clock. For a moment he didn’t know where he was, and when he remembered he groaned and tried to go back to sleep. The memories of yesterday, the sweetness of the woman, the bitterness of her rejection, left him exhausted before he’d even gotten out of bed.
The jungle disagreed with his choice to sleep, however. When the ceaseless chatter of what he suspected were monkeys went on for the next twenty minutes, seemingly right outside his window, he gave up and decided to face the day.
He prescribed himself a hot shower, a good breakfast, and clean clothes. The shower was cold, breakfast a bowl of cereal with powdered milk, and though he found fresh scrubs the same destroyed shoes that once cost a fortune now squished when he wore them. He suspected that if he only asked, someone might be able to come up with a pair of sandals such as the natives wore. But that would involve talking to people. His track record the previous day had left him somewhat wary, and in the uncomfortable position of realizing that perhaps there were individuals he should be apologizing to.
Except Dr. Brant Layton never apologized.
He was not in the best mood then, when he encountered an efficient and distant Dr. Melissa Bell almost immediately inside the hospital. She breezed into the clinic with a coffee cup in one fist and a stack of papers in the other. No sooner had she arrived than she began firing off orders and backing them up with rather official-looking papers. Joseph took one look and made himself scarce. The nurses on duty were therefore left scrambling, though each somehow found time enough to give Brant what would have been termed a ‘stink-eye’ back in his school days.
Not about to be caught in Mel’s line of fire, Brant busied himself with patients and tried his best to keep out of her way. Thankfully, most of the victims from yesterday’s crash were being released later that day. In this case, ‘released’ meant ‘evicted,’ as the patients were in no hurry to vacated an air-conditioned hotel with room service and continuous television.
Mel had orders and instructions for everyone there, an organized tornado of efficiency and organization. Even Joseph was dragged back to reorganize the stockroom, to double-check supplies against the inventory, especially in the wake of the disaster. But for Brant, there was a profound silence; not only did she not have specific orders for him, but her entire demeanor suggested that he wasn’t even there in the first place.
Carmen accepted her role and paperwork with a mute efficiency, and continued her ongoing stare-down with the far wall. The two nurses organized and engineered the mass exodus of patients. Joseph, on the other hand, took his pile of papers and set them down without a backwards glance, following Brant into Room 10 to check on Maria.
The child was in brighter spirits today than she had been previously. She beamed when she saw Brant, and the smile broke through the bandages and the burn scars.
Brant carefully pulled the bandages away from her face and looked at the damage. “This is healing very nicely,” he said, feeling pleased though he’d truly had nothing to do with her progress thus far. He looked carefully at the marks themselves, the scar tissue forming along her cheek.
Yet the observance of one scar led to thinking about another. He tried to put Mel aside in his mind, but she was there, dug in, and he couldn’t stop wondering what he’d done or said wrong.
“Doctor?” Joseph prompted softly.
Abashed, Brant smiled at Maria and shook his head. “Sorry,” he said to her. “You’re looking fine, this is healing well; I…I’m still trying to get used to the place, that’s all.”
Maria smiled back at him. “It must be very different from your city,” she said, her tone wistful and soft. “I would love to see America someday. I want to visit a big city with lots of lights and swimming pools.”
“Well,” he placed a hand on hers and squeezed, maybe surprising himself a little. Normally he didn’t go all out in bedside manner, “maybe someday you’ll be able to.”
“Doctor,” she said, her smile fading just a little, “the nurses said you make women’s boobs bigger, but that you also fix…” her English seemed to fail her, and she searched for the right words, “bad skin…”
“It’s called cosmetic and reconstructive surgery,” Brant added helpfully. “I rebuild people who have been damaged.”
“Can you rebuild this?” she asked, indicating her cheek. Her eyes were guileless and hopeful.
Brant looked into her eyes; now he was the one at a loss for words. “I can’t do anything until after it heals,” he said finally. “Let it heal for a while.” He could help her. Just here, with the limited equipment and supplies, he wasn’t sure how much he could do. If they were in L.A., there would be
so many options. Plus, he didn’t even know how long he was staying.
She nodded, but he could see the unshed tears. He placed a hand on hers again and, although she didn’t remove it, she didn’t return the gesture either. Her hand lay there under his as she visibly struggled to digest that information.
Up to that moment, she’d held hope. Hope in him. Faith in him. A belief that he could cure her. And here he sat, letting her dreams fall at his feet. A professor once said, “Surgeons only think that they’re God. When they start acting like it, people suffer.”
He thought of the breasts he’d enlarged, the butts he’d shaped, and the thighs he’d pulled fat and cellulite from. All for women who had the sickness of wealth and poor self-image. And here was a lovely child who’s risked everything to try and save her father…
He leaned over her and heard himself whisper. “I’ll do what I can, okay?” It was a promise he didn’t want to make. One he would keep, even though his best might not be enough. But he couldn’t look on that face, the side unbandaged, and let such a young child accept permanent disfigurement. Not and call himself a doctor—or a man.
He stood and promised he’d be back later, then left the room in haste, blinking back sudden tears. Thankfully Joseph remained to give her fresh bandages.
Only he ran right into a single sheet of paper held in the outstretched hand of Mel, who stared at him like he was a muddy dog in her nice, clean clinic.
“You get resort duty,” she said flatly. She looked him over, and he was suddenly conscious of the fact that the scrubs he wore were already the worse for wear, and his shoes were ruined. “Bring your wallet,” she added and charged off, the very model of efficiency.
“What’s resort duty?” he asked Tina who was passing by in the hall, pushing an IV pole.
“Most of the funding for the clinic comes from Doctors Overseas,” she said, shifting through her own papers tucked under her arm that seemed intent on escaping her clipboard. “But not all of it. The resort where you landed supplies some money, but they also give us transportation and supplies as they can. Most of the chairs and office supplies are from them, and we get our medicines quickly without having to bribe border guards.”