by Olivia Gates
Comprehension dawned in the woman’s blue eyes. “So it’s because he’s your knight in darkest armor that his superficial injury is making you so upset!”
“What superficial injury takes this long to take care of?” Laylah cried.
The woman waved. “Oh, his wound is long taken care of.”
Laylah frowned. “So why are doctors rushing in there and not coming out?”
Nurse McGregor grinned. “That has nothing to do with how he is and everything to do with who he is.”
“Huh?”
“You can’t tell me you didn’t notice the women fighting to take his case?”
She hadn’t. With Rashid around, everything else in the world became inconsequential, almost invisible.
Nurse McGregor chuckled. “Well, they did, when normally they wouldn’t be caught dead with such ‘first-year-intern’ injuries. Then Doctor Vergas threw her weight around as E.R. director and snapped him up.” Laylah had noticed that. “Boy, did he give us a hard time, ordering us to get him sutures, saying he had more experience suturing wounds than all of us combined. But Doc Vergas convinced him to let her do it using the one thing she figured would get through to him.”
“And that was?”
“You, of course.”
“Huh?”
“She said if he didn’t let her suture him, she’d have you come in to talk sense into him. He allowed her to sew him up without further resistance.”
Oh.
He’d conceded only when threatened with the prospect of seeing her?
Was that good, bad or terrible?
Nurse McGregor sighed dramatically. “Even when he caved, he wouldn’t take his sweater off, just raised it. But the inches we saw of him were...whoa.” A hand frantically fanned her face. “Maybe we wouldn’t have survived seeing the whole package, after all.”
TMI, Laylah almost blurted out. TMDI. Too much distressing info. She could do without more stimulation of her fantasies starring Rashid. Coupling concepts like “‘all the way”’ and “‘the whole package”’ with him wasn’t good for her psychological health.
The woman went on. “Man, it’s like he isn’t human. First that body, and then he didn’t make a sound as we stitched him up when he’d refused local anesthesia or painkillers afterward. Then there’s that presence, even when he didn’t look at us or say a word.”
Layla was intimate with Rashid’s influence from lifelong experience. But... “All E.R. personnel have come out, including you. So who are those people who keep pouring into the room? What’s going on?”
“That’s what I meant when I said it’s all about who he is. After we were done, he said he’d make a donation to the department. Then he mentioned a number. That’s when we E.R personnel stampeded out, to spread the word and investigate him on the internet And we found out exactly who we have in there.”
That must have been a shock. Rashid was worth a few dozen billions. Men of his caliber had entire hospitals at their beck and call and health insurance that would airlift them anywhere in the world if they sprained their ankle. It was actually odd that he’d consented to go to a regular E.R., even for a “glorified paper cut.”
Nurse McGregor flicked her head toward the room. “So those illustrious figures you saw storming in there? They’re department heads, each trying to sell him on a project that needs funding.”
He was in there talking business? Leaving her out here going out of her mind?
With a smile that must be as brittle as her nerves, she said, “Thanks for the recap and everything else, Nurse McGregor.”
Then she marched into that till-now off-limits room.
Sure enough, Rashid was swarmed.
Not that he appeared concerned. Even surrounded by people like a rock star by groupies, he towered a head over everyone, that vast energy he emitted engulfing the scene. He was wearing only his bloody slate-gray sweater. His coat was hooked carelessly from a finger over his back.
She’d thought that coat had made him more imposing. But stripped of its obscuring folds, the symmetry and strength that infused his every line, the power and perfection that filled and strained against the cashmere, ruined as it was, were...
What had the nurse said? Yeah. Whoa.
No wonder god had been the only word the woman had found to describe him. He did look the part, presiding over his worshippers with all the contained might and forbearance of one.
He saw her the second she entered. In fact, his gaze had been pinned on the door.
Had he been expecting her to disobey hospital rules? But that wasn’t what had kept her out. It had been his unspoken, and this time non-negotiable, demand. So had he been expecting her to disregard his wishes? And had he been watching the door so intently because he’d been worried she would? Or only as his means of escape from those who would devour him whole?
There was no way to read the answer on that heart-wrenchingly gorgeous face he wore like a mask. But she let him read her own thoughts in the gaze that clashed with his.
His response was to raise that eyebrow in a calm, Still here?
She folded her arms over her chest, letting him know he could spend the night holed up in here, wheeling and dealing, and she’d stand right here and wait for him to be done.
A glint in his fathomless eyes acknowledged he was aware of her intention.
Then he turned his gaze to the man standing closest to him. “Mr. Hendrix, please send your proposal to my corporation’s email with E.R. in the subject line. I’ll get back to you within two weeks.” Voices rose, trying to get the same offer. He cut them all short. “Give Mr. Hendrix your proposals. I’ll do what I can.”
Without one further look at anyone, he walked away. She could see they wanted to cling to him, but there was no way anyone could stand in Rashid’s way once he’d made up his mind. They parted for him like the Red Sea for Moses.
He didn’t slow down as he reached her, only inclined his head at her as he exited the room, his earlier silent inquiry now a statement. “You didn’t leave.”
She hurried after him, stumbling on legs that felt mismatched as his scent, even over the overpowering hospital smells, filled her lungs. “You thought I would?”
He spared her a sideways glance from his prodigious height. “You should have.”
“Yeah, right.” Her gaze flitted to the pristine white bandage peeking below what now looked like viscous ink on his sweater. She felt nauseated that his flesh had been torn, again, this time for her.
“Are you all right?” she asked. Her breathlessness had nothing to do with almost running to match his endless strides.
He gave her a look that pointed out that she was the one having trouble keeping up. “I don’t look it?”
You look more than all right. You look divine.
She barely bit back the words. “Looks can be deceiving. Especially yours.”
Both eyebrows rose this time. “I wish I’d known I had chameleonlike powers before. That would have come in handy during my black ops days.”
So after being a war hero he’d veered into ultimate warrior territory. A natural progression, really. Only the most formidable soldiers made it and survived in that utmost-skill, maximum-peril world.
Had that been what had shaped him into this force of darkness? He’d always been complex, but his current depths must have been forged in experiences she couldn’t even imagine. The brutal demands and dangers of a black ops life fit the bill.
She cleared her tightening throat. “I meant your skin. It’s so...” Polished and bronzed and tough, so touchable...so lickable... She clamped down on the overheating thoughts. “Tanned. Anyone less...opaque would be pale as a ghost from blood loss by now.”
His eyes moved dismissively away. “It’s clear you’ve never seen what blood loss looks like.”
She quickened her steps to capture his fixed-ahead gaze. “I do now. I was a volunteer paramedic through college in Zohayd.”
Had she managed to stun him again? Tha
t she could decipher a flicker in his eyes meant that she had. And then some.
Did it surprise him that much that she’d volunteered, and in such an occupation? Was he surprised to discover she wasn’t what her mother had tried so hard to make her—a pampered pawn?
“Then you must know all this blood only looks dramatic. I’ve got liters still circulating about, doing its job, and the loss is merely an incentive for my body to produce a replacement, something I’ve always found revitalizing.”
Her jaw dropped. “You find blood loss revitalizing?”
“It does jog my body out of a rut. Before you wonder, I don’t have proclivities for inflicting it on myself for kicks, but when it does happen, I look at the bright side.”
She and Nurse McGregor had been right. There was something more than human about him.
“You’re still not convinced, even when your paramedical experience is telling you I’m right.”
He was. But... “I—I just can’t stop thinking how much worse it could have been...”
“But it wasn’t. You can stop guilt-tripping.”
He was wrong about that. It wasn’t guilt. It was this...fear for him, even when she knew that danger had been averted.
He sighed. “What will convince you that I won’t keel over? I assure you I don’t intend to for roughly the next fifty years.”
The out-of-nowhere flashes of his dry-as-tinder sense of humor amazed her.
Her lips quivered. “I’ll hold you to that.”
Another sideways glance, longer this time, and even more unsettling. But he said nothing more as he navigated out of the hospital and into the freezing night.
She fought the urge to take his hand as they crossed the road. Driving him here and escorting him inside were two things he’d grudgingly consented to. Literally holding his hand was another level of infringement altogether. And she’d rather not be exposed to more eyebrow action.
But she was, in response to her rushing to take the wheel.
He reinforced that eyebrow’s censure by remaining outside, his bulk blocking the passenger-side window.
A button wound it down. “Get in already.”
He only stood there, uncaring of the icy wind as his coat flowed around him like a magician’s cape. “You’d rather drive yourself home instead of giving me directions?”
She thought of saying yes, just so he’d get in from the cold. But even if she didn’t suffer from advanced candor, she wouldn’t bargain with him with anything less than the full truth.
She looked up at him with her unequivocal intention. “I’m driving you home.”
Widening his stance, he shoved his hands in his pants’ pockets, evidently having no problem with haggling over this all night. “Our deal wasn’t open-ended. It ended when you heard with your own ears that my injury was trivial.”
“So the injury wasn’t as bad as you’re used to, and the blood loss turned out to be a kick. But the stitches must be hurting like hell, especially since you went all Rambo and refused anesthesia and painkillers. Even if you have an inhuman pain threshold and feel nothing, bottom line is, I’m still driving. And I won’t just drop you home and leave. I’m coming in with you.”
That silenced him. For at least thirty seconds.
Then he leaned down, looked straight into her eyes, the night of his own eyes deep enough to engulf her whole.
Slowly, distinctly, he said, “I’ve been in three wars, princess. I forget how many other lesser scale, if sometimes even more vicious, armed conflicts. Not to mention all those missions I undertook with one-way tickets because coming back at all, let alone in one piece, was a one in a hundred shot at best. I’ve seen and done and had done to me some of the absolute worst things imaginable. Two-dozen stitches actually feels nostalgic now that I’ve left the battlefield behind for the boardroom. I assure you, I can tuck myself into bed.”
That image filled her with heat. How many women had fought for that privilege, had had that pleasure...?
She bit her lip at the disconcerting projections. “I’m sure you can also lug the whole world on your back, Sheikh Atlas. But that doesn’t mean that you have to, or that you have to do it alone. No matter what, you’re not alone tonight. You got those stitches in my defense, so that makes them mine, too, and I have an equal right in deciding how to view them. You think they’re negligible or nostalgic, I think they’re premium grounds for fussing. You evidently find being fussed over an alien concept, but you’ll have to suck it up, since fuss over you I will. So you might as well give in, get in and let me take you home.”
Judging by the infinitesimal widening of his eyes, she’d definitely flabbergasted him. She’d bet no one had ever dared talk to him like that.
When he finally spoke, his voice was an octave deeper, if that was possible, “I really don’t need—”
“I know you need nothing from anyone.” Now that she had him miraculously off-balance, she had to strike the red-hot iron of his indecision and get the obdurate man in from the cold. “It’s a given you can take care of yourself at the absolute worst of times, having done so all your life. But you won’t tonight. Tonight, I take care of you.”
Three
She’d pushed her luck too far.
From the way Rashid was looking at her, as if she were an alien life form, she feared she’d done worse. Instead of persuading him to get into the car, she might have convinced him to walk home on foot.
What the hell. Might as well go all the way.
She leaned farther so she could look up at him. “If you’re thinking of calling a cab, I’ll follow it. If you decide to walk, I’ll cruise along beside you. Or I’ll get out and walk with you and you’ll have my hypothermia on your hands and your conscience.”
He clearly couldn’t believe his ears.
She grinned up at him. Stick around and, according to my family, you’ll hear plenty of pretty unbelievable stuff.
Before she could utter another word he was in the car, and she sat back quickly into her seat, stunned by how fast he had moved.
She blinked at him. How could someone of his height and bulk flow so effortlessly? It was as if he had a stealth mode and tricked her senses into not registering his movement.
Had they taught him that in black ops training? Or were those powers of undetectability why he’d been sought for the position in the first place?
After closing the window, he presented her with his profile. Not even his horrific scar detracted from its hewn perfection.
Ya Ullah, but he was utter beauty.
Her one complaint was that he’d almost shaved off his hair. She’d once made a profound study of how its lush silkiness framed his masterpiece of a face, how its virile hairline outlined his lion’s forehead, how it captured light only to emit it in glimmers of raven gloss. She’d been grateful when he’d kept growing it so there’d been more of it for her to delight in. When she’d been twelve or thirteen, he’d worn it in a ponytail midway down his back. She’d lived for the times when he’d unbound it.
Even when he’d joined the army, he hadn’t gotten a military cut. But now he had barely half an inch to adorn his warrior’s head. That was an injustice of massive proportions.
Burning to ask why he kept it so ruthlessly cropped, she waited for him to say something. Like where to drive.
His continued silence told her she should figure out what to do with the rest of her one-sided plan. He’d contribute nothing more.
She started the ignition, cranked up the heater, turned back to him. “I’ll need directions.”
Without a word, he set the GPS then resumed his position.
So. The silent treatment. Two could play at this game.
Twenty minutes later, cruising the powerful car down almost-empty streets on the outskirts of the city, she’d long realized that that was easier bragged about than achieved.
She’d spent a lifetime yearning to talk to him and failing. Now she wanted to make up for all of those frustrating times. She w
anted to deluge him with a thousand questions, yammer on about all the things she’d longed to say to him all her life.
But his silence was like a barrier. It made her awareness of him highly distressing. She felt as if his every breath expanded in her own chest, as if every impulse powering his magnificent body quivered through her nerves.
Then she felt him slide a discreet glance her way.
She tore her gaze from the road to his face. For a fraction of a second she saw something...unguarded.
It was gone before she could latch on to it, but she felt he was wrestling with something. Irritation? Humor? What?
“You understand that was blackmail.”
All her hairs, perpetually at half-mast around him, stood on end as the velvet night of his voice poured into her ear.
Her lips wobbled. “I choose to call it persistence. In response to your pointless resistance.”
“My resistance wasn’t pointless. Just useless.”
Her grin widened as she returned her eyes to the road. “That it was. But pray tell, what was its point?”
“That you shouldn’t be with me. That it’s inappropriate.”
“Oh, no. You’re not pulling our region’s traditions on me, of what’s ‘appropriate’ behavior for women, especially the variety stigmatized by spinsterhood.”
“You’re not a spinster.”
Her laugh dripped in sarcasm. “Tell that to my family, especially my dear mother. I’ve been a spinster in her eyes for over ten years.”
“Ten years ago you were a child of seventeen.”
He knew her age!
She tried not to grin like a fool at the discovery. “And I was already past my prime then. You know girls in our region are expected to interest men in acquiring them earlier than that.”
Instead of debating her, he only said, “Any reason why you don’t find this situation inappropriate?”
Was he for real? “Because we’re not in Azmahar or Zohayd?”
“Our behavior shouldn’t change based on geography. Wherever we are, we remain who we are. You—more than anyone from our region—should always observe said ‘traditions.’ As you realized tonight, they’re not only set to limit your freedom, but to protect you.”