by Sadie Jacks
“We’ve got a missing patient, Patty. Sound the alarm,” he said. “She can’t have gone far. Her condition is too bad for her to have run or dodged us.”
Nurse Patty must not have moved fast enough for him.
“NOW!” he screamed as it sounded like he slapped the counter of the nurse’s station.
Shoes squeaked over the floor as nurses rushed to do the illustrious doctor’s bidding. They had no idea what he was capable of. I hoped none of them got in trouble when they couldn’t find me.
I looked around the sectioned off portion of the room I was squatting in. The man there was sleeping peacefully. A woman about his age was sleeping on the couch against the wall. A bag of clothes was at the base of the man’s bed.
I grabbed the bag and looked through it. Winced at the idea of stealing. I couldn’t leave. Not dressed like a patient. I sent up a prayer for forgiveness as I slid the pants on. Thankfully, the guy had some old school sweats that bunched at the ankles and had a drawstring. I pulled the shirt on and dropped the gown.
I wasn’t going to take the socks. They would lessen my purchase on the floor. I couldn’t afford to slide my way around corners or over floors. I did steal one of the strings from his shoes and pulled my hair up and off my shoulders and face. I tucked the tail of it down the oversized shirt.
Doing a couple leg bends to hopefully loosen the muscles in my thighs, I waited for someone to come check this room for the lost patient. I laid down on the empty bed and closed my eyes. My abandoned hospital gown stuffed under my pillow.
The door opened. I cracked my eyelids to see who it was. Felt my belly relax when it was just a nurse. She slid through the room like a wraith. Shut the door behind her when she found nothing out of the ordinary.
I waited, the time ticking by in my abused head like a countdown to a bomb. Once I reached sixty, I eased from the bed. Shaking off the lethargy and the need to just close my eyes, I slapped myself in the face lightly.
The muscles of my thighs burned and protested with the movement as I moved the curtain next to the door. Please let me get away. Please. Please. Please.
I opened the door, hoped no one noticed my bare feet. I moved out into the hallway like I was supposed to be there. Shut the door softly behind me. I strode with aching, burning purpose towards the elevators. At the last turn, I almost vomited from stress.
Shit, shit, shit.
He was there. His arms folded over his muscular chest, his glare an unwelcome reminder imprinted on my brain. He looked up at me. He turned, his crystal blue eyes bright and terrifying under the bright fluorescent lights. His sharply styled brown hair lay just so against his head.
He moved in my direction.
The breath backed up in my throat as he headed towards me. At the last moment, he nodded and moved around me. “Excuse me.”
Thank the goddess he hadn’t recognized me. I nodded and kept moving. The emergency stairs were on the far side of the elevators. I couldn’t risk getting stuck in the moving car if he were still searching for me.
I pushed through the heavy steel door, the cement flooring of the stairwell a hard, welcome jolt to my system. At least I could still feel my toes.
I started down the stairs, one torturous step at a time. Sweat broke out on my forehead as I rounded the first landing and continued on down. I could feel my feet, but only because the cold kept reminding me they were there.
With a death grip on the railing, I eased down the next flight. A door slammed open a couple floors up. I huddled next to the wall, my heart trying to beat its way from my chest.
“Willow?” he called.
I stuffed a fist in my mouth to keep from screaming. Slid to the floor in a pile as my legs finally gave out. I prayed like I’d never prayed before.
The door right next to me smashed open, the door ricocheting off the wall and almost bouncing shut in one smooth movement. A man stepped through.
Tall as the Amatucci brothers, he was as light as a spring day. He looked like he could wrestle bears or lions barehanded. His muscles strained the sleeves of his dress shirt. His thighs bulged against the fabric of his pants.
Blonde hair that fell forward over his forehead, it looked thick and cool to the touch. His grass green eyes were as hard as emeralds as they widened when he caught me close to tears in the stairwell.
His mouth pulled up in a growl when he looked at me.
I shrank back from the blatant anger on his face.
“Willow? Is that you?” my nightmare called again from up above.
The man opened his mouth.
Oh sweet goddess. No. Please no. I had to put my life in this angry stranger’s hands and pray he didn’t give me away.
Forcing myself to look up into his hard, shuttered eyes, I shook my head quickly. Put a finger over my mouth. No longer cold, I was burning up. The tunnel of my vision grew darker. I pushed it aside. I couldn’t let this stranger send me back to hell.
The blonde-haired man studied me for moments on end. I counted every single heartbeat while he made his decision. All I could hear was the pounding in my head.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
“No.” His brow furrowed as he answered. He looked almost surprised by his own answer.
“Is there a woman in a hospital gown down there?” the doctor of hell asked.
The man looked me up and down. Heat flared in my cheeks as the look of disdain on his face when he studied me. I was embarrassed by my stolen clothes. Could my life get any weirder?
“No,” the man said again. His voice was a beautiful baritone, clear as a bell. He didn’t offer anything else to his explanation. Just a simple, firm negative.
“If you see a distraught woman in a hospital gown running around the hospital, please do not approach her. She’s dangerous. To herself. To others.”
Shame slid through me like a knife. I wasn’t crazy. Not to anyone normal. Nor was I dangerous. Unless you counted my baking delicious confections a crime.
I gritted my teeth. I wasn’t crazy. And he couldn’t convince me of it otherwise. Not anymore. I was no longer under his thumb.
I firmed my lips, straightened my shoulders to the best of my weakened ability and looked up at the stranger. I shook my head, laid a hand over my heart.
The stranger grimaced. “I’ll be sure to tell someone.”
I wilted, basically collapsed against the cement steps, as the door up the stairs slammed shut once more. “Thank you,” I whispered as my eyes fluttered closed. I hurried to wipe away the tears that leaked from the corners of my eyes. I looked back up at my savior. “Thank you.”
He nodded and stood there for a moment, his gaze running over me again as he crossed his arms. “Technically, I didn’t lie. You’re not in a hospital gown.”
I smiled up at him. Looked down at my stolen clothes. “Indeed.” I grabbed the rail, attempted to stand.
I fell forward as my legs seized up.
The stranger was there. His hands slid around my hips. The bite of his grip as I stumbled against him had lights and sirens going off in my mind.
He smelled like bubble gum and mint.
“Sure you shouldn’t be in a gown and in a bed somewhere?” he asked, his voice a rumble against my chest.
I pulled back, hoped my bruised and battered legs would hold me. “I should be, but I’d brave an emotional first-year philosophy student with a scalpel before I’d let him touch me.” I pushed some hair off my forehead. Looked into his eyes. With me a couple steps higher, we were at eye level.
“Any particular reason for that?” he asked, one darker blonde eyebrow winged up.
I nodded as I straightened my borrowed shirt. A multitude of reasons, but I wasn’t sharing them with this guy. He’d already saved my life, he didn’t need to get caught up in the drama that was my every day for his reward.
His lips, full and unfairly pouty, quirked into a smile. “Good girl. Keep those secrets.” He flexed his fingers into my hips.
My lips parted o
n a gasp as the delicious pain slid through me again. Complete with that white noise haze of blessed silence.
He wet his lips as he dropped his eyes to look at my mouth.
I blinked at him. Knew he didn’t have any idea what he was doing other than helping some poor, supposedly crazy lady in baggy clothes not get caught by a doctor.
“Is savior of the misfortuned your day job or do you moonlight as a superhero?” I asked softly.
He laughed, low and sexy. His breath panted against my lips. “You’ve definitely got the wrong guy for that one, sweetheart. I’m a chew ‘em up and spit ‘em out kind of guy.”
My lips curled up. “Real bad guy, huh?” The man was probably a pussycat. I knew scary men. This guy wasn’t one of them.
“Tried and true. Terrified mothers on reference if you need them.” His fingers dug into my hips again before he pulled away. Something darkened his eyes as he looked away.
I felt the loss of his gaze immediately. As his hands dropped away, the reins of control on the pain inside me loosened. The pain in my body roared back, unmanageable and overwhelming. I hissed in a breath.
“You need some help down?” he asked. His voice was tight and his mouth was pinched.
“Do bad guys help strange women down stairs?” I took his hand and eased to the next step down.
His lips kicked up at the corner for a sliver of a moment. “Well, I can’t be bad all the time. That would just be exhausting. You caught me on my annual day of redemption.” He curled his arm across my back and over my hip.
“Pretty sure bad guys don’t care about redemption. But thank you…again.” I gripped his arm as I tried to be fast. He probably had somewhere to be and I was holding him up with my pathetic inability to descend some stairs.
“You’re welcome. Can I ask what happened?” We finally made it to the next landing.
My lungs worked overtime as I struggled to put one foot in front of the other. “You can.” I focused on keeping my feet under me. My vision was fading in and out as the pressure built in my chest.
We descended a few stairs in silence. He chuckled after a minute. “What happened?”
“A jackhole and a table,” I answered.
His arm jerked around my back. I pitched forward slightly under the movement. He righted me before my body had a chance to follow through. “A man hurt you?”
I shrugged. “Not precisely. He was trying to grab my best friend. I bumped her out of the way. I just missed the table he slammed into me.” I swallowed heavily. My throat felt like the desert. “I’ll be okay.” I patted the arm I was gripping. “You don’t want to waste your redemption day on me. You won’t get enough points.”
He mumbled something against my head that I missed.
As the next turn for the following landing came, I knew I needed to get flat. As soon as humanly possible. And as far from this hellhole I could manage before I passed out.
“Do you have a phone, by chance?” I asked him, my entire being focused on the stairs.
“Need to call someone?” It sounded like he was smiling as he said it.
I couldn’t spare the movement to check. I just nodded. “I need to call a friend to come pick me up.”
“A boyfriend?” he asked as he eased me against the wall.
I smiled as my eyelids dipped. “He’s a guy, but I can’t lose him, so we’re just family.”
His brows dropped as his mouth hardened again. “He shouldn’t have left your side. If you were mine, you wouldn’t be out of my sight.”
I blinked a few times. Decided to ignore his last statement. I shrugged. “Boys are a lot of work.”
His face brightened momentarily as he chuckled again. “Pretty sure you meant to say girls are work.”
I snorted softly. “Not into the ladies, but yeah. They are too. Men are weird. Women are crazy. I’d rather be with weird than crazy. Ready for that number yet, Thor?” I rested my overheated head against the cool wall.
I felt his chuckle deep inside my chest. “Definitely not a god, sweets. Real or imagined. Yeah, give it to me.”
I gave him Dom’s number as my brain gave one small, sickly slide to the side.
“Shit,” he said as he caught my shoulders before I took a header down the stone steps. “You really should be in a bed.” He pressed my body between his and the wall. The shock of the heat from him in startling contrast to the cold wall cleared my mind for the briefest moment.
I smiled blindly. “Only if it’s yours or mine.” An unwelcome thought exploded through my fuzzy head. My nose wrinkled. “Don’t let him find me.”
The ‘please’ got lost as my mind went dark.
Chapter 3 – Ryker
Ten minutes ago
I slammed through the doors of the stairwell. Fucking doctors. If they would just make up their minds and stick to a single course of action, maybe Corrie wouldn’t be stuck in this life-sucking hellhole.
I jerked to a halt just inside the stairwell, snarled at the person sitting on the steps. If she was here to get some kind of story, I was going to toss her down the stairs and spit on her mangled corpse as I walked out into the night.
Fucking doctors. Fucking reporters. Someone was going to die. It might as well be her.
She was in the ugliest clothes I’ve ever seen. She was shaking like a leaf, trembling on the stairs, her fist shoved into her mouth. Haunted eyes wide.
Not a reporter then.
“Willow? Is that you?” A hard male voice asked from a couple floors above. He sounded like an asshole used to getting his way. I couldn’t fault him for that. But I could fault him for being a fucking doctor in this fucking hospital right now.
The pallid woman looked up at me, her mossy green eyes clouded with pain and terror. She shook her head.
I imagined that’s what Corrie looked like when the doctors came in and told her what would be happening to her body. Not giving her a say in any part of it.
Fucking doctors.
“No.” My mouth answered without conscious direction from my brain. Fuck. Seeing Corrie always screwed me up. I needed to get the fuck out of here if I was trying to help terrified women in stairwells.
“Is there a woman in a hospital gown down there?” the same man asked. The tone of his voice set my teeth on edge. If I found out this asshole was on my sister’s care team, I’d do whatever was necessary to get him replaced.
“No.” I spit it out. I needed to get the fuck out of here. Now. This woman was clearly someone else’s problem. I’d gotten the doctor off her tail, she was on her own from here on out.
“If you see a distraught woman in a hospital gown running around the hospital, please do not approach her. She’s dangerous. To herself. To others.”
I eyed the woman. I didn’t really care if she was off her meds or her rocker. I just wanted out of this situation as quickly as possible. She hadn’t attacked me, so we were square.
She looked up at me, fire hardened the moss green of her eyes into peridots. She laid a hand over her breast, shook her head.
My mouth twisted. Shit, she’s trying to be all brave. For just a second, I saw Corrie reflected in this stranger. “I’ll be sure to tell someone.” There. I’d covered for her all the way through.
She fell back against the steps. “Thank you.” She wiped her eyes before she looked back up at me. “Thank you.”
I nodded, wondered if I could leave her there. I looked her up and down. She had street clothes on, so technically she should be able to leave the hospital. “Technically, I didn’t lie. You’re not in a hospital gown.”
She smiled and looked at herself. “Indeed.” She grabbed the rail and pulled herself up.
Then proceeded to fall headfirst down at me.
Fuck. I reached out, grabbed her hips. My fingers sank into the generous flesh. I tightened my fingers before my brain gave the command. Damn, she felt good. Get your head out of her pants, fucker. You’ve got other things to deal with.
“Sure you shouldn’
t be in a gown and in a bed somewhere?” I asked, my voice a little more gravelly than normal. I bit my cheek hard enough to taste blood.
She pulled back. “I should be, but I’d brave a philosophy student with a scalpel before I’d let him touch me.” She pushed back some of the hair that had escaped the knot at her nape. She looked into my eyes.
“Any particular reason for that?” I asked, one brow arching high. No. Damn it. Shut your fucking mouth. You’ve got to go.
She nodded, fussed with her clothing.
I waited. Some part of me needed the answer. When she didn’t say anything else, I felt my lips quirk. “Good girl. Keep those secrets.” As the pet name I used for my subs fell from my mouth, I flexed my fingers into her hips again.
Her lips parted the slightest degree as her pupils blew out...right before they went unfocused. The predator in me was instantly curious. Very few women were into my kind of lifestyle. At least at the level I truly enjoyed it.
But if she was quaking in fear and could still feel arousal?
Very curious, indeed.
I licked my lips as I looked at her mouth.
“Is savior of the misfortuned your regular job or do you moonlight as a superhero?” she asked, her voice low and sexy.
I laughed. Oh, pet, if you only knew how wrong that was. “You’ve definitely got the wrong guy for that one, sweetheart. I’m a chew ‘em up and spit ‘em out kind of guy.” Listen to me well, little girl. I don’t play nice.
Her lips curled up at the corner. “Real bad guy, huh?”
You’ve got no fucking idea. “Tried and true. Terrified mothers on reference if you need them.” I tried to warn her away as I dug my fingers into her hips once more. You couldn’t handle me. And I’m fucking tired of breaking soft women like you.
She hissed as I pulled my hands away. “You need some help down?”
What? No! Drop her ass, get back to the penthouse, and handle this shit with Phillip. I was on the verge of tossing my own ass down the stairs when I offered her my hand.
