by Jan Irving
“Yeah.” Caleb went over to a vending machine. I was going to ask him if he had any change when he yanked it from the wall and upended it. Produce spilled out like prospector’s gold.
“Here, Doc. Granola bars, which I know you jones for, candy bars, gum—”
“I adore the ground you walk on.” I sat down and took two of the bars, stuffing them in my mouth with my eyes closed.
“That’s what all the cute guys say,” Caleb quipped. There was a rumbling sound and when I looked up, I saw he was using the other vending machine for two hot chocolates. “You need the cals,” he said. “You lose a lot when you’re out in the cold weather.”
Now he mentioned it, I realised I was shivering. I wasn’t cold now, although this underground facility wasn’t exactly toasty, but it was such a relief to be out of the constant chill breeze, my body was shivering in reaction. “Are there showers somewhere?”
“Yep. I’ll watch over you while you have one.” Amusement lit his eyes. “It’s a hard job.”
“Yeah, right.” But the thought of being nude and under hot water while he watched me… I swallowed hard on the candy.
He handed me a hot chocolate, then a coffee. I smiled at how Caleb always covered all his bases. He was thorough, which brought my imagination back to his lovemaking. No part of me untouched by his hands, his mouth. Surrounded by him, big and lusty and yet tender.
“You’re thinkin’ about it too,” Caleb said. “I can always tell because your eyes go a deeper colour and your cheeks flush. It’s your sexy tell.”
“I have a sexy tell?” I repeated before raising a hand. “Never mind. This place…it seems so normal.”
“Parts of it are, I reckon. Just the work they did in here wouldn’t exactly stand up to public scrutiny.”
“The kind of thinking where you can so divorce yourself from morality to do the things to the men we saw—it’s kind of an extreme version of the head surgeon in my hospital, Dr Royce.”
“He put you on sabbatical.”
“How do you know what is going on in my life?” I shook my head. “Never mind, you said you were keeping watch on me. I’m not up to all your super-spy tricks.”
“Nope,” he agreed laconically, so much the cowboy in that moment that all he needed were his scarred boots and his hat.
“Dr Royce and I are constantly locking heads. I don’t mean to but…”
“To go along with his perspective meant not bein’ yourself. And you’re already a doctor.”
“Yes. You have to have a certain confidence in yourself in order to diagnose and take action, sometimes without a lot of time. I worked the ER.”
“Kind of like being under fire.”
I nodded. Caleb had a lot of insight. Perhaps being a soldier and a doctor weren’t so dissimilar. We both fought, just on different battlefields. “Things came to a head when I lost Jeremy. He was a special kid. I didn’t just see him as a patient, I spent time with him. He was a killer card sharp.”
“Royce treated him like just another patient?”
“Yeah. And he expected me to do the same. He was fed up with me getting too personal, but I’ve never been able to help myself. It’s why I became a doctor.”
He held my gaze, slouching next to me. I wanted to go to him, tangle with him like he was my boyfriend. My patients weren’t the only place where I couldn’t keep perspective.
“Seems to me you’re working something out about you and Royce.”
“I’m not going back.” The words burst from me. I rubbed my upper lip, feeling sweat prickle at the sudden epiphany. “I don’t want this. I don’t want to be a surgeon. I think I was doing it for all the wrong reasons, because it was tough, because it was a challenge.”
“I get going the tough route. Are you sure it’s not just this dude colouring things?”
I shook my head. “No. It’s too removed for me. I want to treat the whole person. Lilah is also into natural remedies and sometimes… I think we’re too hidebound in medicine.”
“You want to practice your kind of medicine, whatever it turns out to be.” He crossed his arms.
“Yeah.” I felt a pang. Caleb wasn’t just a man I found maddening and sexy. He was also a friend, maybe my best friend in the moments we spent together.
Soul mate.
I wanted to scoff at the idea but I couldn’t.
I gusted out a sigh, disgusted with myself. “I’m going to make some changes when I get back to my life. Uh, that is, if I get back.”
His face hardened. “You will, Doc.”
“Not at the cost of losing you.”
He stared at me very intently, before saying softly, “You want to start again? I mean, you and me.” Then he laughed and rubbed his hair. “Yeah, right.”
I opened my mouth but whatever I was going to say—Christ knows!—was lost in the sudden racket.
“Is that coming from the floor below us?” I whispered.
Caleb was by the door to the lounge, gun held at his thigh. “Sounds like. Stuff some of that junk food in your pack, Doc. We’ll hit the showers next.”
Showers? He thought I could take a shower after hearing those sounds?
“We’re really not alone here.”
“No.”
“Oh, yeah, I really want a shower here now.”
He looked at me, quirking his brow. “You’re already in hot water. Might as well get a taste of the real thing. Besides, you need to shave before I’ll let you kiss me. You might scratch my sensitive skin.”
“Jerk.” Somehow he eased my anxiety, like he was a bright window in the dark. “That banging sound…”
Caleb shrugged. “I don’t know, Doc. But chances are, we’re going to meet up with someone. You’ll just have to trust me to take care of you.”
The showers were just as standard issue as the lounge had been. A long row of them, sans stalls. I folded my T-shirt again, running a hand over the edges. I was feeling shy. What the hell?
“You’re stalling, Doc,” Caleb said in a husky voice. He was leaning against the far wall, watching me. He shouldn’t have made this long rectangle of a room seem too small, but he did. He was tall and lean and tanned and scarred and infuriating and he caught at me. He always had.
I could feel his desire like the building heat from a fire.
Anything I said would be superfluous, so I peeled off my underwear and headed to the nearest shower without meeting his gaze. I turned on the water, waited until it wasn’t scalding or cold enough to curl my balls back up my body. All the time I did I felt his hunger.
I closed my eyes to try to shut him out but still I felt him. I felt his gaze on my nipples and they tightened in reaction as if he’d sucked them hard into his mouth. I felt them ripen under his touch, pulsing sensitivity with every beat of my heart.
My cock responded, stiffening eagerly.
I heard Caleb’s soft intake of breath even over the pounding water.
Touch me. Suck me.
I had only to ask and he would. He would get down on his knees to please me.
With my eyes still tightly shut, I let my head fall back and the spray hit my face, clearing away fatigue and warming tense muscle. I felt purified, but not only by the mere habitual cleansing of the shower.
It was Caleb’s gaze, searing away layers of heartbreak, of loneliness, of rage in the middle of the night when I’d paced and cursed myself for not being able to forget him.
“I always want you, Doc,” he whispered.
My eyes snapped open.
Caleb was close enough almost to reach out to me. “I, uh, locked the door. We’re safe here for the moment.”
I stared into his eyes, seeing loneliness I recognised as the same dull, hopeless feeling that had lived so long under my breastbone.
He ached as I ached.
He hurt as I hurt.
I lifted a hand, unable to stop myself.
His eyes flared and he walked into the water.
“Idiot, you’re getting s
oaked!” I choked out.
He ignored my scolding, pushing me against the wall, hard, his mouth coming down over mine equally hard.
Taken, I was being taken and I was so needy.
He crushed his body against mine. Desperate, I yanked up his soaking T-shirt and put my hands on his chest, digging in, feeling muscle and lean strength and how goddamned thin he was.
“Someone took you from me,” I gasped. “It pisses me off so much.”
“I know.”
“I want to know why. I just want to understand why.”
He let me take off his sopping shirt. It hit the shower floor with a splat. I grazed my fingers over his shoulders, taking in the width before putting my mouth on the left one where he had a crescent-shaped mole.
“You always liked that ol’ birthmark,” he said, his hand tangling in my wet hair.
“I love everything about you,” I mumbled.
He stiffened and I knew what he wanted, but I couldn’t say the words. They burned, but I was afraid.
“It’s all right, Doc.” His voice was raspy, his eyes full of regret. “You said those words to me and I walked out.”
I didn’t want to remember that day so I blotted it out by loosening his jeans, and he was in my hand, long and full and as desperate as I was. He groaned, rubbing himself into my grasp.
“I’m taking you back. You’re mine. Do you hear?” I yanked his hair so he’d look at me. When he did, I saw only a thin sliver of iris around his pupils. He was far gone into the heat, the feel of our wet flesh meeting.
“They can probably hear you in the next state, Doc.” He kissed my neck and again my head fell back. I felt him bite down, the sting of his teeth, and knew he’d marked me. Damn it, I was going to mark him too. “I’m yours. You haven’t asked, but there hasn’t been anyone. Not anyone since you.”
The flower of hurt inside unravelled a little more.
“That’s because you’re mine.”
“Christ, yeah.” He used a sliver of soap, lathered his hand and reached between our bodies. I whimpered at the slick hand around my cock, his grip moving up and down slowly while he deliberately looked into my eyes.
“Love you.” He lifted me. My back slid up against chilly tile. I wrapped my legs around his hips as our sexes grazed, as he took us both in hand and stroked us together.
“Oh… Oh, my God, my God…”
He grinned and I pinched his arm in retaliation. “Sorry, it’s just a little flattering.”
“I haven’t—Me either, Caleb. Haven’t been with anyone.” Haven’t thought of anyone, haven’t wanted anyone. But Caleb.
His forehead rested against mine. “I’m glad there hasn’t been anyone else. I don’t want some other guy touching you.”
My heart galloped as we locked together, frantic to come. Every touch of his callused hand branded me, lit me up so I was surprised I wasn’t glowing with an incandescent light.
I want you, I want you. Words spilled out, raw and hot, the way he made me come.
Chapter Nine
“Are you okay, Doc?” he gasped. His legs gave out and we slid down the wall, both of us sucking in oxygen like it was our last breath.
“I think my legs are missing.” He looked down at his curled limbs, at me collapsed over him. “No, still there.”
“I can’t feel anything but the back of my eyeballs and my nipples.”
His eyes fired up and he leant forward to lick one. I made a gasping sound that might have been a plea. More, Christ! Please more.
“You were always so sensitive there. Almost as much as your dick,” he said.
“It’s just all the deprivation,” I said, trembling. I wasn’t ready to do him again. I couldn’t be after the tsunami I’d just lived through. “We’ve both admitted it’s been more than a year since we’ve been with anyone.”
“What if I said I always feel this way with you?” His voice cracked.
For a moment all I could hear was my heart beat as his words reverberated through me. “You sure didn’t act that way when we first met.”
“I lied.” He swallowed. “I had to.”
I frowned. “But that was before you were involved in…whatever it was you became involved in.”
His eyes narrowed. “Yeah, I think it was. Before I met you, I remembered flashes of my last mission as a SEAL.”
Water continued to pound down on us. I didn’t want to move. I wanted him again. I always wanted him.
But it wasn’t going to help us get out of this fix.
“Help me up.”
“I think you’re going to help me up, Doc. You and maybe one of those cranes for building a high-rise.”
We propped each other up and made use of the wall to struggle to our feet. “You’re soaking wet.”
He shrugged. “I should be able to find something lying around. I can carry my shoes until they dry out.”
He stripped out of the rest of his clothing until he was naked. For a moment he faced me and I saw I wasn’t the only one who was feeling renewed. “Don’t look at me like that.”
“Like what?” But I knew. I just couldn’t help myself. Damn.
“Like you’d like to eat me. You always were an amazing cock sucker. Those healer’s hands on me, squeezing my balls while you—” He heaved in a deep breath. “Right. We’re on a mission.”
“Find out what we can about this site and see if we can help those men.”
He nodded. “We got time to shave and rustle up some fresh clothes for me. Come on.”
I followed him into an adjoining room full of lockers and sinks and mirrors. He busted open one of the lockers and produced an electric shaver, which he passed me, then he took out the green surgical scrubs he also found inside and placed them in front of his chest. “These things are really one-size fits all.”
“They have the virtue of being comfortable.”
“Which is why you medical personnel wear them even in your off hours.” He smiled into my eyes and I remembered how often I’d returned from a shift when we’d been together wearing my greens.
“I can imagine you all done up in tiger-striped grease paint and wearing camos.” And the thought made my palms a little damp. “Promise me something.”
“If I can.” His face darkened.
“If we… When we get out of here, I’d like a striptease sometime.”
“Me shedding my uniform?” He grinned. “I’d wear the ice cream suit just for you.”
I knew he meant his set of whites. Oh, boy, there was just something about a sailor. And I nearly cut my chin with the shaver, which shouldn’t have been possible. I forced my attention back to what I was doing.
Caleb also dug up a set of greens for me and I was grateful since I hadn’t relished putting on my dirty clothes again.
“It’s weird they left so much stuff behind,” I noted when Caleb had finished shaving and brushing his teeth. It felt weirdly homey, doing these chores together even in this cavernous and alien place.
“They had to get out quick because of the fire.”
“There was a fire?”
“Yeah, there—” He broke off and rubbed his forehead in his familiar gesture. “I don’t remember all of it.”
I reached out and squeezed his shoulder. “You will. We’re here, right, ground zero?”
“Roger that,” he said. “You’re good for me, Doc.”
“I’ve got a good bedside manner.”
He shook his head. “No, you. You’re good for me. I wish—”
But whatever he would have said next died on his lips.
“More banging sounds. Are they closer this time or is it my imagination?”
The sounds were rhythmic, kind of gong-like, as if someone was striking a pipe somewhere in the deep guts of this building. They’d tap then pause. “It’s not Morse code or something, is it?”
“No, it’s just a jumble of sounds,” Caleb said. “I’d really like to locate who is making them.”
Cold crept down
my spine. “Oh, yeah.”
He looked amused. “For information.”
“Uh-huh.”
“From what I remember, this level was the personnel zone. The ones below are where experiments took place.”
“Okay, then.” I crossed my arms, looking him over. “Let’s go, Soldier.”
I got a kiss. Hot silken lips, freshly shaved skin, damp hair brushing my face.
“You stick close now, Doc,” he warned me.
I gave him a wry look. “If you keep that up, it’s guaranteed, never mind whatever danger lurks in those lower levels.”
He smiled, a little shyness, a lot of smugness. “Maybe…we do have a shot. You ever think that?”
“Sometimes,” I had to admit. “Sometimes I can’t help myself, cowboy.”
I wanted to call Lilah and check in but I couldn’t get reception for my phone in the underground building. Caleb assured me he thought she’d be fine, as long as she’d followed his directives.
“She would have—she’s smart and capable.” Still, I couldn’t help being worried for her. As soon as we got free of this place, I was going to find her and arrange to meet for a big breakfast at Denny’s. “You think the people looking for you would have tracked her down that fast?”
“They would have found those men back on your property by now. Cleaned that up and gone right on rollin’ on to locate you. I don’t figure they would see me coming back here. That’s our only advantage, Doc. That and the fact they haven’t sent one of the supers after us.”
“The supers… You mean what those men were like before their health was compromised by whatever was done to them.”
“Yep.” The elevator lurched, missing the third floor we’d requested and passing on to the fourth. “Now that’s interesting,” Caleb said, studying the elevator panel.
“Could it be damage from the fire affecting it?” The door slid open to partial darkness. Down here on the fourth level, some of the strips of florescent lights were flickering or nonfunctional. It didn’t make for a very appealing place to investigate. All we needed was a flashlight that was low on batteries and the horror movie cliché would be complete.
