“Oh. The doctor non-friend-friend?” the dude asked, looking Landon up and down.
“That's mister doctor non-friend-fuck-buddy-friend,” he corrected him.
“Stop it,” Tori hissed. “He's an asshole, don't pay attention to him. Landon, this is Chris, he plays football at A&M. Chris, this is Landon, he's ... an asshole.”
“Uh, cool,” Chris said, shaking hands with him. Landon still had a tight hold on Tori's waist, keeping her pressed to his side.
“Super duper cool. And hey, in case you didn't get the hint, she's leaving this club with me, so you can run along now,” he suggested.
“Landon!”
“Whatever,” Chris grumbled. “It was nice meeting you, Tori. Have a great rest of your vacation.”
The footballer melted into the crowd, disappearing from sight quickly. When Landon finally turned his attention back to Tori, she was having trouble maintaining the scowl on her face.
“Feel good about yourself?” she asked.
“Actually, yeah, I kinda do.”
“Why didn't you just piss on me? Would've been a quicker and easier way to mark your territory.”
“Ooohhh,” he moaned as he slid both hands over her hips. “Now we're finally getting somewhere. I knew you had a kinky side.”
“Seriously?”
He ignored her, kissing her instead, all while pushing her backwards. She was wearing a pair of tall wedges, making her almost equal to him in height, and she stumbled as they moved. When he finally maneuvered her into the hallway leading to the bathrooms, he came up for air.
“I have a surprise for you,” he said.
“Oh, I like surprises.”
“I know. Do you ever wear underwear?” he asked, squeezing her ass. She was wearing a skin tight, high waisted skirt which stopped about mid-way down her thighs. Her strappy tank top was also painted on her body, and all of it left very little to the imagination.
“No, because someone keeps throwing them all away. What's my surprise?”
“I don't care for that tone at all,” he growled, shoving her roughly against a wall.
“What tone? You said ...” her voice trailed off when he put his hands flat on the wall on either side of her head before putting his full weight against her. An intimidating pose, for sure. He loved watching as her breathing quickened.
“You like that kid?” he asked, jerking his head back towards the dance floor. She burst out laughing.
“You know, you're almost sexy when you're jealous,” she snickered. He smirked back at her, then used his right hand to cup her breast.
“Almost, huh. What will make me really sexy, then? Breaking his fucking face?”
“Please, he plays football, he could kick your ass.”
The hand moved away from her breast and traveled down her body, smoothing around to her back and working its way between her and the wall. Then down over her ass, pulling up the back of her skirt.
“You have very little faith in me,” he whispered, fingers working their way to the bare skin between her legs.
“What else did you expect?” she chuckled, then gasped when he made contact with a very slick surface. “Landon, we're in the middle-”
He swallowed her protests, kissing her hard. He didn't care if they were in public, or that people were staring at them as they moved in and out of the restrooms. He never cared about shit like that, not when he had something so good standing in front of him. He felt her hands against his chest, gripping his shirt in her clenched fists. He yanked her completely flush with him, rocking the bulge in his pants against her front.
He really had no shame, and a minute or two more, he would've yanked her into the men's room and fucked her in one of the stalls. And she would've let him, because one beautiful thing he'd learned about Tori was that once he turned her on, she would let him do anything he wanted.
Before he could do any of that, though, a shriek pierced through the night club. They stopped kissing and both turned to look at the dance floor. A second scream followed the first, and then the music was cut.
By the time there was a third shout, Landon was already running. Shoving and pushing his way through a now motionless crowd on the dance floor.
When he finally broke through the people, it was to a clearing in the middle of the room. A woman was on her knees, sobbing and screaming for help. A man was writhing and twitching on the ground, then while Landon watched, he gave one last spasm before going completely limp.
“What's going on?” he demanded, dropping to his knees next to the woman. She was still crying, mascara running down her face.
“I don't know,” she said in a British accent. “We were just ... just dancing and he just ... just fell.”
“Do you know his name?” Landon kept going, and he leaned over the man on the floor, snapping his fingers over his face. “Hey buddy! Are you okay!? Can you hear me!?”
He barely noticed Tori getting on the floor beside the woman and wrapping her arm around her shoulders.
“His name ... is ... is ... Tony,” she sniffled.
“Tony! Tony, are you awake?” Landon shouted, all while ripping open the guy's shirt. “Hey, chick, does Tony have a history of epilepsy?”
“I don't know, I just met him a couple days ago.”
“Did he take anything tonight? Drugs, prescription pills, anything?” he kept asking as he pressed his head to the unconscious man's chest.
“He ... uh ...” the woman glanced around the crowd nervously. Landon scowled and sat up. He grabbed her jaw and yanked her around to look her in the eye.
“Hey! Tony isn't breathing, so you better decide what's more important – getting in trouble, or letting someone fucking die?”
She started sobbing all over again.
“The guy said it was ecstasy,” she cried. “I told him not to take it! I told him!”
“Fuck,” Landon growled. “Tor – go make sure someone called an ambulance, see if this place keeps a doctor on staff. Take her with you.”
“No, I want to stay with my friend!” the girl insisted.
“Get the fuck outta here!” he shouted. She tried to argue more, but Tori was well practiced in dealing with unruly drunk people. She kicked off her heels and yanked the girl to her feet before dragging her into the crowd.
Shit, this was not good. The guy hadn't been breathing for a solid minute. Landon edged up right next to him and placed his left hand towards the bottom center of the dude's breast bone. Then he put his right hand on top of it, laced his fingers together, and started pumping his arms up and down. Rapidly, and hard enough he felt a rib bone crack.
“Ambulance is coming,” Tori sounded out of breath as she fell to the ground next to him. “And you're the only doctor, Dr. Edenhoff.”
After thirty compressions, he put his ear over the man's mouth. Still no air. Felt for a pulse, found a trembling one. So he tilted the man's head back, pinched his nose shut, and gave him two quick resuscitating breaths.
“What can I do to help?” Tori asked, watching as he worked.
“Nothing. Shut up and watch for the ambulance,” he replied through gritted teeth while he continued with the compressions.
“Is he gonna die?” she whispered.
“Not right this fucking moment, but he will if you don't let me concentrate!” he yelled at her.
At compression number thirty, he stopped to give more breaths, but just as he was checking the man's pulse, he sucked in a gasp of air. Tori gave a startled yelp and fell backwards, but Landon stayed right where he was.
“You had a seizure,” he spoke loudly and clearly while he stared down into the man's eyes. “You stopped breathing.”
His pupils were seriously dilated, but that was to be expected if he took ecstasy. He also seemed to be trying to speak, but he kept coughing. Landon decided to take a chance and he rolled the guy onto his side, helping him to hack up bile and phlegm.
“Can you tell me your name?” he asked. “How old are you?�
�
“T-T-Tony,” the guy gasped. “Twenty ... twenty ... twenty-three.”
“Okay, Tony, twenty-three,” Landon repeated. “Do you have any allergies you want the paramedics to know about?”
“P ... p ... p ...”
“Penicillin?”
“Y-yes,” Tony was still finding breathing difficult, and he pressed a hand to his chest.
“How else are you feeling? Numbness in your arms or legs? Chest pains?” Landon asked, feeling for his pulse again.
“My chest ... tight ... heart is fast ...” Tony gasped.
“I think you're in shock, Tony. You had a bad reaction to whatever was in those drugs. I need you to stay calm,” he instructed.
“They're here,” Tori's voice was suddenly at his back. “There's a stretcher coming.”
“You're gonna go to a hospital now. I'm gonna tell the paramedics what you told me. Just stay calm and everything will be okay.”
Landon stood to the side and let the paramedics do their job, then followed them out to the ambulance. He told them everything that had happened, everything he'd learned from the patient, then produced a plastic card he kept in his wallet which proved he was licensed to practice medicine by the Medical Board of California.
After the ambulance took off, the adrenaline rush which had been fueling him suddenly evaporated. People were slapping him on the back and congratulating him, but it all felt like noise to him. Static. He stumbled away from the crowd, shouting at everyone to fuck off. He finally got free from the club, made it a couple steps around the side of the building, then dropped to his butt. He leaned his back against the wall and took deep, calming breaths.
“You okay?”
She asks that a lot. I wonder if I'll ever start answering truthfully.
Landon didn't respond, just kept his hands pressed over his face. After a minute or two, he felt Tori sit down next to him.
“Don't say anything that's gonna annoy me,” he finally grumbled.
“Hey, I'm not saying a peep,” she replied. He scowled and finally looked over at her. She was staring up at the sky, smiling to herself.
“You look like an idiot.”
“Such a sweet talker.”
“You're not off the hook, you know,” he warned her. “Just cause some guy almost died doesn't mean I'm not getting laid.”
“Oh, don't worry. You are definitely getting laid, Dr. Edenhoff,” she chuckled.
“Shut up.”
“Pretty impressive, Landon,” she sighed, still not looking at him. “Up until that moment, I genuinely thought you didn't care about anyone but yourself.”
“I don't. I was just doing something I've been trained for years to do,” he replied. She shook her head.
“You heard screaming and ran. Not a cry for help, not someone asking for a doctor, just screaming. I was ready to bolt out the back door, thinking it was a gunman, but you? You ran straight towards it, didn't even hesitate. Same with that guy. I was standing there thinking he had Ebola or something, and you just dove right in and gave him CPR.”
“Just doing my job,” he whispered, joining her in gazing at the stars.
“I think,” she whispered back. “You're very good at your job, doctor. And I think you like it very much.”
“I think I do, too,” he said.
When he was dealing with his own personal demons and bullshit, it was easy to forget he liked being a doctor, or that he was actually a good doctor. It had been a long time since he'd done something like that, since he'd saved a life. He hadn't thought it was in him anymore.
“Can I say something that might offend you?”
“Oh, jesus.”
“I'm proud of you,” she said softly. “Not that you need me to be, or even want anybody to be, but I am. I'm proud of what you just did, and I'm proud I get to say you're my friend.”
Landon took a deep, shuddering breath, then he reached between them. Grabbed her arm and pulled it away from her body. Found her hand and linked their fingers together.
“Thanks for that, Victoria.”
11
Landon was somewhat of a local celebrity after his stint as a night club hero, and Tori got to revel in the status by association. She shared a room with him, they went everywhere together, so it was automatically assumed she was his girlfriend or wife.
She didn't say anything to discourage the assumptions.
He didn't appreciate it too much. Except for the women – Landon was an incurable flirt, much like his twin brother. A new fun game they started playing was who could piss the other one off the most by flirting with other people. The loser was whoever caved and dragged the other off to have sex in some grossly inappropriate place.
In short, the vacation she had thought would end terribly, was actually ending on a pretty high note.
“Did you bring me a present?”
Tori didn't bother looking over her shoulder when she heard the door to their suite open and shut. She was laying on her stomach on their bed, flipping through a magazine.
“Fuck off,” Landon chuckled. “You all ready?”
“Yup,” she said, glancing at the floor next to her. Her bag was all packed for the flight home tomorrow. She was wearing her yellow bikini and figured it would be good enough for the rest of the day.
“Good girl,” he said, his voice husky, and she stopped moving when she felt the mattress dip under his weight. He was moving over her, straddling her thighs.
“You were gone for a long time,” she commented, finally glancing over her shoulder. He was looking down at her body, his hands kneading her butt.
“Just because you're such a good girl doesn't mean the rest of us behave ourselves all the time.”
“Seriously?”
He snorted and slapped her on the ass, then moved to sit next to her. She sat up, as well.
“No. I was setting some stuff up, I should probably tell you about it.”
That statement actually made her more nervous than anything else he'd said. She took a deep breath and swept all her hair up into a bun on top of her head.
“Okay, I'm ready,” she said, shaking out her hands. He rolled his eyes.
“Don't be stupid. C'mon, come outside with me.”
She followed him onto the balcony and they both sat on the lounge chairs out there. He took his time taking out his cigarettes and lighting one up. She'd noticed he'd been smoking even more than usual over the past couple days, and she was pretty sure it was because he'd cut back on his drug use. She smiled and sat quietly, waiting for him to feel comfortable. Getting Landon to talk was never easy, sometimes he needed prodding, and other times he just needed to be left alone.
“So the flight leaves at one tomorrow,” he finally started speaking. She nodded.
“Yeah, I already called the front desk and they're gonna have a taxi waiting out front at ten. We just have to be down there fifteen minutes before,” she explained.
“Yeah, yeah,” he mumbled through a cloud of smoke. “I'm not going.”
“I'm sorry, what?”
“I'm not going with you,” he repeated, staring out over the balcony railing. Tori held very still and stared at him.
“You're ... staying here?” she guessed when he didn't say anything else.
“I'm going to Thailand.”
Thailand. She wasn't sure what to do with that information. What had she expected – Landon would fly home with her, and they'd live happily ever after? Sharing a couple secrets and having mind-blowing sex didn't change anything, he was still the same person. She was still the same person. What had she expected?
Nothing ... but I'd hoped maybe he was beginning to feel for me what I've started feeling for him.
“Oh ...” she struggled to think of what to say. “That sounds ... fun. Be careful out there.”
He nodded his head and took another drag. She stared at the cigarette, suddenly wishing she could yank it out of his hand and grind it into the top of his thigh. Make him feel someth
ing, anything.
“I honestly thought this whole thing would be a fuck show,” he said, gesturing between the two of them. “You'd spend most of your days on the beach, I'd spend my time in the bars, we'd hook up at night. I didn't expect ... this.”
“Whatever 'this' is,” she chuckled.
“Yeah. This was ... it wasn't so bad, Tor.”
“No. No, it was pretty alright.”
There was another moment of awkward silence. She hated it. Before they'd started sleeping together, they hadn't been in each others presence a whole lot. He'd come to the club, act like an asshole, she'd shoo him away from the bar area. They'd banter and bitch at each other whenever she was at Liam's place. That was about it.
After they'd started sleeping together and had gone to Bali, it had seemed like the only times they were speaking was either when they were snapping at each other, or when they were fucking. More recently, they had just talked, or enjoyed companionable silences. Again, no space for awkward silences. So now any awkward silences felt doubly so. It was annoying and frustrating and not at all how she'd wanted to end their trip together.
“Fuck this,” Landon grunted, clearly thinking along the same lines as her. She watched while he flicked his cigarette butt over the railing, then was surprised when he grabbed her hand and yanked her over onto his chair. They fumbled around for a moment while she got situated between his legs, her back pressed to his front.
“I'm shocked to say I'm actually going to miss you,” she chuckled, draping her arms over his legs when he bent his knees up.
“No, you won't,” he snorted. “You'll have your friends and Liam to distract you from the absence of my awesome self.”
“I don't think I'll be spending a lot of time with your brother,” she said in a low voice.
“Don't go too hard on him, okay? He's a fucking idiot, but he's a good guy. Go home, kick him in the balls, then get over it and go back to work,” he instructed.
“I just don't think I can,” she stressed. “It would be ... weird.”
“What? Knowing you slept with me in place of him?” he laughed.
Neighborhood Watch Page 11
