“Okay.”
Gage grimaced as Duke helped him rise stiffly from the picnic table, and they made their way to her campsite. She unzipped the tent and directed him to the opened cargo hatch. Emma was surprised that he made little noise as he settled. He must have a high pain tolerance level. She’d seen grown men cry over much less.
Duke made himself handy with the lantern while she reached around Gage to unbutton his jeans. He grasped her hand and stilled it. “What are you doing?” His hand was strong, impeding her progress, but not forceful.
“Gage, I just need to loosen the zipper so I can pull them down once the arrow is out. I need to give myself some room to work and I’ll have to clean the wound properly after the arrow is removed.”
Gage seemed to debate with himself for a few seconds then gently removed her hand from his fly and unbuttoned and unzipped his pants himself then settled back down.
“So, did you just get here?” she asked, making small talk as she sanitized her hands and prepared to remove the arrow.
“Yeah. We’d just set up the tent,” Duke said. “We were enjoying the view when it happened.” She glanced over at Duke and saw his crooked smile curl up on one side, and mischief twinkled in his eyes. There seemed to be more he wanted to say but didn’t. “This is a pretty cool setup you have.”
“I got a great deal on it. The customized tent was ideal for me because I love to camp.” The tent that came with the vehicle had been altered and another larger tent attached to it so that she not only had the enclosure for the back of the vehicle, but in addition, she also had a small private space at the end of the vehicle.
“We do a lot of camping, too,” Duke replied as he came close and watched her work. The combined scents of the two men in the small enclosure caused her to inhale slowly and appreciatively. A ripple of awareness quivered through her at his proximity. Her nipples hardened to tingling points, and warmth spread through her core. Glancing up, she caught Duke watching her curiously, and her cheeks tingled with heat.
“I feel like I know you from somewhere, Duke,” she said.
“Our work takes us all over. We’re IT consultants.”
She gloved up and wrapped her hand around the arrow close to the wound. To Gage she murmured, “Ready?”
“Yeah.”
“Count to three.” She tightened her hand around the arrow and prepared to remove it.
“One—” With one fast but careful tug, she pulled the arrow straight out. “Ow! You said—”
“I was distracting you,” she replied with a chuckle as she handed Duke the arrow. “I couldn’t have you clenching, now could I? Lift for just a second while I pull down your underwear and jeans.”
He hesitated, and that trace of unease returned to his handsome features. He seemed more bothered by her exposing his ass than the pain of the arrow removal.
To reassure him, she said, “I’m just a doctor, Gage. I see asses all the time. Young asses, old asses, tight asses, and saggy asses. I’ve seen the asses of half the people in Divine at one point or another.”
Duke chuckled softly at her attempt to put Gage at ease.
Gage looked up at her. “Maybe so, but I’m not used to showing my ass off. And you’re not just a…”
“What?”
“Never mind. Do your thing,” he muttered as he allowed her to tug his jeans and underwear down. He flinched, hissed, and cursed softly. “Stop.”
She let go and watched the muscles in his triceps ripple with strength as he lifted his upper body on one arm and carefully pulled the waistband of his underwear over his groin area. Although it was dim in the enclosure, as she observed him she realized what the problem was. His cock was standing up stiff and must’ve gotten caught by the waistband when she’d tugged.
“Sorry.” She bit her lower lip and hummed softly to herself, a habit she’d developed when she was nervous. There is no need to be anxious. You’re a doctor for crying out loud. She propped her rimless eyeglasses a bit higher on her nose with the back of her hand and assisted him as he lowered the jeans and underwear and then lay back down.
Her inner turmoil because he had an erection in her presence was replaced by professional instinct as she doctored the bleeding wound. She directed Duke to bring the light closer when he inched away from her. She caught an almost imperceptible nod from Gage as he looked at Duke, and he came closer with the light again.
Gage’s ass was firm and muscular under her hand as she held his butt cheek steady to clean the puncture wound. “Duke, you’re going to have to come closer. I can’t see what I’m—”
Scars. There were scars all over his otherwise perfectly formed ass.
Gage’s voice was rough like gravel when he said, “Sorry, Doc. Duke was trying to spare you that sight.”
From the look of them, the scars were old, pale, and shiny. They were round, about the size of a pencil eraser, some larger, some smaller. Some were darker and seemed like they went deeper. There were also several thin, faded slash marks against the outside of his left cheek.
Volunteering at the women’s shelter in Dallas while she was in medical school, she’d seen wounds like this, only fresher, on the bottom of a little toddler who had stayed there with his mother.
Finding her voice, she asked, “How old were you?”
Gage’s answer was so soft, it was impossible to determine his emotional state. “Toddler.”
“I’m sorry.” It wasn’t her business to intrude into his personal life, but she wished she could offer some kind of comfort. She pulled her hand away when she realized she was stroking his bare ass. He let out his breath in a soft whoosh. His green eyes were shuttered by his long, thick eyelashes, and she couldn’t tell if he’d reacted to her words or her touch.
“It’s okay, Doc. It’s in the past.”
“You can call me Emma.”
“Thanks, Emma, for taking care me.”
“You’re welcome, Gage. Have you had a tetanus shot recently?”
“Yeah.”
“Good. You’ll need to see your doctor about this when you get home. I’m going to clean it and bandage it. The puncture goes deep so you’ll want to watch carefully for infection. You may have some lingering pain until it heals completely.”
“Sure. Can I come see you to have it checked out?”
She caught movement in her peripheral vision. Duke frowned and shook his head. She pretended she didn’t see it, but she got the gist of what he was trying to communicate. They needn’t have bothered because she never dated patients anyway. Duke probably didn’t want her to get her hopes up that she would see them again.
Focusing on her work, Emma cleaned the wound thoroughly, wondering what it must’ve been like for Gage as a little boy, unable to defend himself against his abuser. It made her sad. She glanced up at Duke as she worked and found him watching her again. She suddenly felt like a bug under a microscope.
After the job was done, she gave Gage an over-the-counter pain medication. Her stomach growled as they thanked her and said good night after she refused any form of payment for her services. They departed, and she made herself something to eat and perched on her bedding with her knees drawn up to her chest.
She listened to the noises of family activities beyond her campsite. Adults were chatting, and children were running off their excess energy before settling down for the night, and here she sat inside her tent, eating alone.
She wrapped her arms around her knees, and many emotions crowded her thoughts. She was troubled by the scars on Gage’s gorgeous ass, curious at the way Duke had watched her as she worked, and painfully aware of her own lonely state as she looked around her tent. Being in such close proximity to two handsome men had unsettled her.
For some reason, as she turned out her lantern and settled down for the night, the “Instant Threesome” she’d purchased at Discretion came to mind. It was inside her locked cedar chest, along with the rest of her sex toys, in the walk-in closet of the apartment she’d just m
oved in to. She wondered what a threesome would feel like, and an image of her sandwiched between Duke and Gage came to mind.
Emma throbbed with need and wished that she’d brought it with her on this trip, even though it was totally impractical. Her thoughts returned to Gage with his turbulent green eyes and to Duke as well. In the lantern light, she’d been able to make out his slate-gray eye color. It didn’t matter though. Judging by Duke’s subtle reaction, she obviously wasn’t their type. Their type? She put her hand over her eyes and wanted to kick herself for imagining a ménage. She wasn’t that lucky.
Maybe someday she’d see them again, not that it would make much difference. She didn’t date patients, and she didn’t kid herself about guys who were clearly out of her league. They were nice to her because she’d done a good thing for them, but that was all there was to it. Duke had been so disinterested, he hadn’t even wanted Gage to come by her clinic to be checked out later. She was used to people coming and going like that. It was a fact of life for a doctor. The difference this time was that the subtle rejection hurt her feelings.
Chapter Two
Tuesday evening, Duke grinned as he walked in the front door of the apartment he shared with Gage and dropped the mail on the coffee table.
“Gage, you’re never going to believe who our new downstairs neighbor is,” he said, fighting the urge to do a fist pump. A pair of sparkling green eyes and soft-looking, kissable lips came to mind. This was the perfect opportunity to get to know the beautiful doctor better.
Gage craned his neck to see the address label on the top envelope. “Whoever it is, I hope they don’t bitch and moan like that lady with the cats did. We could hardly take a step while she lived downstairs. And I swear I can still smell her cat litter box.” Gage shifted uncomfortably on the couch, removing all doubt about the cause of his ill humor.
“Nope. I think you’ll consider this good news, actually.” Duke lifted the envelope from the stack and showed it to him. “Recognize that name?” he asked. It had only been a few days since the disastrous camping trip. They’d come to be at that particular campground because Duke had asked Summer about her doctor friend and she had mentioned that Emma favored that particular campground.
Duke had seen the interest in Gage’s eyes as they’d both watched her pacing the shoreline right before Gage had gotten tagged in the ass with the arrow.
When she’d shown up with her medical kit and treated Gage so soothingly, Duke had imagined what life would be like with her around. She’d spoken to Gage in the reassuring tones of a doctor, but her voice had a sexy, low-pitched, musical quality to it that made Duke want to just sit and listen to her talk. Neither he nor Gage had been able to resist her winsome smile when she’d explained why she’d preemptively yanked the arrow out.
He hadn’t missed the fact that Gage had been hard for her while she’d treated him, and had stayed hard despite the fact that he was in pain and she’d discovered his scars. Duke knew Gage was self-conscious about them and had been surprised they hadn’t dampened his libido.
They’d become intrigued by Emma that day in July when she’d visited Summer at Discretion and made her unusual sex toy purchase. Emma blushed very easily, and he’d fantasized many a time about what she would look like riding the “Instant Threesome” to a moaning orgasm before climbing onto him or his cousin and doing the same with them. He stiffened now just thinking about it.
He’d barely managed the save when Gage had asked if the pretty doctor would like to check his wound for him later, if necessary. If Gage became her patient she’d never date him. Since they’d both already voiced a mutual interest in her it was imperative that they not establish a regular doctor-patient relationship.
Unfortunately, Gage hadn’t been able to sleep because of the pain, and Duke had elected to drive them back to the apartment, where Gage had a stronger pain reliever leftover from a recent oral surgery. Gage had encouraged Duke to stay at the campsite and get to know the doctor a little better, but Duke had wanted to approach her with Gage.
Gage focused on the address on the envelope, and his eyes bugged. “No way.”
“Oh, yeah. The doctor is in,” he said triumphantly. They couldn’t have asked for better luck. “I left a note stuck to her door to let her know that her friendly upstairs neighbors got her forwarded mail in their box by accident.”
Duke’s thoughts were interrupted by the telltale chime of an instant message on Gage’s laptop computer sitting beside him on the couch. Gage sighed heavily and rubbed his hands over his face.
Duke asked, “Is Amy still pestering you?”
“Yes. I told her I wasn’t interested in meeting. She is being persistent.”
Duke grimaced and said, “Persistent? We know all the signs of cyberstalking. You’ve tried reasoning with her. You’re just going to have to block her.”
They’d met Amy playing Call of Duty online one night with two other friends. They had no problem playing with women on their team, and she’d done okay. Gaming had progressed to her messaging them at other times. Duke wasn’t interested in an online relationship because he knew the risks and had ignored and discouraged the contact from the start.
Gage had a softer heart and had replied to her messages, trying to keep it friendly. His interaction with her had only encouraged her to contact him more often. She’d become needy to the point that he’d had to tighten the security settings on his social networking sites to stop her from spamming him, which made having them at all kind of pointless. The private messages had taken on a whinier, more desperate tone, and Gage had finally told her that it had to end. She was silent for two days and then began instant messaging him almost constantly, even in the middle of the night. She wanted to meet him face-to-face.
When the text message alert suddenly sounded on Gage’s cell phone, he peered at the screen and cringed. He looked at the phone like he wanted to throw it.
Duke gaped and said, “You’ve got to be joking.”
“She tricked one of the guys into giving my number to her. I already called him. This is what I get for being a nice guy.”
“Yeah. Cyberstalked. I think we need to do a little research and then contact her to put a stop to this.”
Gage shook his head. “I’ll e-mail her and warn her one last time.”
“Have you ever Googled ‘personality disorders’? Amy sounds obsessed. Seriously.”
Gage scowled as his phone chimed again. He turned the phone off and lifted the computer to his lap.
Duke hoped this time Amy got the message. Given his background in security and investigation, he felt relatively certain that Amy was who she said she was and wouldn’t be difficult to find. The issue worrying Duke was that she might be more deeply fixated on Gage than he realized.
* * * *
Emma climbed from her vehicle and quietly closed the door. She hadn’t seen her new apartment in broad daylight since she’d visited it with the property management representative the week before. She’d come home late every night since moving in. Her lease had come up for renewal on the house she’d been renting, and she’d opted to move out of the noisy neighborhood to find someplace a little quieter.
She followed the moonlit sidewalk to the front of the building with her keys ready and waiting to unlock her door.
A folded note was slipped into the crack between the doorjamb and the door, which she removed as she slid her key in the lock. Walking in, she sighed at the stack of sealed boxes the movers had delivered that still waited to be unpacked. Her goal was to have the apartment shipshape by that weekend. After hanging her keys and purse up, she unfolded the note and read it.
Hello New Neighbor!
Your mail was accidentally placed in our box by the mail carrier today. Feel free to come by at your convenience to get it. Welcome to the neighborhood.
Your upstairs neighbors in Apt. 104B
The confident, boxy scrawl looked like a man’s handwriting. Her mail had been forwarded from her old add
ress, and today would’ve been the day it would start delivering at her new place. She was willing to bet her neighbors had gotten quite a stack.
Glancing at the clock, she pondered if she should go up right then to get her mail. It was after ten o’clock, and her neighbors might already be asleep. She hung her doctor’s jacket on the hook beside her purse and keys, thankful she’d taken a break to eat an early supper when she had. One of her younger patients had been admitted into the local hospital, and she’d been there longer than she’d expected.
Placing a box on the kitchen counter, she slit the tape open with a utility knife and began unpacking the contents and putting them away. She heard a light thumping noise overhead and wondered if her neighbors upstairs were night owls like her.
She heard more soft thumping and made a decision. Walking to her door, she put her doctor’s coat back on and grabbed her keys. She trotted up the stairs and knocked on the door of apartment 104B. Nobody had been home upstairs last week when she’d taken a look at the apartment for the first time. She’d heard them moving around a couple of times late at night, but they were nothing compared to the noise level she’d lived with at her last residence.
Jane was the one who had suggested the complex because Tabitha from the quilting circle had just recently moved out of the apartment Emma now occupied. She hoped that with time the cat box odor faded. She was relieved she’d been able to get out of tonight’s quilting circle get-together. Working strange hours had its perks sometimes.
The door opened wide, and she stood there in amazement, staring at Duke Rivers. He smiled widely at her and seemed genuinely pleased to see her. She couldn’t understand why, given his apparent lack of interest the other night.
“Well, hello there, Doc. Welcome to the neighborhood.”
In surprise, she said, “Wow. It’s a small world.”
Duke backed up and beckoned her inside. “And getting smaller all the time. Look who’s here, Gage.”
She peered in and waved at Gage and stepped over the threshold. “I’m sorry if I came up too late. I hope I haven’t interrupted your evening.” Judging by the familiar soundtrack, they had a movie going.
Rainier, Heather - Their Divine Doctor, A Holiday Ménage [Divine Creek Ranch 9] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) Page 2
