“Stop this,” she says, watching Tony pick himself up out of the deep snow yet again, his body surely on the brink of a breakdown. “He’s had enough.” She pulls the clipboard from Dr. Godfrey’s hands winging it across the floor into the corner.
“I’ll prepare the recovery room,” he says, shuffling away.
“I’ll take it from here.”
Dr. Godfrey stops, his back to her, a smile gracing his lips at her concern for the brave detective.
“And Dr. Godfrey...you find a way to end what you’ve created. Or I will.”
Moments later, Tony sits in the small, dark recovery room wrapped snugly in a blanket. His therapeutic chair lukewarm and positioned in front of a crackling fireplace, Gina comes to him, handing him a brimming concoction of herbs and potions. He reaches out for the thermos, his hands unsteady along with the rest of his body as it engages in the autonomic warming process of shivering. She kneels in front of him, the glow from the fireplace glimmering through the strands of her long, full auburn hair.
“Here,” she says, firmly holding the thermos to his lips.
The noxious smell of the tepid liquid causes Tony to refuse, pressing his chattering teeth together.
“It’ll help warm you.” He takes a sip choking it down, his eyes never faltering from hers. “Good for aches, pains and inflammation.” She insists he drink more, the bitter brew aiding his tongue and the inside of his mouth in recovery from numbness. Setting the thermos on the end table beside him, she pulls supplies from a medical bag, lining them up at the foot of his chair. Wringing water from a moist, hot towel submerged in a metal bowl beside the fireplace, she wraps Tony’s elevated feet in it.
“Ssst,” he groans, the stimulation painful against his ice-cold appendages.
Gina lets the towel rest a moment, softening and removing any residual dried, frozen blood. Scooping homemade medicated balm from a plastic container, one of Dr. Godfrey’s serums, she gently massages the thick, greasy substance onto his feet. Pushing the wide-legged gi pants up toward his knees, her focus trails from his shins to his eyes with sincere apology. The fronts of his legs are covered in bruises, speckled with blood from nicks in his flesh at its contact with the unforgiving makiwara. Tony remains expressionless, his hazel eyes tired and somber, mental fatigue holding captive his lucidity. The nerves in his feet and legs awakening from the peppermint oil in the salve create the sensation of tiny pinpricks along his lower body. His head falls back, relaxing against the plush recliner.
After covering his balmed extremities in soft, white rolls of gauze, Gina takes a pair of scissors to the irritating canvas fabric, splitting it up the middle from his ankle to his hip reducing him to his boxers beneath. She settles on her knees upright between his legs as she pulls the blanket from his upper body, unbelting his gi and swiftly laying it back against the sides of the recliner exposing his bare chest, inspecting. He moans, her sincere touch warming him from the inside out, his muscles continuing to twinge. Snipping away at his sleeves, she doctors his hands and arms with the same care she gave his lower appendages. Locking the recliner into its upright position, she places a down-stuffed pillow behind his head and shoulders, positioning them closer to her reach.
“A little more,” she softly commands, holding the thermos to his lips, taking note of the thickness in his shoulders and his neck as his Adam’s apple engages, transporting the drink. Exchanging the mug for a moist warm towel, she presses it against his eyebrow removing blood just above the coarse, dark hairline. Further inspecting the tear in his flesh, she cautions, “Might sting a bit.” He winces with the cold, sterile contact of the Betadine prep pad. Gina lightly blows over the wound causing him some relief before applying a butterfly adhesive to close the skin. More of the red viscous substance clings to the corner of his bottom lip. With the removal of the outer hardened layer, fresh blood forms at the dense capillary hotbed. Tony’s eyes flair like the crossbar of a lit-up police cruiser, reflective of the emerald green eyes staring back at him, quickly dimming out, his body too tired to fully transform. The jolt to his sympathetic nervous system quieting as his cool body temperature maintains a low heart and respiratory rate. His mouth soothes with the contact of Gina’s encasing his bottom lip drawing it carefully between hers. “I’m sorry,” she whispers, lingering there.
He shakes his head, his unsteady hand tracing the bruise that mars her face cheekbone to temple, the shiny blue hue a result of their sparring session. His remorseful eyes watering, he clenches his jaw together, expelling a guttural groan, “I’m the sorry one.”
“You think Hell Hound is going to take it easy on me?” She smiles, attempting to relinquish his guilt. Placing her thumb in the divot gracing his chin, her fingers splay out around his face and neck. He takes her hand inspecting her wrist, bruises lining the petite bone structure from their tussle over Manny Briggs’ safe. He presses it to his lips, the moisture from his eyes falling down the sides of his handsome five o’clock shadow. “It’s okay...it’s okay...it’s okay,” she whispers, intermittently kissing every square inch of his face until her lips are wet with the taste of his tears.
His body shakes uncontrollably, a combination of the warming process and his surfacing emotions. Gina stands upright, swiftly disrobing. She wraps a blanket around her back, joining him in the recliner astraddle his waist, fully swaddling him with her warmth. Tony breathes in deeply filling his lungs with the sweet scent of her hair as it tickles the skin of his chest and shoulders. She pushes against the back of the chair causing it to fully recline letting her body meld into his, floating up and down with the calm rise and fall of his chest. Perfectly content with her closeness, Tony’s eyes give in to rest.
CHAPTER 15
Just before dawn, Tony awakes in the recovery room. His breathing labored, his heart pounding, both caused by the extreme heat his body puts off in its speedy recuperation. He gasps, hurling the covers from around him and Gina. Her body cocooned tightly around his, adds to the suffocating warmth. The crucifix she wears around her neck lays face down against his chest, a source of excruciating radiation. Tony flips the recliner forward, jolting Gina from her sleep. Her body slides against his, both of them burning up, their skin moist and glistening. She pushes away from him, her intent to provide some space between their frames, allowing their internal thermostats to cool. Tony latches onto her waist, a rebuttal to her separation. Standing from the chair, he takes her with him, her arms wound around his shoulders. The fireplace long since burned out, the room pitch black deprived of even a single window. Tony adeptly maneuvers them to a nearby wall.
“You really think you should be carrying me around in your condition?” Gina’s voice sultry and low, not yet fully awake.
“What condition?” he replies, feeling renewed, not even a hint of discomfort.
“Ah, Vigilare healing,” she recalls, her wits momentarily repressed on the speed of their recovery.
“Gina, baby...I want you,” he growls pressing himself against her, her back to the wall.
Feeling him hard and throbbing, she winds her fingers through his hair. Trailing them down the sides of his face, she sleepily encourages, “Well, then, have me.”
With angst, he releases himself from his boxers, kicking them away as they fall around his ankles. Arousing her with his hand, she moans, her lips finding the quenching moisture of his mouth. With the taste of her his appetite grows urgent. His hands, each one firmly grasping her thighs, he enters her slowly, filling her up. She arches her back, pressing her head into the wall behind her, emitting a satisfied exhale. Each indulgent thrust causes Tony’s already screaming sympathetic nervous system to more fully engage. His pulse beating in his temples like the climax to a native war dance, he feels his transformation begin. Gina feels it too, prepping herself for another intense intimate episode similar to their last—mirror-popping, body-whirling, gravity-defying, hella
-satisfying sex. Stalling against her, he freezes his momentum. His eyes glaze over emitting an emerald green cast filling the darkness in the room.
“Just breathe,” Gina coaxes, moving rhythmically against him, refusing to rob herself or him of the pleasure. He rests his mouth against her shoulder, pressing his eyes shut, his fervid respiratory rate nearing hyperventilation.
He steadies her hips stalling her strokes. “I don’t want to hurt you,” he confesses, his chest heaving up and down, rising and falling against the curve of her breasts.
“Gronkowski,” she begins, short of breath herself.
“Don’t call me that. Not here. Not like this.”
She lifts his head from her shoulder, cupping his jawline waiting for him to open his eyes and look at her. “Tony,” she corrects. “Your control is gaining by leaps and bounds. You are not going to hurt me.” She places her hand over his heart. “Trust yourself.”
“That’s part of the problem,” he references his heart. “That thing liked you...way before you did whatever you did to me...turned me into part of you. But now it’s gone. Fully submitted. You feel it?” He nuzzles his face into hers, mustering the strength to hold back the insatiable urge of his lips aching to claim hers. Gina watches her hand, visibly bouncing back and forth with the unabated movement of the life-sustaining organ beneath his skin. “You walk into a room and that thing reacts. I could feel you last night...through the window. When you were close, and too far away. What have you done to me?” he laments.
She kisses him, a passionate apology, winding her legs more firmly around his waist, pulling him deeper inside. He groans, uncontrollably returning her invitation. Withdrawing his mouth from hers, his eyes are tormented and pained, his body failing to heed his mind’s abstinence direction. “Channel me,” she pleads, knowing it’s within him to do so as with all Vigilares.
“How?” With each satisfying stroke his eyes spark, his power igniting.
“With your eyes. Give me no choice,” she pants through a succession of broken words expelled between ragged breaths. “Do you want me?” she incites.
“Hell yes, I want you!”
She smiles with the commanding shift in his body language. “Then claim what is yours.”
He lets go of his inhibitions, his eyes now matching the intensity of his actions, calling on hers. She gasps, his deep exhale robbing her of her own breath. Her heart mimicking a shot of adrenaline straight to its core thunders, keeping pace with his. The wall behind them gives way in its close proximity to their carnal hunger. Tony pivots, Gina securely bound to him, their darting eyes luminous and destructive of everything in their path. First the recliner, then the end table, and an unfortunate spot in the ceiling blown to smithereens.
“Shit!” Tony ducks, diving to the floor, tucking Gina beneath him.
“Good thing there’s not a window.” She giggles. Spinning herself over on top of him, she lightly instructs, “Maybe I better take over from here. We’ve got plenty of time to practice your channeling.” She looks down at him, demanding of his eyes drawing him in. Waiting for that complacent, glazed-over look, she steadies herself astraddle him.
“I can’t see anything.” He sits up reaching for her.
Gently pushing him back down to the blanket, trailing kisses along his chiseled frame, she consoles, “I know. But you can still feel.” She covers her hips with his hands, enjoying how they roam. Trembling from his tantalizing touch, she lets her thighs fall down around him. He meets her halfway, so in-sync every action calls for a reaction even before it’s initiated. Hitting that sweet little spot inside her, she moans slinging her head back. The sound of broken glass chimes above the fireplace, a vase that once resided there now lies in pieces along the mantel.
Tony chuckles rolling her over, securing the dominant position. “Looks like Vigilare could use a little practice in the control department as well.”
“That’s what you do to me,” she purrs.
He tucks his forearms along the sides of her back gripping his hands around her shoulders propping himself up while maintaining full frontal contact with her as he glides against her rhythmically, fully delivering himself to her each time. Their inhales and exhales in perfect tandem, one matching the other. Heartbeat for heartbeat, stroke for stroke, their bodies are truly one. The rays of emerald green darting from their eyes, winding about each other, escalate into a spiral toward the ceiling. “Gina, baby,” Tony warns nearing a fervid climax.
“I’m right there with you,” she pants. The floor beneath them begins to creak, a divot forming with the electrifying current running through their souped-up physiques. Tony hurls their entwined figures across the room, away from the ruptured center. Rolling from back to back, their frames so tightly bound, they do not miss a beat. Gina giggles through a splendid onslaught of orgasmic relief, Tony’s coupled with her own. “I’m thinking we could have a stellar future in demolition.”
“Let’s tear it up, baby,” Tony growls, settling himself atop her, their bodies shuddering in aftershock. “Hope Dr. Godfrey has some good insurance.” His smiling lips passionately seize hers, preparing for round two.
Hours later, just after sunrise, Emily and Gina stand side-by-side in the exam room of the basement, both women defensive in their posture, arms crossed firmly over their chests. Dr. Godfrey stands about twenty feet in front of them, Maxim Kiesel stretched flat out on his exam table. The room filled with measuring and testing instruments from blood pressure cuffs to tourniquets, which he uses to draw and test his blood samples.
“Where’d you dig him up?” Gina inquires.
“What? You can have one, but I can’t,” she references Tony, who is persistent in his training just outside the exam room. The sounds of karate gis popping and grown men grunting echo through the wide-open space as Tony and Marks square off. “By the way, I saw the recovery room. Very classy,” Emily scolds.
“You really think this kid has Vigilare pedigree?” Gina ignores her goading.
“He has something.” Emily raises her eyebrows.
“You think he’s one of theirs? ETNA’s?”
“For all I know, any one of us could be theirs.” She watches Dr. Godfrey draw Max’s blood into a glass tube, her nerves unsettled.
“What can he do?” Gina propels her thought talking with her hands. “You know, what’s his thing?”
“Ice.” Emily answers vaguely.
“Ice? Sculptures? Cubes? What?” Gina digs sarcastically.
Emily huffs, rolling her eyes at Gina. “He can freeze fire...genius.”
“Hell Hound,” Gina expels. “Maybe they made him to control Manny Briggs.”
“Hell Hound?” Emily scoffs at the moniker knowing it came from the round-faced, four-eyed hematologist. “You really think he’d be here...letting Dr. Godfrey put him through the ropes if he was one of ETNA’s?”
“Moles aren’t a new concept...genius,” Gina fires back. “He looks like someone I should know.” Gina scans him with her eyes, his features familiar.
“What’s it like?” Emily begins, clearing her throat before continuing, “being with another Vigilare?” Her eyes shift to the floor, embarrassed by her curiosity. She quickly recovers, jutting out her chin.
Gina smirks. “You like this kid that much?”
“Just answer the question, DeLuca.”
“Intense,” she summarizes, the most fitting adjective.
“Hmm,” Emily grunts.
Gina keeps her sights on Dr. Godfrey peering down into his microscope. “Have you? Ya know? Since your...” her words cut off unable to mention Emily’s rape now four years removed.
“No,” Emily bites quickly. “Haven’t even thought about it.”
“It gets easier, Em,” Gina tenderly and purposely refers to her by her nickname attempting to soften their
conversation. “When you’re with someone you feel safe with. You can’t punish yourself forever.” Gina shifts her weight from one hip to the other subconsciously. “Does he? Make you feel safe?”
Max smiles apprehensively at Emily from the exam table. She smiles back encouragingly, fully answering Gina’s question.
“What’s going on in here?” Aubrey enters, her step bouncy, her voice resonating.
“Shh,” Emily scolds.
Aubrey winces, honeying up to Gina, the easiest of the two to crack.
“Emily brought him in this morning. Dr. Godfrey’s testing him for Vigilare pedigree,” Gina explains half-whispering.
“What? Now she has one too?” Aubrey turns around, her eyes finding Marks through the glass wall of the exam room. “Can I bite his neck or something? There has to be a way.”
Gina chuckles. “Easy, Twilight.”
“He’s handsome.” Aubrey takes note of his features, not to mention his toned frame as he lies on the exam table, just a blanket covering his middle.
Emily’s head snaps quickly in her direction, not a word uttered but a territorial warning exuded through her body language.
“Too dark for me though,” Aubrey adds, nodding toward his black jeans, black t-shirt and black leather jacket lying in the chair beside him. “Geez,” she mutters nudging Gina, thankful for the quick-minded excuse in dodging Emily’s fury.
“Amazing,” Dr. Godfrey chimes, his shoulders stooped over his microscope.
The three women eye him impatiently awaiting further declaration.
“His blood...B-negative with only a trace of AB-negative...no O-negative,” he points out its variance from Gina’s.
“Does that mean he’s ETNA’s?” Gina inquires, scanning him offensively.
“Gronkowski is O-positive. Does that mean he’s ETNA’s?” Emily rebukes.
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