The Heroic Surgeon

by Olivia Gates

  “Dante…” His name sighed on her lips, a celebration, a supplication, a second chance at life. Her first real chance. He absorbed it into him, took her lips, her breath, like their first kiss. And nothing like it. No tender reassurance here. There were no preliminaries, just all-out invasion and headlong surrender. Never before. This connection, this pure craving, this clear access to another. She had never even imagined this mix of lust and trust, carnality and vulnerability.

  She’d been waiting for this for ever. For this man. And she’d never even known. Never known there was that much to dream of. Had it really been only a day? Yes, and it had been her real lifetime, erasing her barren existence before it. It was enough to know he existed, that she could feel this way. She’d never ask for more. Never be the same.

  He staggered back, sagged down on the couch, keeping their lips fused, tried to bring her down on his lap.

  She resisted his hungry power. “I’ll hurt you…”

  His groan reverberated inside her. “I hurt more where I’m not touching you. Touch me, Gulnar, give me your mouth, your body.”

  His need sent hers raging, sank her into his mouth again, gasping for him. His breath filled her lungs. Just hours ago, he’d had none. He’d nearly drowned in his own blood, suffocated on his own breath. The tears that had poured out of her soul as she’d struggled to restore his ability to breathe welled again, flooded both their faces. He licked them all, murmured his craving, his soothing, nipped her quivering chin, stilled it in his teeth.

  “Dante, you’re in pain—every time you draw breath…”

  His grunt confirmed her words, the sound so deep and dark it scared her, aroused her beyond endurance. He only pulled her back into his kiss, muttered against her lips, “Then you kiss me, Gulnar—save me the effort. Let me feel you, tesoro, feel your heat and life and desire.”

  She could resist her hunger, for his sake. No way could she withstand his. She capitulated, straddled his thighs, hers taking her weight, her arms keeping her torso off his. He wouldn’t let her keep that distance, his left arm pressing her down and forward.

  “Dante!” It was too much—too poignant, feeling him hard with life and arousal. The promise of all that power inside her, the completion, the merging. He snatched his lips from hers to bury his pained pleasure in her neck. She rained her own kisses all over the slashed planes of his face, scraping her abandon across his beard.

  “Help me…” His left hand wasn’t up to opening her shirt unaided. She was up to doing anything he wanted and what he wanted was more of her flesh, her willingness. She’d give him all.

  Another surge of moist heat flooded her, demanding him inside her, granting them both release and oblivion. Her lips fed at his pulse as she fell into his rhythm, their clothes a chafing barrier. She unbuttoned her top, and what he did then stopped her heart.

  He just laid his face against her breasts and breathed her in, breathed out her name almost like a mantra, a prayer. For endless minutes they just stayed there, with his head hugged to her breast, her heart beating just because he’d said her name.

  Then he rubbed his face over her breasts, had her writhing before his lips closed over one nipple. She arched on a seizure, on a mute scream. She knew her body, her senses. They weren’t equipped to register that much. Never had there been sensations fiercer than caution, greater than detachment. It had to be him, his effect, causing her metamorphosis.

  His eyes captured hers, showing her what it would be like with him driving inside her, filling, inflaming, assuaging. Her muteness shattered, her cries rose, her disbelief, too. Just promising her with his eyes and he was bringing her closer to an unknown cataclysm. Her tremors became quakes.

  “Gulnar—from the moment I first saw you, do you know what I wanted to do to you? With you? For you?”

  His words, the total abandon they painted, every license she couldn’t wait to grant him. They released her from the crippling build-up, completing the climax that drained her, left her hungrier. The hands that held his head to her breast tore at his headscarf, needing her fingers in his hair, luxuriating and—she froze.

  No hair. He had no hair!

  Surprise flooded her, immobilized her. Then curiosity swelled by degrees. Dante, without the presumed dark wavy hair? She finally jerked away, bracing herself for a different Dante from the one already imprinted on her awareness, and—Oh!

  Her every mental image and presumption disintegrated. What were those compared to his reality?

  He—he looked as if he’d just stepped out of a medieval fairy-tale! A knight sworn to an ascetic order—shaved and fasting, perpetually prepared for to-the-death battles!

  And he wasn’t shaving the rest of balding hair, like so many men did. A barely there raven shadow clearly delineated his healthy hairline. But it would have been a crime to cover such perfection with hair, no matter how luxurious. He just had to know how unique a shaved head made him look. If he didn’t, her stunned hunger would surely tell him.

  “Oh, Dante…” Her eyes closed as she reached for him, her hands itching to experience his regal symmetry and strength in unhindered touching.

  He aborted her eager grope, pushed her hands away. She almost stumbled off his lap. Her heart did, plummeted all the way down to her gut.

  He was withdrawing, all intimacy leaving his expression, distress, disappointment flooding in its wake.

  She sat still, sick electricity arcing in her flesh, waiting for him to spell it out. He did, and life dimmed back to its dreary monotone.

  “Hell, I’m sorry Gulnar…” His strident breath wheezing out of him, he slumped back, closed his eyes. Then he opened them, turbid and disturbed and averted from her still-exposed breasts. “You’re suffering from post-traumatic stress and I took advantage of it…”

  His agitation hurt her even more than his withdrawal. She had to relieve it. Had to cover herself first, get off him. Had to find her co-ordination and control. She finally did, stumbled up and to her bed, sank on it, aftershocks of release still rocking her, loss and confusion suffocating her.

  He continued, his black-velvet voice hushed. “I can only plead that I must be suffering the same survival backlash…”

  “You said you felt this way from the moment you saw me…” Please, let this at least be real.

  His next words told her it wasn’t. “I guess, being in this region, in our line of work, we’re never not in post-traumatic stress. What we think, and what we think we feel, how we react—it’s all extreme reactions, unreal, just escape mechanisms.”

  She was intimate with all that. The last fifteen years had been a string of coping maneuvers, sanity preservers. She’d mastered them all. And none of them applied here. With Dante, it was all new and real at last.

  And it was one-sided.

  Fine. She understood. It gutted her, but she did. And she accepted it. She would still have something else of him. He was part of GAO now. They were bound to give him an important post, keep him here. She’d join his team. It would be enough to see him, work with him. Anything at all with him was better than everything she’d ever had…

  He finally moved, rose, came over to stand above her, every move an effort now. “Gulnar, please, say you forgive me. I feel like I’ve dishonored what we’ve shared, what we’ve been through. And after all you’ve done for me. I can’t let us part with this hanging between us.”

  Part? Did he think he needed to put distance between them now? Would he ask for an assignment that would take him out of her reach? Refuse her access to his team?

  No. No! She had to make him understand it wouldn’t change a thing, that she wouldn’t pursue or embarrass him. Their enforced intimacy was over and she’d keep to her place, be his assistant, or whatever he wanted her to be, and nothing more. She had to make him believe her.

  “Dante—stop it, please. You’re making too much out of this. It isn’t the first time and it won’t be the last that two survivors seek physical comfort in each other’s arms.” A bi
tter giggle escaped her. She surely hadn’t given him comfort! “I can’t begin to see how you can think you’ve dishonored anything.”

  The distress in his eyes faded, something even blacker, bleaker seeping into its place. Then his lids went down, obscuring a succession of expressions that stopped her heart. Cynicism. Disillusion. Disgust.

  He walked back to the couch, sat down again. His head fell back on the headrest, his lips twisting. Her insides followed suit. Had she made things worse by making light of it? Was he, now that his blood had cooled, analyzing her actions, condemning her for her shamelessness, seeing her as Lorenzo—and Emilio—had once accused her of being, a promiscuous hazard to any team effort? No!

  She tried again, an uncontrolled thread of desperate laughter weaving into her tones. “Dante—let it go. It was nothing important, really. A month from now we’ll look back on this and laugh.” Stop, stop. She was making it worse and worse. Distract him. Change the subject. “And do you realize you didn’t tell me what you wanted me to do for you? Do you need your back scratched?”

  The eyes that opened, leveled on her, were a stranger’s.

  So this was how it felt to lose something irreplaceable.

  “Actually, I was going to ask you to shave me, especially my head. I don’t mind the beard as much, but a few millimeters’ growth on top makes me crazy.” Even his voice was unrecognizable.

  Swallowing the jagged desperation, she jumped at the opportunity, and to her feet.

  His alien voice froze her. “Never mind. I don’t think you’re in any condition to handle a razor now. What you really need is to get back to sleep. I’ll take one of the other nurses up on her offer.”

  Other nurses? Oh.

  That put her in her place. Ended their artificial intimacy and her importance to him.

  But this was what she’d said she’d settle for! Keep it light. Impersonal. He wanted it that way.

  Her heart wept but she tried on her most nonchalant smile. “Just to put your mind at ease, I’ll let someone else do it. But for future reference, I’ll have you know that I am an expert barber!”

  His blank eyes rested on her, his smile even emptier. “I’m sure you are. But since I’m going back to the US just as soon as I can breathe without keeling over, I don’t think I’ll have the chance to take you up on your offer.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “YOU just can’t leave!”

  Dante sighed. GAO’s Azernian operation co-ordinator was a good man. One of the best. He just had the most aggravating nasal twang ever. As for his powers of repetition!

  Dante inhaled deeper this time, the air rushing into his lungs a reminder of how lucky he’d been. Only two weeks after a bullet had penetrated his chest back to front, he was beyond lucky to be breathing at all, let alone with such ease.

  No, it wasn’t luck. It was Gulnar…

  “Dr. Guerriero, you have to let us persuade you to stay longer!”

  Impatience chafed in Dante’s chest, the currents stronger along the fast-healing bullet tract. “Mr. Kauffman, you have to stop talking as if I’m going back on my word, as if I’m deserting! You knew the moment I stepped into your office two weeks ago that I was here for the hostage situation, not to join GAO. I am sure you also know that I am a freelancer, if the term can apply to voluntary work. I roam around offering my services where I can make a difference, then move on. I couldn’t have been clearer when I asked you to grant me temporary GAO credentials. As it turned out, it has been the only thing that has gotten me through the quarantine zone. Now it’s over, and so is our liaison, and I’m moving on, as has always been my intention.”

  Kauffman’s lanky, relaxed posture eased even more, making his persistence even more droning, more effective. “That’s all well and good, as far as previous plans go, Dr. Guerriero. But things change. Things have changed.”

  Dante stared at the fair, frail man who’d had him trapped in this office for the last hour. Who had him trapped, period. Dammit. What a disguise! Ivan Kauffman was anything but fragile. He’d never come up against fiercer relentlessness. He’d dragged him into a logic loop, and every time they bounced the same argument off each other, Dante felt his grip on his slipping. Ivan made him feel like trash for doing what he’d been doing for the last four years, something he’d thought effective and worthwhile.

  He shook his head. The man was a juggernaut. He should have known he would be one. People who picked humanitarian work in the most dangerous places on earth were a special breed. They had to have steel running through them, had to be totally unpredictable. Like Gulnar…

  “We don’t only need any and every capable medical person around here.” Kauffman made his main argument again, tireless, tiring to his listener. “But after what you’ve done, you’re not just an extra pair of sorely needed hands. Like it or not, you are a role model, a symbol of hope that good does triumph over evil and that humanitarian operatives are not just more vulnerable chips for terrorists to play with.”

  Counter-arguments crowded into Dante’s mind. None of them seemed enough any more. He exhaled, irritated, cornered and hating it. “Really, Mr. Kauffman! This legend everyone is weaving around my role in the hostage situation is getting out of hand.”

  “Modesty is very becoming, Dr. Guerriero, and also the mark of a true hero.” Oh, no. He didn’t get him that way. Dante had no ego to tickle in this direction. Kauffman continued, exchanging flattery for debate, “How many doctors breach impending disaster situations and not only manage to save almost everyone, but come out alive, too? Even we who live and work in areas of conflict do so only where there is relative safety. We take precautions and withdraw from openly dangerous situations. Not many risk throwing themselves into the line of fire, and almost none who actually do make it out get their charges out, too. This has been epic, and you’d better get used to it.”

  Dante’s teeth screeched against each other. What he’d give for an episode of mass amnesia to counteract the sweeping mass hysteria! When would it pass? He just wanted to fade into the background, wipe this from the record, get on with his roaming—get away from Gulnar…

  He exhaled again. “You know what, Mr. Kauffman? I was really indignant when you all insisted on downplaying Gulnar’s far more important role in this situation. Now I am just glad everyone decided to ignore her. I have never suffered anything more aggravating and oppressive than the status you’ve all thrust on me. I am happy she escaped the same fate.”

  Kauffman gifted him with another of those impassive smiles that made him feel like an over-emotional idiot. Made the man such a nerve-fraying negotiator. “Such is the burden of heroism, Dr. Guerriero. Just as you’d accepted the possible outcome of severe injury or death, going in there, you have to accept the acclaim now you’ve made it out triumphant. And you also have to accept the responsibility that acclaim places on you.”

  Dante heaved himself up to his feet. This wasn’t going to end unassisted. “That’s where you’re wrong, Mr. Kauffman. I don’t have to accept anything. In my opinion, I’ve done my share, and that’s it. I’m out of here, and I’ll be eternally in your debt if you stop your attempts to emotionally blackmail me into staying, and if you let this be the end of this endless meeting.”

  Without giving Kauffman the chance to bat a languid eyelid, Dante dragged the man’s hand for a hard, adamant handshake then turned and almost ran out of his office. And directly into Gulnar. And Emilio.

  His heart stuttered. Everything inside him surged, almost burst out of him. Why didn’t you come to see me today?

  He barely caught the reproachful roar back. She didn’t owe him anything after that morning when he’d behaved like an out-of-control teenager. She’d been gracious enough to laugh it all off and walk out of his room with a smile.

  The moment she’d closed the door behind her he’d plunged into a hell he’d never known before. Not knowing if she’d ever return, where she was, how to contact her, what he’d say if he did—he’d felt abandoned, desperate,
like a kid in an alien world, and it had had nothing to do with her loss as an interpreter.

  Next morning, and every day ever since, she’d come back during the morning visiting hour, ten to eleven a.m., behaving as if they hadn’t fought and survived by each other’s sides, as if they’d shared nothing but an aborted flirtation in one of his former American hospital’s cafeterias. And she’d mostly come with her shadow, her fellow GAO volunteer and nurse, the hunky Emilio Fernandez.

  He’d lived for that hour. Then she’d deprived him of it today. The almost suicidal despair that had robbed him of all reason and power when the seconds had ticked by and she hadn’t appeared had decided him. He was running out of there.

  Tomorrow. He’d go back on the road tomorrow. And to hell with recuperation.

  “Dr. Guerriero! Good thing we caught you. We were told this was one of your stops today.” It was the Portuguese nurse who addressed him. Gulnar only looked at him. Burned him down to the bone.

  He swallowed the roiling hunger, the crushing despondency, kept his eyes on Emilio. “Yeah, I have a whole line-up of appointments all over Srajna.”

  Emilio raised one thick, straight eyebrow. “People actually asked you to go to them?”

  Say something cool and diplomatic. “I’m a popular man nowadays, am I not, Fernandez? Everyone wants a piece of me.” OK, not so cool or diplomatic. “Most did try to save me the trouble, but twelve days in one place, one room, is my limit. So, what can I do for you? I really have to run.”

  Emilio’s brown eyes told him he could drop dead. At six feet five it was unusual for Dante to meet men’s eyes on the same level. He did Emilio’s. A mane of black curls even gave the good-looking man an extra inch over him. As tall and as broad and as dark. Emilio could have been his brother. And he hated Dante’s guts.

  It figured. Men who were interested in Gulnar would probably shred each other with bare teeth and talons over her. And Emilio’s interest was unmistakable. Was Dante’s?

  What kind of a stupid question was that? All the sexual energy he’d thought he’d never had or had lost had only been accumulating undiscovered, had only taken the sight of her, her touch to be unearthed, unleashed.