The Heroic Surgeon

by Olivia Gates

  It hurt even more that it had ended—and in pain? The thought of his pain, his loss was unbearable. What had happened? Had she died? Had he sworn off caring again, not wanting to be hurt, unable to lose again? Like her?

  Was this why he went to areas of conflict, risking his life, daring death? Was it that his grief, still fresh and overwhelming, was prodding him for release, for an end to it all? And she’d intruded on the sanctity of his mourning.

  Just leave him alone. Remember your own rule.

  She never cared. Never got close. And Dante was probably the one man she shouldn’t come near. The one man courting danger and death.

  But it was too late. It had gone beyond caring, beyond closeness. It was beyond even what she had with Evraim.

  And if it were only about her, she would have broken all her rules, invited devastation for that one night with him. But it wasn’t about her—only he mattered now.

  A nauseous claustrophobic sensation crushed down on her. Just get out. “I’ll just go…” She got the words out somehow. “Goodbye, Dante…”

  “Gulnar!” His imperative bark jolted her. She closed her eyes. No more humiliation, please! She ventured a look at him—and almost fell to her knees.

  The burning intensity in his gaze! Did that mean…?

  He prowled over to her, eased her back until he plastered her to the wall. He held her eyes until she whimpered. Then he said it. “Yes. Yes, Gulnar. Satisfied?”

  She flung her arms around him, her tears flooding her cheeks. “Oh, Dante—not yet, not yet.”

  He crushed her mouth in a near-violent kiss. The pressure of longing was a heavy, viscous quicksand sucking her consciousness. He snatched his lips away, and his eyes. “Just remember—I did try to step back.”

  “I’ll remember. And I’ll try not to hate you for it.”

  His frown made it clear he’d misunderstood her. She could see him withdrawing in his mind first. “Hate you for tormenting me, you idiot, for making me beg and wait.”

  “So we’re back to calling me names, huh?” There was no humor in his voice or expression, just searing emotion and sensuality.

  “If you’re fool enough to think I meant anything else.” She gasped, her knees almost giving out. He stepped away from her, the driven look in his eyes slamming into her. He tugged her out of the hall past smiling personnel. She ran in his wake, dazed, unquestioning, quaking in anticipation.

  He stopped only when they were at the end of a corridor housing the doctors’ rooms.

  One was open and there was no one inside. He tugged her behind him as rushing personnel passed by and cast them curious looks.

  He locked the door behind them, looked down at her. For answer, she wound herself around him, arms and legs. He staggered with her until he opened the bathroom and spilled with her inside the shower cubicle, his hand behind her head and his arm at her back taking the impact against the tiled wall at the last second. They remained like that for endless minutes, panting, their bodies and gazes fused, exchanging memories, longings, hunger—everything. She silently sobbed to him what she couldn’t say out loud, what she had no right to say. Dante, Dante, you’re everything, my heart. His unending universes of inner beauty and strength and tenderness said she was everything to him, too. And she believed she was. For now. Until he left.

  She brought his lips down to hers, sank into him with all her love and despair. And he gave her back everything, then more, and more. More fervor, more intimacy, more abandon.

  Suddenly Dante’s groans doused her in dread. What if they were ones of pain? His injury—two weeks weren’t enough for him to be back to normal…

  Distressed, she unclamped him and attempted to regain her footing. He wouldn’t let her, crushed her tighter to him, then shifted, taking their weight on his extended arms against the wall. His eyes detailed his pain and how his hunger overwhelmed it, negated it. Then he closed them, gritted his teeth. “I am going away tomorrow, Gulnar. Nothing will make me stay.”

  She bit him. His lower lip, his chin, his neck, silencing his mutilating verdict, frustration, grief, arousal sending her berserk.

  Growls of pain, of voracity rumbled from his gut. He dropped her to her feet, tore her scrubs off her then swooped to his knees, yanked down her trousers. She wanted to help him, to be naked before him, against him, now, now, but she had no volition.

  He put himself between her thighs, worshipped from calf to thigh to stomach. His hot breath, his voice, his passion scorched her flesh, She didn’t obey him as much as she sagged in his grip completely. He nudged her thighs further apart, bent lower to bring them over his shoulders then heaved her up, her flaming hair streaming back, sliding upwards against the tiles, until she was straddling his shoulders. Then he buried his face in her.

  A scream welled from her depths, too loud, too frenzied to form. The next one would have, but he reached out a hand to her mouth, caught it in his palm. She bit down, harder each time his tongue lashed her swollen, hypersensitive flesh. He was giving her no chance but to thrash every time he drove deeper inside her. But she just had to make him understand, tell him what would deliver her. Her voice wouldn’t come. Her tongue filled her mouth and everything else in her, heart and body and soul, was swelling, overflowing. She managed a word, the only word that mattered. “You—you…”

  He gave her one more hot, wet lash that almost had her blacking out then raised his eyes to her. Obsidian gems housing all his intellect and passion and virility, promising her what he had in store for her. “Yes, amore, me. You’ll have all of me. You promised me anything and I promise you too, anything—everything.”

  She bit down hard on the heel of his palm as all her desperation detonated, crashing down through her, each convulsion wringing her tighter of every sensation her body was capable of.

  And it left her feeling so empty that the last of her sobs were real distress, not the delirious weeping of release.

  Her hands flailed on his head, gliding, memorizing, as he completed her pleasure, just enough pressure, enough insistence, making sure she had nothing more to want, to feel. He stopped only when there was no more, leaned his cheek on one inner thigh, rubbed his forming beard into it, sought her streaming eyes with his tenderly tempestuous ones, deepening the connection, heightening the intimacy.

  It was undreamed of, caressing his face like that, experiencing his magnanimity. Her heart clenched an obsessive fist around the memory. It would never let go.

  He let her down from his shoulders, held her to him, contained her, still fully clothed, absorbing her shudders, soothing her. “Shh, shh, amore—ah, bellisima mia—I’ve never seen or felt so much beauty, so much wonder…”

  His words spread in her body and brain, balmy, corroding, had her whimpering to him again, incoherent, supplicant, desperate, “Please, please…”

  He carefully propped her against the wall, a boneless heap. Then he rose and began to undress, his eyes giving her no respite. She needed none.

  The ferocity in his gaze melded with the permeating gentleness of his essence, promised the violence capable of silencing the screaming tension, the cherishing that would express and assuage their need, on every level.

  Seeing him standing above her, powerful, beautiful, had a backdraft roaring higher in her blood. She pounced on him, didn’t know where she found the power, her need a ragged sobbing filling her throat.

  He undid his buttons in a succession of frenzied motions—and it felt so slow! A growl of frustration erupted from her, her eagerness pushing him against the wall. She fell to her knees, in supplication, in ravenous wonder, took him between trembling hands and lips.

  His surprise at the role reversal was short-lived, his surrender to her worshiping even shorter. He growled and hauled her up, fumbled her bra off and pressed his rough chest against her released, swollen breasts, abrading her stinging nipples. The sensation screamed down every tortured nerve, the very idea of the intimacy, of his need for it, inflaming her even more.

&nb
sp; So he felt the same. It wasn’t about physical release, but about merging, taking and being taken, finding that release with her, inside her.

  Her heart still thrashed in her chest, demanding her instant addiction, his feel, his scent and taste…

  “Take me inside you, amore mio—just take me…”

  “Yes, yes, yes…” She strained in his arms, climbing higher, the legs clamping his steel buttocks flailing.

  He flexed his mass and power, his manhood nudging her entrance, seeking, asking. Everything in her opened, accepted, surrendered. At last, Dante was invading her, completing her, holding her eyes as he eased his girth inside her, expanding her beyond her limits, letting her see every nuance of shocked wonder and pleasure transfiguring his magnificent face.

  He thrust, full and hard, sought her depths. He found them, then further, where she’d never been touched, right through to her soul, filling all her emptiness and loneliness, ending her solitude.

  All her nerves fired at once and she screamed. No—she wanted it to last for ever.

  He withdrew, yet still clung to her, eyes and need and flesh, dominating her, surrendering to her. Then he rammed back into her. Her convulsions started from the furthest point he caressed within her body, spread in expanding shock waves, each building where the last just began to diminish, constricting her whole body around him inside and out. He withstood her storm, every shudder and tear and scream. Then he gave it back, plumbing a new depth inside her, impaling her to her heart, releasing all his agonized ecstasy there.

  She drowned, thankful, replete, complete.

  His tongue mated in moist, luxurious heat inside her still gasping mouth, twisting and turning in a languid, healing duel with her own. And there was rain, a warm, blissful shower cocooning them in an obscuring cascade.

  A pungent scent enveloped them, familiar, cleansing. He was on his knees again and she was draped over him, her knees hugging his sides. He was still filling her, rocking gently as he worked the soap lather in easing, avid patterns over her back and buttocks. She slithered from him to kiss his face and neck and shoulders, took the soap and started her own worshipful painting.

  So this was how it felt to feel, to love. To live.

  Tomorrow, it would be over. But she still had the rest of tonight. Starting now.

  She put her lips to his wound, prayed for him and gave thanks. Tonight would have to be her whole life.

  CHAPTER TEN

  “PLEASED with yourself, Guerriero?”

  Dante turned slowly. He couldn’t move any faster if his life depended on it. His life force had been drained in Gulnar, in their love-making. Only enough was left to keep him on his feet.

  His swollen lips twitched, the imprint of her every tooth still shooting pained pleasure bolts to every erogenous zone. She’d bring him to full life, full frenzy again the moment he saw her.

  She’d stayed behind with Dimitri, to talk to him some more, after he’d checked him, documented his short-and long-term post-operative care and allowed his removal from Recovery to Intensive care. Ten minutes, she’d promised. And no more, he’d insisted. He wanted every minute of the rest of the night and time was ticking by…

  He met Emilio’s bitter eyes and sighed.

  So even war reaching their front doors hadn’t overwhelmed the hospital staff’s interest in the latest scandal. The amazing part was, he didn’t give a damn who knew or who said what. He still didn’t know what had come over him. He’d had no idea he had something like this in him, this blinding passion, this uncontainable hunger. On the last record, and presumably on the best of authority, he was a passionless brre.

  I always needed more! But I tried excusing you, thought maybe it was your preoccupation with your career. But you’re just cold, Dante! And now you’ll lose interest completely and it isn’t fair…

  Irony huffed out of him. If only Roxanne could see him now. Any hotter and he’d set the place on fire.

  Emilio bristled. “Oh, laugh, Guerriero. Lick your whiskers. Don’t think you’re anything special though. You know Lorenzo Banducci, don’t you? Gulnar went after him the same way, and for the same reason.”

  So she had gone after Lorenzo? Had Lorenzo succumbed to her as he had?

  What kind of a stupid question was that? What man could resist her? And would Lorenzo have even tried? Of course he’d succumbed, taken all he could of her for as long as possible.

  It shouldn’t hurt. That was the past. And he had nothing to say, nothing he should feel, about her life or choices anyway, not in any tense.

  He shouldn’t. But he did. Feel. Too much. And he wanted to knock Emilio down for confirming his suspicions, for planting the corroding images of Gulnar with Lorenzo in his psyche, adding them to his other morbid imaginings.

  But Emilio was in love with Gulnar, was hurting, too. He should feel sympathy for him if his pain was even a one-thousandth of his.

  He didn’t. Not in the least.

  Though knowing he wasn’t and would never be Gulnar’s lover did remove him from the top of his hate list.

  But Emilio seemed bent on venting some venom and he could afford to let him have some catharsis. He cocked his head at him, pretended interest. “And what is that reason she went after both me and Lorenzo—and not you?”

  If she picked her men with certain physical criteria, he and Lorenzo shared almost all of them. Big, tall, distinctive, dark-skinned. Latin. But so was Emilio. Why had she excluded him from her list of possible conquests?

  “I don’t share the main criterion you both have in her eyes.”

  “What? Being surgeons?”

  Emilio snorted. “Gulnar doesn’t look at social status or money or perceived life-role importance.”

  Dante believed that. In her eyes, in her arms he was his basic self. She valued him, not what he did or was or had. She was the first one who ever had.

  Emilio went on. “Gulnar doesn’t have one shallow or covetous bone in her body. No, she has only one rule about the men she takes to her bed—figuratively speaking in your case. They have to be safe. And I’m not safe.”

  “Safe? What are you talking about?” An ugly suspicion detonated in his mind. “Heaven help me, Fernandez, if you’ve ever even thought of hurting her…”

  Emilio waved him away in total boredom. “Don’t be ridiculous, Guerriero. I don’t hurt women, not in any way and not even if they drive me crazy and tear my heart to pieces like Gulnar has been doing for the last two years. Oh, OK, so she hasn’t meant to, and it’s my fault that she has, but anyway I’m not safe because I love her. She went after Lorenzo because she believed he couldn’t care about anyone, not in an emotional, monogamous way. That made him safe. But even when he proved her wrong and fell for Sherazad, she still used him to drive her point home to me, to keep me away.”

  Gulnar had come between Lorenzo and his wife? Hadn’t cared that Lorenzo was in love, had seduced him, not caring if she would have wrecked his relationship, or broken another woman’s heart?

  No. He had to take Emilio’s words with a pound of salt. A thwarted man wasn’t the best source of information. And he had to trust the Gulnar who’d risked her life, who would have died for others. Who couldn’t risk the possibility of his continued involvement and had almost walked away from him, making him lose his mind and every shred of inhibition. No. She wouldn’t have done anything to deliberately and carelessly hurt another.

  He scowled at Emilio. “But you just won’t be driven away, will you? You just shadow her like a lost puppy, forcing your presence on her, trying to emotionally blackmail her into surrendering to your obsessive emotions!”

  “I don’t follow her around. We work together.”

  Dante barked an ugly laugh. “Oh, you have to be here? You can’t ask for reassignment if you wanted? Or haven’t you lost hope yet that she will respond to your persistence?”

  Emilio drove his hands deep in his pockets, shook his head in resignation. “Oh, I know she won’t. She’s made it beyond clear. It
’ll probably take me going on an extended promiscuous spree to make her consider me.”

  “You don’t have a very good opinion of her, do you? And you say you love her.”

  “I love her because, apart from this aberration, she is everything I can love. And because I can only presume to judge her if I lived anything like the life she has. And whatever happens to me, I’ll never suffer a fraction of what she’s suffered.”

  “Big of you.”

  “It took some doing, believe me.”

  Gulnar appeared at the other end of the spacious hospital reception area. Everything inside Dante rioted at the sight. Impatience tightened his head, his voice. He wasn’t losing one second with her for anything. “Fernandez, if we’re done here…”

  “We are, Guerriero. Goodbye. Don’t get yourself killed.”

  Dante had to laugh. “Don’t you mean, get myself killed?”

  Emilio half turned to him again, something like a smile shadowing his lips. “I don’t want you dead, Guerriero. It’s not your fault, what Gulnar is doing, what I’m feeling. And you’re a hell of a surgeon and you do a lot of good. Believe it or not, you’re one of the last people I’d like to see wiped out from this world.”

  “This is big of you. Seriously. I don’t think I’d be so charitable in your shoes.”

  “Just pray you never are.”

  Dante’s heart itched with regret. What a mess. In other circumstances, he would have liked to be Emilio’s buddy. Not in this life, it seemed. He stopped Emilio, extended his hand. Emilio shook it in silence then turned away.

  Two nurses stopped Gulnar’s eager advance towards him. They kept looking over at him, interrogating her, no doubt, to judge from the blush radiating from her. He now knew it blazed all the way to her toes, spreading that incredible peach throughout the lush cream as he merged with her, watched her scaling satisfaction, writhing in his arms…Distract yourself. “Fernandez…” He cleared the covetous rasp from his tones, tried again. “You never told me what Gulnar finds so safe about me?”