by Olivia Gates
Her lips twitched. “You’re too good for my ego.”
He gave her a look of genuine perplexity. “It baffles me that you don’t have a planet-sized ego. You’re phenomenal, amore!”
Pleasure at his praise spread through her as he picked up Mr. Khurdi’s chart and scribbled notes and observations.
He was phenomenal. What they shared was. How was it possible for it to keep getting better, deeper, the fire raging higher?
It had to be the clock ticking. She’d heard that timed liaisons had a way of keeping the passion burning, every sensation exquisite, every feeling soul-shattering. And she only had three weeks left. This time, when he left, it would be really all over. For her.
She tried to stifle the gutting dejection. She’d agreed to his rules. Ha. She’d snatched at any extension with him.
Live now! To the last moment.
She caught his eyes as she took the chart out of his hands and what she saw there…! Could it mean what she so insanely prayed and wept for? That he felt something for her beyond sexual dependency? That he might extend their liaison, at least keep the door open for future possibilities, sporadic reunions?
She couldn’t hope for that. She’d better not!
She cleared the suffocating longing out of her throat and gestured towards Mr. Khurdi. “If you really want my diagnosis, I think he has a hydatid in his liver! OK, go ahead, laugh!” As he would, no doubt, if she told him how she loved him.
“Why should I when I think you’re 100 per cent correct? When I’m impressed out of my mind that you actually thought of it?”
A hundred giant butterflies tried to burst out of her chest.
Don’t make me love you any more. There is no more. I can’t stand any more.
It was getting harder and harder not to tell him how she felt, not to scream her love in his arms as he transfigured her with ecstasy, or when he helped her and validated her and made her feel like the only woman in the world, the most precious human being in existence.
“I would really love to know how you came by the diagnosis. Give me a detailed performance of your beautiful mind at work, amore.”
She busied herself with placating Mr. Khurdi, answered Dante only when she got her erupting pulse under control. “Before I give you any performances, I want to know what you think we should do about it. My knowledge doesn’t extend to knowing if it’s operable or inoperable.”
“From its location and his general condition, operable. Definitely. Do you have time to help me, tesoro?”
Oh, how she reveled in his precious professional faith. But she remembered something. She felt reluctant to convey it, but couldn’t withhold it with a clear conscience. “Uh, Helena wanted to assist you some time. And I guess I can’t hog you all the time.”
“Amore, you still don’t believe you have carte blanche to do anything you want with me? With my eternal gratitude? But, seriously, I don’t want anyone else to assist me, if it’s at all avoidable. If it’s a must, just this time, let Helena be the second assistant.”
“Uh, so what do I tell Mr. Khurdi? He’s getting agitated.”
“I can see that. OK, tell him he has a parasitic infestation by a tapeworm of the genus Echinococcus granulosus which is causing him a disease called cystic hydatidosis of the liver, the favorite target of the organism. At least one cyst now is over five centimeters in size and that’s why its pressure produced symptoms of obstructive jaundice and abdominal pain. I also suspect he has bile sac rupture, therefore his classical triad of biliary colic, jaundice and urticaria.”
She turned her back to the patient and shook with suppressed laughter. Dante widened his eyes in devilish innocence. “What? He should know all that!”
A splutter escaped. “I’m sure it would also interest him to know that the stuff he passed in vomit and stools was the hydatid membranes when the cyst ruptured!”
“Ah, so that is how you diagnosed it!”
“That, the triad and him living in a country in his childhood where it is endemic. He used to live in Greece.”
“Brilliant, bambola! So, shall you tell him all that?”
She gave him an affectionate nudge. “Just tell me what I can tell him about the surgery.”
“Tell him that’s it’s nothing serious now he’s diagnosed. We’ll take care of him, I’ll just go in, remove the ruptured gall bladder, remove the parasite and sterilize the cyst cavity by injection of a scolicidal agent. Hmm, we do have formalin here, don’t we?”
“Dante! You don’t tell patients you’re going to inject them with formalin!” She knew he was teasing her, knew how considerate he was with his patients.
He pretended bafflement. “It is what I’m going to do!”
“Well, I’ll stick with telling him it’s a solicidal agent—hell, a parasite killer. I’m not about to try to explain to him why we’re going to inject him with something used in preserving corpses!”
In twenty minutes, the surgical team was gathered around the sedated Mr. Khurdi and Dante was taking one more look at the X-ray and ultrasounds.
He snorted in disgust.
Gulnar raised her eyes from her final preparations of the surgical instruments. “We already knew X-rays aren’t well known for their reliability in detecting hydatids.”
He rotated his neck, working a crick out. “I do wonder why we bother with X-rays at all. And ultrasound results remain operator-dependent.”
Her eyes caressed him. “And since our operator is the best there is, we did find confirming signs—daughter cysts, sand…”
“But not an exact position. But, wonder of wonders, there is the barest shadow in the X-ray of a thin rim of calcification delineating the cyst.”
“Enough for you to go in with confidence?”
He gave the X-rays one last assessing look, then handed them to her. “I believe so.”
“OK, Dante, he’s under. You can go ahead.”
Dante looked at his anesthetist. Sam Hiller wasn’t looking at him. Not likely when he could barely take his eyes off Gulnar. Dante sympathized. And because he knew Gulnar was his alone, as long as their…arrangement lasted, he didn’t mind.
He still couldn’t believe what she’d done to him. She’d created new facets in him, new personas. The perpetually lusting male. The powerless, dependent creature. The devil-may-care rogue. The fearless fighter. And then there were the richness and tenderness and joy and freedom and constant surprises…
He knew he was heading fast for the fall of his life, the one he’d never recover from. He’d taken the leap into the chasm the day he’d come back, was now suspended in mid-air. Until he began his descent and crashed, it felt like soaring.
Helena’s guttural voice intruded into his contemplations as he marked the field of surgery on Khurdi’s abdomen. She was asking Gulnar something, her eyes as heavily on him as Sam’s were on Gulnar. But that he minded. He shouldn’t have agreed to make her his second assistant. Hell, he didn’t need a second assistant.
He shook his head and decided to give the staring Helena something to do to take her focus off him. “Gulnar, will you tell Helena to go find out if we have 0.5 per cent cetrimide solution in our pharmacy? It’s the agent of choice for cyst cavity sterilization. If we have it, I’d rather use it instead of formalin.”
Gulnar translated and the woman at last shifted her glassy blue eyes off him and went out to do his bidding. He breathed a sigh of relief. Then he began the procedure.
He made a mid-line incision at the same level as the cyst, then deepened it throughout the layers of the abdominal wall then pulled back as Gulnar placed self-retaining retractors, opening the operative field.
“We need to protect the surrounding tissues,” he informed her. “Once I begin removal of the daughter cysts, any spillage can seed the abdomen with the parasite and cause secondary infestation.”
“As I remember—packing by formalin soaked packs?”
“You remember right.”
They finished packing t
he abdomen then he began evacuating cysts by strong suction and injecting formalin into their cavities. He repeated the procedure until the return was completely clear then instilled formalin into the cavities.
“We’ll let it sit for ten minutes, evacuate it, irrigate the cavities with isotonic sodium chloride solution. This ensures both mechanical and chemical evacuation and destruction of all cyst contents.”
Helena came back at that moment, sniffed the formalin and frowned.
“Tell her we’re sorry to send her on a wild-goose chase.” He fixed his eyes on Sam’s. “That Sam remembered just after she left that we had none, so I went ahead and used the formalin.”
Sam didn’t bat an eyelid. Dante knew Helena made him uncomfortable, too. He played along, made apologetic gestures at Helena, said sorry in Badovnan.
“Would you like to fill the cavities?” Gulnar nodded eagerly. He made space for her to perform the task. After she was finished she stepped aside and Dante returned to his place.
“Reverse cutting needle? Vicryl absorbable sutures?” Gulnar asked. He nodded and she handed him the needle holder with the threaded needle to close the cysts with. “The main cyst looks too large a hole, Dante. Do you think we need a piece of omentum to fill it first?”
That was a really good idea—using a piece of the fatty sheath of the abdominal organs as filler. “Didn’t think of that but, yeah, I should.”
After he did that, he removed the ruptured bile sac, inspected the inside of the cyst, and sutured the opening where it communicated with the bile duct.
“Done. Sam?”
Sam looked at his monitors. “Strong and steady, like he’s napping.”
Dante yanked his mask down, stripped off his gloves. Gulnar shot him a questioning look. “You and Helena wrap up. Irrigate copiously with formalin then saline. And I mean copiously. Then, if she’s very anxious to get some surgical practice, you guide her through closure.” Her questioning look became one of extreme dismay. It seemed no one wanted anything to do with the buxom Helena.
He got up, giving her a you-got-her-here glance. On his way out she muttered, for his ears only, “You’ll pay for this!”
He stopped, dropped his heated retort in her ear, stopped himself with all he had from pushing her cap off and making a feast of it. “Any price, amore. Any price.”
The razor stroked down his nape. Dante squeezed his eyes tighter and surrendered to the incredible sensation. He was already addicted to this. Gulnar shaving him had to be the most erotic experience of his life. Right next to anything else he did with her. It was even more mind-melting now with them naked, just minutes after they’d made love. The feel of her lushness pressing his back, the feel of her hands spreading the gel foam, feathering his face and skull to adjust the angle she needed, her breath on him as she leaned in to concentrate on the harder-to-navigate areas around his ears, whispering to him how he’d felt inside her, how she craved everything they had together…
How would he ever shave his own head again? How would he ever even breathe, exist…?
“Can I ask you a question?”
His eyes snapped open. Gulnar hadn’t been asking him any questions. She’d told him almost everything there was to know about herself. Her childhood, her experiences in war, her refugee years, her dead fiancé. She’d even cleared away his agony over her and Lorenzo. But she hadn’t asked him anything in return. Sure, she asked just about everything that revealed his character and mind and preferences, just nothing that involved divulging personal data or facts from his past, none since asking about existing commitments. She hadn’t even asked how or why his marriage had ended. It amazed him, her lack of curiosity.
Or was it her way of keeping him anonymous, making sure he ceased to exist for her once he was gone?
If so, it was as it should be. And it hurt.
But maybe she was going to ask now. Should he answer?
With his heart dropping beats, he barely articulated a rasped, “Go ahead.”
Her hair spilled over his shoulder, caressing, scorching him with its heat and beauty. Then her question did. “Why do you keep your head wrapped up all the time?”
Ha. What a fool. Gulnar would never want to know any real information about him, would she?
Why should she when she already knows the only things that matter about you? a voice whispered inside him. She’s the only one who ever asked the right questions, the only relevant ones…
He didn’t want to dwell on this now. Answer her. “I want to be bald, but the world doesn’t agree to my decision. Everyone stares and-or bombards me with questions. A scarf solves the problem. I have a shaved head beneath it and people don’t see it to ask about it.”
“They don’t ask about the scarf, then?”
“It generates less interest. Seems I’m less conspicuous with it on.”
Her nod was thoughtful. “It does detract from your shaved magnificence.”
“Magnificence!”
“You do know how utterly breathtaking you look, bald?”
He’d thought it repelled her! At least at first. That first time when she’d seen him without the scarf. The shock in her eyes then—how could it still hurt, after all that time, and the thousand ways she’d shown him how much she lusted after each inch of him? He stood up, running his hands over the perfect smoothness she’d achieved. “First that I’ve heard it! I’ve been actually thinking of growing my hair back.”
Her dimpled, flushed lips spread, indulgence incarnate. “Don’t you dare! Haven’t you ever looked in the mirror? In women’s eyes?”
He went back to their mattress on the ground, stretched out, reached out his hand to her. “Haven’t seen anything in either.”
Her eager leap into his arms uprooted his heart all over again. “And in my eyes?”
Hunger. Appreciation. Constant and consuming. He saw that. Reveled in it. Lived for it. What would he live for after her?
For now, his hand trailed gratefully, proudly over her perfect buttock, up her satin, resilient back, ended up cupping her hungry breast. Her erect nipple hardened more. “Yeah, there I see things.”
“What? Tell me.”
“I see you and me, always ready, always hungry, feasting, worshiping. I hear us, I feel us, merged, sharing every intimacy, every privilege. Am I reading right?”
She came fully over him, rose to straddle him. He was hard again. Aching, maddened, as if he hadn’t found total satisfaction inside her just minutes ago. As if he’d been aroused all his life without possibility of relief. She took him in her hands, rested him against her flat, firm belly, stroked him, stoked him. He thrust himself into her grasp. “Your sight is perfect—double meaning, oh, so intended. Now use it to watch this…”
She rose on her knees, and a little more besides to scale his length, rested him at the honeyed heat of her entrance. Holding his eyes, she opened on him. He lunged, tried to plunge himself inside her in one thrust. She shook her head, her beloved hair an indignant flame. “Watch, darling—watch me taking you, watch yourself invading me…”
“Gulnar, mercy—I’ll come in a second like that…”
“I will, too—as soon as I have you where you belong. Watch us, darling…”
She sank on him, her mindless moans melting into delirium, taking all of him, the impending tremors of her quake that always hurtled him into his own soul-wrenching release already milking his girth for maximum stimulation, for her, for him. He shouted with it. His enslavement. Her domination. “Gulnar, amore mio…”
She screamed his agony back to him. “Dante!” Her desperation jolted inside him as she rose to begin another stroke. He thrust up into her and she took him, snatched at his length and thickness with her muscles. Then the tidal wave crashed.
He bucked off the mattress, raising her in the air with him. She was no longer bearing down on him, open, abandoning all to his impalement, her convulsions around him wrenching every last bolt of pleasure from every last nerve. He jetted inside her until
he felt he’d poured out his life essence inside her.
Still jerking with the electrocuting release, he snatched at her as she collapsed on top of him, her shudders resonating with his, their tears of deliverance mingling.
“Give me your lips, Gulnar…” he gasped, needing the emotional surrender to complete the carnal abandon.
She groped for his lips, fed him her life and passion, her moans sinking through to his soul. “Dante—Dante, I love you—love you—my love, so much. You’re my life, darling, my life…”
The words sank slowly into his mind.
Had she really said…? Not “I love what you make me feel” or “I love what you do to me” but “I love you” and “You’re my life”?
Endless moments later his shaking hand raised her face to him and her dazed eyes, sated and dissolving in tenderness, slowly filled with horror. Then emptied.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
GULNAR’S lungs emptied of air. Her heart of blood.
What had she said?
Oh, God. She’d told him.
And if the shock in his eyes was anything to go by, she’d told him the last thing he wanted to hear.
She pushed herself off him, shaking. “Strike that off the record, OK?”
He tried to catch her back, take her into his arms again. “Gulnar…”
She disentangled herself and rolled off the mattress. “No, Dante. Don’t say anything. I shouldn’t have said that. It’s none of your business what I feel.”
He sat up, barked in incredulity. “None of my business!”
“No, it isn’t. We have a deal and I’m honoring it. Remember when you told me you’d work with me, that you’d handle your desire if I didn’t want an affair, that it would be your problem and not mine? Well, same thing here. Let’s just forget it.”
He was silent for a long moment. She tried to busy herself with anything, putting on her shirt, folding up their strewn clothes, removing the mess of their last hasty meal. His arms suddenly took her from the back and she jumped. She hadn’t felt him move. Her body felt swollen, uncoordinated, torn between wanting to lean into him, to take all she could before the end that she could now taste came, and wanting to bolt, so ashamed of betraying herself, of compromising him.
