“Uh, right. Great.” Something was wrong here. This thing between them shouldn’t be so complicated. Amelia wanted him, he was sure of it. And he sure as hell wanted her. So why wasn’t he stripping her down on one of the tables, or the manacle chair?
Amelia faced him askance. “You’re not changing your mind, are you?”
“What? No. Absolutely not. I’m just … thinking.”
She raised an eyebrow at him before she turned back to work, snapping a vial into an injection gun. “About what?”
“You,” he said. “What else is there worth thinking about?”
The gun wavered in her hands. “How about that you might die this week?”
“So you keep telling me. Is that how you keep your mind off what we did?”
“In the chair, please,” she said.
“Does it work?” he asked. “I’d really like to know this, you see.” She walked away from him, toward the manacle chair, giving him no choice but to follow. “Because no matter how often you keep reminding me that I’m a dead man walking, all I keep seeing is your face when you came for me.” He could still feel the way her body had tensed against him, how she’d clutched him and dug her little nails into his back. He could feel her heat squeezing his cock, and her scent was all around him still. He couldn’t seem to get rid of the memory. It kept coming back to him, and he had to remind himself he wasn’t in bed with her anymore.
Amelia wouldn’t meet his gaze. It was probably a good thing. If she showed even hinted she was thinking the same thing, he’d be on her in a split second. “Sit,” she said.
“I won’t let you forget it, Amelia.” Somehow, after sating themselves on each other, they’d left things frustratingly unfinished. Gabriel cupped her cheek, coaxed her to look at him. “You can’t blow this off. We have something here.” Damned if he knew what it was, though.
“This is the first part of your treatment,” Amelia said, but her voice was unsteady. “It’s to prepare your body for the shift. If it’s successfully integrated, it should help you heal a lot faster.”
Gabriel dropped his hand and took a seat. “And if it isn’t?”
“Then you’re shit out of luck and the first change will kill you.”
He snorted. “Good to know.”
“Luckily, your current injury gives us a chance to test it and recalculate if something goes wrong.” She turned his hand palm up on the armrest and put the injection gun to his vein.
Gabriel caught her hand to stop her. “A kiss for good luck?” Come on, angel. Give me something here.
He thought she would refuse, but then she licked her lips and brought them to his. Gabriel let her set the pace, didn’t push for more, just gently coaxed her to open to him. Her kiss was sweet and slow, almost like she was trying to soothe him. Or to apologize.
He reached for her, intending to pull her into his lap and kiss her proper, when the needle stung his arm and the gun injected the serum.
Amelia pulled back, looking into his face. Probably checking his pupils or something. “Are you okay?” she asked.
“No,” he answered. “Kiss me again.”
She wanted to. He could see it. Instead she stepped back. “I need to monitor your vitals in case something goes wrong.”
Gabriel growled and pulled her down into his lap. He clamped his arms around her to keep her there.
“What are you doing! I told you—”
“Just stay still a minute and let me enjoy this. I won’t try anything.”
“Then what’s the point?” Always thinking. But she stopped struggling. Even if she was still tense.
“Consider it an experiment.”
“Experiment.”
“Uh-huh. I postulate that holding you like this will relieve my anxiety and slow my heart rate.”
Amelia looked at him for a moment, then tensed, straining away. He tightened his hold on her on instinct. “I want my notepad,” she said. Gabriel allowed her enough room to reach for it.
When she settled back, she relaxed against him. “Every experiment needs data.” Tapping in commands, she brought up a miniature scan of his body, along with all his vitals. His heart rate slowed and evened out, and his BP lowered.
Amelia looked at him, seeming astonished.
Gabriel shrugged. “I told you.”
“Amazing,” she mumbled, checking and double checking everything on her small screen. “And the serum is working. Your ribs are knitting back together. Can you feel it?”
He winced. “It itches like crazy.”
She smiled at him and it was like watching a brilliant sunrise. Wriggling out of his arms, she ran to one of the many cupboards and pulled out another gigantic syringe.
“Oh, now wait a minute,” he said. “We’re not doing that again.”
“Have to,” she said. “The bandage is permanent unless I dissolve it. If I don’t, after a while your body will form a fluid filled cyst around it and I’ll have to go in to remove it surgically.”
Gabriel glared.
“Come on, don’t be such a baby.”
He choked. “A baby?”
“Look at it this way. If you can’t handle this, then you sure as hell can’t handle every bone in your body stretching, distending and breaking to accommodate a new shape. We might as well give up now and save you a lot of pain.”
“Fine,” he growled. “But next time I’m getting knee walking drunk before I let you do anything to me.”
Her mouth quirked. “Noted.” She adjusted the chair so it stretched out into a gurney. “Lift up your shirt, please.”
Gabriel grinned. “You do it.”
She hesitated.
“Come on, after this morning, you’re still shy? About something so simple? Not like I’m asking you to pull down my pants and suck my di—”
“Fine,” she said quickly. With that syringe at the ready, she pulled up his shirt and touched the needle to his side.
“No anesthetic this time?”
“I’m not going deep. You shouldn’t feel more than a prick.” The needle stabbed through his skin and muscle. He felt it enter the chemical bandage, but there was no pain. Amelia pressed along the rib as she injected the fluid. “It’s dissolving into saline.” Still no pain. At least not from the injection. As she dissolved the one on the other rib, he flexed his abs, ready to sit up, and winced. Without the bandage support, the freshly healed breaks strained. They were whole, but still fragile and felt like a deep bruise he couldn’t ice.
“Damn.”
“What’s wrong?” Amelia tossed the syringe onto a tray and grabbed her e-pad again. “Vitals are stable, BP slightly elevated. No adverse reaction to the bandage or solvent. Are you in pain?”
The monitors suddenly blinked and shut down.
“What the—”
“Gladius!”
Gabriel sat up so fast he felt one of the ribs crack again. Aw fuck!
Now he was in pain.
And in trouble. A whole lot of trouble.
*
Amelia spun on her bare heels to face the intruders she hadn’t heard enter as the computers booted back up again.
“Unauthorized system shutdown,” her computer system said. “Initiating diagnostic scan.”
Three large, muscled men accompanied the tall, curvy woman with a ridiculously red wig. “I am getting so sick of people coming in uninvited,” she muttered.
The fake redhead smiled beatifically and opened her arms to Gabriel. They were weighed down by at least two pounds of golden cuffs and bracelets. “My Champion. Gladius, how I’ve missed you!”
Amelia transferred her gaze to Gabriel. He was sitting up, staring at the quartet with murder in his eyes, a muscle jumping in his jaw. “Friends of yours?” Amelia asked.
He said nothing. Her e-pad beeped insistently. His heart rate was through the roof. Who the hell were these people?
“Will you not greet me properly, Gladius?” the woman inquired and though the request was sweet and almost hurt, t
here was an underlying edge to her voice. It wasn’t a request, it was a command.
Out of the corner of her eye, Amelia saw Gabriel’s hands curl around the edge of the gurney, knuckles white. “Shit,” he breathed.
His vitals were going haywire. She had to calm him somehow. “‘Gladius’?” she repeated, keeping her voice carefully neutral.
“Latin for sword,” the woman said, seeming delighted to have someone to speak to. Her arms had lowered and she now had her hands clasped demurely in front of her.
“Also for penis,” Gabriel added. Amelia could see the effort it took for him to release his death grip on the gurney. She couldn’t be sure, but she thought he called the woman a bitch under his breath.
Amelia set the e-pad aside. “Give me your left hand,” she said.
He looked at her in surprise, but complied.
Holding his forearm in one hand, she placed the other over his recently broken ribs. “Push your shoulder down and your chest out to the right,” she said. He was reaching across his torso to her. If his ribs still bothered him, he would feel it now. “So she just called you a dick?” she said to take his mind off things.
Some of the tension left him, but Gabriel still wouldn’t look at her for more than a second. “She thinks the Latin makes it sound classier.” He showed no reaction to her touch but she could feel the fracture. It had to be causing him pain. It didn’t show past the seething rage in his eyes.
Amelia released his wrist and he subtly brushed his fingers over the length of her arm as she let go of his ribs, too.
The redhead woman huffed. “Well, aren’t you going to introduce me?”
“No,” Gabriel said simply.
“So rude, my Champion.”
“Go fuck yourself,” he snapped. “How’s that?”
Amelia expected the bodyguards to step up, but they didn’t twitch.
The redhead shivered. “Will you watch?”
Now was as good a time as any to ask. “Why is she wearing bed sheets?” The woman had white sheets draped over her from shoulder to ankle. They were held in place by golden ropes tied around her waist and shoulders. It looked like she’d be naked if she took one wrong step.
Amelia’s question was ignored.
“Gladius, I missed you so,” the redhead said, mewling. “Come give us a kiss.”
Amelia wanted to snarl at her. “He needs to rest. He’s been injured recently.”
The redhead gasped—so obviously an act. “Goodness me, what happened?”
“A brawl,” Amelia said. “I was there when it happened. Offered my services as a medical professional. Mr. Connors has been a patient here for a while now.”
“Why would you care if Mr. Connors got hurt?” the woman asked, sounding perplexed.
“Because he did it in defense of me,” Amelia lied without hesitation. She didn’t like the woman’s theatrics.
“Ah, sentiment.” Her tone said how precious she found it.
One of the bodyguards snickered. “You ran away to play doctor?” Oh, good. So it wasn’t only Gabriel in Rome with an infantile sense of inappropriate humor. Now she knew where he got it.
“I still have a week,” Gabriel snapped. “Why are you here?”
Curious, he hadn’t asked how they found him.
“Silas,” the redhead said, “explain.”
“The fair Honoria, Caesar of Rome has given you leave to venture out of the city,” Muscle Number Two said. “She has not cleared you to leave the planet.”
All pretense of civility left the redhead. “I don’t know how you managed to get off world, but rest assured those who aided you will pay.” Then she smiled. “Now, my Champion. You had to know we’d find you eventually. So why have you come here? Who is she to you?”
“Wait,” Amelia said, inserting herself into a conversation which did not in any way pretend to include her, and turned fully to Gabriel. “She’s the Caesar?” Honoria, and not the man in the recording he’d shown her that first night. “Caesar is a woman?”
Gabriel nodded tensely, not taking his gaze off the intruders.
“How’d you manage that?” she asked Honoria.
The redhead shrugged a shoulder and set down the instrument she’d absently picked up. Something told Amelia nothing this woman did was an accident, or without purpose. “Killed the last Caesar in his sleep,” Honoria answered easily.
Cut the head off a snake … another grows in its place. If the former Caesar had been the merciless ruler in the recording, Amelia couldn’t imagine how much worse this woman could be, that Gabriel felt he had to take her out no matter what the cost to himself.
Honoria was meandering around her lab, looking bored but those deceptively uninterested eyes missed nothing.
“Diagnostic scan complete. Reinitiating last session. Please enter password.”
Amelia tapped on her e-pad to shut down all screens and Honoria swung her cold, viper gaze to Amelia. “Something to hide?”
“My work is proprietary. Yes, I try to keep it from others.”
“Enough with this,” Honoria said. “You’re coming back with us. Now.”
“I’m afraid I can’t allow that,” Amelia said. Gabriel wasn’t going anywhere until he was good and ready.
Honoria raised a perfectly groomed eyebrow. “You think you have a say in this, doctor?”
Gabriel tensed behind her, his vitals spiking again.
Amelia made sure to keep her voice steady and professional. “As his physician, his welfare is my concern. I cannot in good conscience clear him for duty until I am assured he will be able to hold his own. What would be the point of healing him, if he ends up getting himself killed the moment he steps foot back in the arena?”
“Doc,” Gabriel said in warning, but Honoria was considering the quandary. Or rather, considering an opponent. Amelia knew when she was being measured, hated it with every cell in her body because she’d been subjected to that sort of look countless times in the past. She’d accepted it as a fact of life before. Now it made her want to give this Caesar something to look at. Who the hell was she to judge Amelia?
“You needn’t have bothered coming after me,” Gabriel said, distracting her. He’d shifted closer, holding his ribs and the small motion was enough to tell her it would be unwise to antagonize the redhead right now. “I would have come back on my own.”
Honoria shot him an I-wasn’t-born-yesterday look. “I’m certain you would have.” She considered Amelia again and said, “Very well. I will allow you the rest of your free time here. I expect you back in the arena at the end of it—”
“Or you’ll kill me good and bloody,” Gabriel finished for her. “Yeah I know.”
Honoria smiled. “No, sweet Gladius. I will kill your doctor here. Good and bloody, as you say. And I’ll make you watch.” The sheer venom in her tone, the way she looked as if she would enjoy doing those things, made Amelia take an involuntary half-step back.
“I said I’d be back,” Gabriel snapped, savage hatred pouring off him.
“And now I know you’ll keep your word,” Honoria said, her tone once again civil. “Patch him up well for me, Doctor Amelia Marguerite Chase, and I’ll make sure you never want for anything for the rest of your life.”
“Save your threats and bribes,” Amelia said. “I don’t work for you. You don’t frighten me.” She would not show how unsettled it made her that Honoria knew her name.
Honoria blinked. “Oh, but my dear, no one touches my champions, unless I say so.”
Out of spite, because she was sick of people ordering her around, sick of them forcing her hand, and the decisions she had to make, she ruffled Gabriel’s hair. “There. Touched him,” she said. “What are you going to do about it?”
The smile that stretched across Honoria’s face gave Amelia chills. “Silas,” she said pleasantly, “break her arms.”
Three things happened then, all at once. The one called Silas grunted and started forward. Amelia dove for the biggest syrin
ge on her tray, filled with a chemical solution that, without the reactant, would dissolve tissue on contact. And Gabriel shoved to his feet, taking a stand between Amelia and the others.
Silas and Gabriel stopped nose to nose. Neither moved to attack, nor to make way for the other. “Back off, minion,” Gabriel said low. A warning.
Amelia palmed the syringe and edged closer to Gabriel.
“You dare defy me,” Honoria hissed.
“Call off your dogs,” Gabriel ordered. “You know they can’t match me.”
“I should have them flay you out of your skin!”
Amelia heard the chill smile in Gabriel’s voice. “Try it. I’ll break their necks, and gut you before you can scream for help.”
Fury swirled across Honoria’s features. She was tense as a rock, hardly breathing, her face turning so red it clashed with her wig. Four against one, and it appeared that Gabriel still had the upper hand here. How was it possible? Just how good a killer was he?
Finally, Honoria breathed out in defeat, though she was still livid. “Silas, heel,” she said and, like a good dog, Silas obeyed. “This isn’t over, Gabriel,” she told him. “At the end of the day, don’t forget you chose this. You owe me blood.”
Chapter 13
The moment the queen bitch and her evil minions were gone, Gabriel wheeled on Amelia. “Did you go stupid on me? What the hell is wrong with you?” His side was throbbing, his jaw ached, every muscle screamed for him to go after Honoria and finish her off.
But none of that held a candle to the mind numbing terror he’d felt when Silas came after Amelia. To break her arms. Except he wouldn’t have stopped there. And Honoria wouldn’t have called him off.
“Seems like you missed a prime opportunity there. Why didn’t you just end it?”
“You don’t think I wanted to?” He stalked her as she retreated. “You don’t think I’ve stood before that sadistic cunt a hundred times before, inches away from ripping her head off? It’s an illusion, Amelia. A great big fucking game of make-believe. I can’t take out one of her dogs without two more crawling out of the woodwork. And it’s not me they would have come after first.”
Blood Debts (The Blood Book 3) Page 11
