Blood of Life: Cora's Choice 1-3 Bundle

by V M Black

  The chauffeur got into the driver’s seat, and the snap of his car door closing brought me back to myself. With a sudden pinch of guilt at holding him up, I buckled hurriedly.

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  “Mr. Thorne is here in Baltimore today,” he said, shifting into drive. “The office is not far.”

  The leather molded itself to every muscle, and I surrendered to its embrace, letting exhaustion settle over me like a thick blanket. It was easiest to sink into the warmth and let my fears go to sleep as the buildings passed by the tinted windows in a blur.

  I roused myself from my daze as we passed the Inner Harbor. The car swung up one of the side streets, and in a moment, the driver pulled up to the curb and sprang out, swinging open my door before I had time to do more than unbuckle and gather my jacket.

  “Top floor, Ms. Shaw,” he said, giving me a fractional bow.

  A bow? Really?

  “Thank you,” I managed awkwardly.

  The old building towered from the sidewalk in front of me, half columns of white marble flanking the high arched windows before defaulting to red brick above. The great stone letters on the frieze were darkened with the grime of a century: FIRST BANK OF BALTIMORE. But there had been no such bank in my lifetime, and there was no indication of what the building was used for now.

  It didn’t look much like a clinic or a biotech company, but it had to be one of them. What else could help me now?

  I climbed the six steps up to the brass double doors, taking note of the address in gold letters on the glass of the transom above. Linen shades shrouded the glass. The right door yielded reluctantly to my pull, and I stepped inside.

  I found myself in a marble lobby, accented with brass pots and burnished mahogany. Each of the great windows had a shade drawn over it, shutting out the street, cutting the building off from the world. Elegant people dressed in sharp suits strode across the room and spoke in low, urgent tones in corners among the groves of potted ficus. None of them spared me a glance. Among pencil skirts and neat ties, my sweater and jeans were definitely out of place.

  I’d had an internship with the corporate arm of an insurance company the summer before, and it had been nothing like this. This was the kind of scene that you saw in a movie—not a real office but the Hollywood image of one, where everyone was just a little too attractive, just a little too put together, and everything was just a little too polished.

  My stomach twisted with sudden uncertainty. What was this place? Where were the other patients, the nurses, the waiting room?

  The receptionist across from the doors took note of me and raised her eyebrows. “May I help you?”

  “Cora Shaw to see...Mr. Thorne?” I asked weakly. I hoped I remembered the name right.

  The woman smiled briefly, nodding at the central elevator. “He’s waiting for you, Ms. Shaw. Go on up. Penthouse office.”

  I went to the elevator, the shaft of which was wrapped in the curve of the staircase. It opened as soon as I hit the button. A sign? I’d had such a catastrophically bad run of luck that I was ready for anything to be a sign right now.

  I hit the twelfth floor, then fumbled in my jacket pocket for my cell, texting Lisette the full address of the building that I was in. She’d already blown up my phone with texts and calls, but I couldn’t answer them. Not yet. Not when all I had to tell her was more bad news. But I was glad she’d already seen my message. Feeling safer, I shoved the phone back in my pocket as the doors opened.

  Just like in the lobby, all the windows on this floor were shaded. A striking redhead sat behind the reception desk in an immaculate cream blouse and heavy pearls that I had no doubt were real. Again, I felt distinctly grubby and out of place, like a person who had wandered onto a stage set from off the street. I had dressed for class and a doctor’s appointment, not this.

  Whatever this was.

  I had a sick feeling that there had been some confusion, some mix up. They wouldn’t be able to help me at all. No one could....

  “Ms. Shaw?” the woman asked, smiling with perfectly pitched pleasantry. “Mr. Thorne will see you now.”

  She must have pushed a button, because the tall mahogany doors beyond her desk swung open.

  I braced myself and went inside. The doors closed silently behind me.

  Chapter Three

  Shadows crowded in the corners of Mr. Thorne’s office, spilling toward the center of the room. The marble tile of the rest of the office gave way to elegant parquet here, scattered with rugs that were worth every penny of my student loans and more. Oils of hunting scenes hung on the paneled walls, and the ceiling, at least a dozen feet above my head, was intricately coffered.

  No, it didn’t seem much like a biotech company at all.

  “Ah, Ms. Shaw.” The voice came from the shadows at the far end of the room. It was rich, low, and dark with some private humor.

  I stepped forward, feeling the heat rise in my cheeks. “Cora,” I offered.

  “Yes, I know. Please, take a seat.”

  I could make out the shape of the man behind the enormous, gleaming desk, but the discreet lighting seemed designed to conceal his face. Two massive armless chairs crouched on lion’s paw feet in the center of another thick rug. Cautiously, I took one, sitting on the very edge of the brocaded seat. The recessed light above me shone directly into my eyes. I squinted to see beyond it and could only get the impression of wide shoulders and dark hair.

  “Mr. Thorne, I’m sorry. I think there must have been some kind of mistake,” I began.

  “There has been no mistake.” That voice again—warm and amber. It was effortlessly intimate while being entirely polite.

  I shivered slightly and wished that the door to the reception room was still open.

  “I have your medical record here, Ms. Shaw,” the man continued. Hands emerged from the shadows—strong and masculine, with long blunt fingers. He flipped open the laptop in front of him with a carelessly graceful gesture, and in the sudden glow, I could make out his features.

  I swallowed hard. His black hair swept immaculately to the side, and his long jaw and broad forehead were balanced by an elegant, slightly aquiline nose. His face seemed a little too symmetrical, almost artificially so, like it belonged to the paintings on the walls instead of to a living, breathing man.

  I wished suddenly that the lush rug under my feet could swallow me up.

  “Cora Ann Shaw. T-cell prolymphocytic leukemia. Terminal. Is that correct?”

  The cold summary hit me like a blow. I opened my mouth, and for a moment nothing came out. He raised his gaze to meet mine. His eyes were icy blue, and they seemed to look right through me.

  “Yes,” I breathed. “That’s right. Dr. Robeson said you could help me.”

  “You must understand that you are first required to pass the initial tests,” he said, his brow low and stern.

  “I understand,” I said, even though I didn’t.

  Mr. Thorne opened a drawer and took out a small black case. He stood and circled the desk until he stood above me, so close that I might have reached out and touched the hem of his pinstripe suit jacket. He was, I thought, quite tall.

  He set the case on the edge of the desk and unzipped it, opening it to reveal a kind of blood collection kit. I sat up straighter. With the last round of medication, I’d become used to regular injections, but I still wouldn’t say that I was exactly blasé about needles.

  And anyhow, blood collection? In an office? That was...unconventional.

  “The results of the screening will indicate if you are a good candidate for the procedure,” Mr. Thorne said. He selected a needle from the array inside the case, locking it into a holder. “But you must know, even if the outcome is encouraging, the treatment is only successful in a small minority of cases.”

  “How small?” I asked, as much to distract myself from his preparations as out of a desire to know the answer. I could always Google for details later.

  “One in a h
undred,” he said. “Perhaps less.”

  “Oh,” I said in a little voice. “That is small.”

  “And if the procedure is unsuccessful, it always results in death,” he continued.

  “Wait, what?” What the hell kind of procedure was that? “So a one percent chance of cure, and a ninety-nine percent chance of death? That doesn’t sound like smart odds to me.”

  He looked up from the needle. His gaze pierced me, his eyes deep and hollow under his straight black brows. As handsome as he was, he didn’t exactly look the picture of health, either. “What are your chances now?”

  I opened my mouth, then shut it. My chances were exactly nil. Put that way, gambling on an outside chance didn’t seem quite so insane.

  “That is why we only select terminal patients,” he said, pulling out a glass blood collection tube.

  “What about relapse?” I demanded. As a cancer patient, I’d learned that the disease could lurk in my body for months or years, undetectable until it spread out again to kill me.

  “There is no risk of relapse. If you are cured, you are cured.” That mesmerizing gaze caught me again. “Forever.”

  He dropped to one knee next to my chair, and my heart did an unexpected backflip. Oh, God, he was a beautiful man, more beautiful than he had any right to be. I tried to think about something else, anything else, because this certainly wasn’t the right kind of response of a patient to her doctor. But this close, I could smell his cologne, all sandalwood, leather, and musk, and my mind refused to obey my order to find something else to dwell on. Pink elephants, pink elephants, pink elephants....

  How old was he? I wondered. He carried the authority of an older man, but this close, I could see that his pale skin was almost inhumanly flawless, not so much young as...perfect.

  Damn.

  At least it was too dark for him to see my furious blush.

  He held out a hand. I stared at it for a moment before I realized that he wanted my arm.

  “Shouldn’t you be wearing gloves?” I asked.

  “I am not at risk of blood contamination,” he said, sounding unaccountably amused.

  For some reason, I believed him, even though I had no reason to. I gave him my arm, inner wrist facing upwards. His fingers touched my skin, cool and commanding, as he slid the sleeve of my sweater up to bare the crease of my elbow. It sent a deep shiver through me, a tightening in my center that made me blush even harder. My jacket slipped from my lap to crumple on the floor between us. I tried not to look at him, but I could not stop myself from staring at the top of his head with such intensity that I was half-surprised that his impeccably combed hair didn’t combust.

  He’s about to stick you with a needle, you idiot, I snarled at myself. Don’t you have any sense or dignity at all?

  He looked up at me, one side of that delicious mouth quirking, and my breath tangled in my lungs. No, no I don’t, I thought distantly. No sense or dignity at all.

  Mr. Thorne wiped the inside of my elbow with an alcohol-soaked swab. The smell of evaporating ethanol turned my stomach a little.

  “It won’t hurt,” he said, discarding the swab and taking up the needle. “I promise.”

  I started to protest such an absurd claim, but just then, the needle met the skin above my vein. Something else happened at the same moment—some sensation that came from the touch of his hand against my wrist. It spiraled outward, up my arm and deep into my center, rippling back up into my head so suddenly that I gasped. The needle pushed through my skin at the same moment that a heady wave welled up to carry the pain of the needle and turn it into a deep, twisting sensation that sent my heart racing as heat flooded my groin.

  I stared at the needle in my arm as the shivering reaction swept over me. My skin was burning, my body flushed against the impossible coolness of his fingers. The blood collection tube was almost full. Swiftly, Mr. Thorne pulled it free, then slipped the needle from my vein.

  “No—” I said involuntarily as the sensation was cut off. I needed—I needed it back. I needed him.

  What was wrong with me?

  I turned my bewildered gaze to Mr. Thorne. His face was still as pale as ivory, but there was a dark glitter in his hooded eyes that matched my need and sent my heart skittering out of control.

  “What did you do to me?” I whispered.

  “You would say yes,” he said, the dark hunger of his voice tinged with an infinite sadness as he stood and discarded the used needle, setting the blood collection tube upon the desk. “If I told you right now that I knew you would die, you would still say yes.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said, even as my body said, I would—to anything, anything at all...

  He bent over me, and I tried not to notice the scent of him. He touched the bead of blood that had formed upon the needle’s exit. I could hear his breathing now—irregular as mine had become. With the tip of his forefinger, he scooped up the droplet, holding it suspended just as he held me with the force of his regard.

  A shudder went through his frame, and he curled his fingers into a fist, smearing the blood across his palm. Suddenly, he seemed to grow, as if some darkness were uncurling inside him, extending past the limits of flesh and bone.

  “Go,” he ground out. “Go now, before I damn my best intentions.”

  It was as if some invisible bonds that had been holding me to my chair had been broken. I sprang up, snatched up my jacket, and fled, banging through the tall mahogany doors and not stopping until I jabbed the down button on the elevator.

  “Goodbye, Miss Shaw,” the secretary said unconcernedly from behind her desk. “You can expect the results within a week.”

  The door slid open, and I stumbled into the elevator compartment, slapping at the ground floor button frantically until the doors finally, reluctantly closed.

  Chapter Four

  The elevator began to move, and I let out a breath of air I hadn’t realized I’d been holding.

  What the hell had just happened?

  That man—Mr. Thorne—clearly he’s some kind of perv. He’s dosed me, roofied me or something.

  How? I asked myself. With the power of his hands? Oh, God, that was what it had felt like. I lifted my hands to my cheeks. Even now they were flushed. And he had felt it, too. I knew what desire looked like, and that impossibly handsome man had desired...me.

  It wasn’t that I thought I was unattractive. But I’d come there as a patient seeking medical advice. What was his game? What did he want, other than patients for his trial? And why?

  I stepped from the elevator back into the lobby. The receptionist looked up and greeted me with another bright smile, a jarring counterpoint to the man who lurked in darkness in the office above. “The car is waiting for you, Ms. Shaw. You will be taken back to your vehicle.”

  I nodded to her and went outside. The Bentley hummed at the curb, and the chauffeur opened the door at my approach. Dumbly, I sat inside, and the car rolled away.

  My body ached, but it ached with a far different kind of pain than that which had become my constant companion in the last few months. It was a part of me that I had thought had died, stolen by the sickness months ago. Now all my nerves were awake and singing, and I had nothing to tell them because they only wanted one thing.

  Him.

  I hardly noticed when the chauffeur pulled up behind my battered Ford Focus in the parking garage. I didn’t even think to ask him how he knew where I was parked or what my car looked like. I was far beyond wondering about those kinds of things.

  I ducked out of the car, fumbling for my keys as I stepped unsteadily onto the concrete. By the time I had opened the driver’s side door of my Focus, the Bentley had purred out of sight. I collapsed into the chill of the driver’s seat. I wondered if I had just imagined everything. Already, it seemed as insubstantial as the clouds that materialized with my every breath, evaporating before I drew the next. I pushed up my sleeve and stared at the tiny needle prick there. I shivered as a shad
ow of sensation went through me again.

  I closed my eyes, leaning my head against the edge of the steering wheel. My phone dug into my stomach, which reminded me—Lisette.

  Abruptly, I opened my eyes and started the engine, the car coughing to life in the cold.

  What the hell was I going to tell Lisette?

  ***

  At the door of our campus apartment, I stopped and tried to rub some color into my cheeks, dredging up my last reserves of strength before I went in. Lisette was already worried sick about me, and I didn’t have much good news to give her. She didn’t deserve to be burdened more.

  I unlocked the door and pushed it open in the same movement.

  “I’m back!” I called as I headed down the short hall to the living area.

  Lisette looked up instantly from her laptop. “Hey, Cora’s here,” she said to the faces on the screen. “Gotta go.”

  “Hi, Cora!” the faces chorused, waving with forced cheer. “Bye, Cora!” Hannah and Sarah hung up.

  Lisette opened her mouth—to scold me for my strange texts, no doubt—but taking a look at my face, she seemed to change her mind and treated me to a brittle smile instead.

  I never was very good at fooling her.

  “I grabbed some extra dinner for you at the dining hall,” she said, patting the foam takeout box. “Eat. Chelsea and Christina are already gone.”

  For our senior year, Lisette, Chelsea, Christina, and I had ditched the dorms, which were dominated by underclassmen, for an on-campus pre-furnished apartment. There were four tiny bedrooms, two bathrooms, and a common kitchen and living area.

  I felt a stab of guilt. Chelsea and Christina were probably already out drinking, but Lisette had put her own plans on hold to wait for me to come back.

  “You don’t have to stay in because of me,” I said. “It’s Friday. Sarah and Hannah will probably have a dozen people in their apartment by now.”