Immortal Healer (6 page)

Abigail rolled to her side and pulled her knees up as she snuggled into the warmth of the bedding and watched him. His back was to her, and she let her eyes travel every inch of him. He wasn’t at all tall and lanky, but he was nowhere near being short either. His dress shirt was fitted as seemed to be the fashion with the trendy type, and it showed his trim waist and the tight muscles beneath. She could barely remember what it felt like to be trendy, but she had been once. His slacks were black, and he wore square-toed black leather ankle boots. He looked like a page from a damn magazine, and the most she could say of herself was she’d managed to get a comb through her hair.

When her eyes started to feel heavy, she let them slowly close. She wasn’t quite ready to stop looking at him, but she was just too damn tired. Every muscle in her body was aching and begging her for sleep, and as her eyes flit open one last time, it was to catch him looking at her again. His face looked oddly sad, pained in some way, but she was too far gone to ask.

Chapter 6

There wasn’t much that surprised him in the world anymore, but when she let out the most blood-curdling scream he’d ever heard, he was more than surprised. He panicked as he leaped from his bed, darting through his office and down the clinic corridor to her.

He’d only left her and retired to his room because he couldn’t stop staring at her, and as he burst into the room where he’d last seen her sleeping soundly, she was gone. But she wasn’t really. He could smell her blood, and he followed the scent to find her huddled between the wall and hospital bed. She’d torn the I.V. from her hand, and it dripped down her leg. Her knees were pulled up, and she was clutching them tightly with her hands as her breaths came in quick short gasps. Her eyes were open wide, staring at some unknown spot in front of her, and she looked nearly insane.

He had to pull the bed out from the wall to get to her, and when he kneeled in front of her, she yelped, and her lips trembled. He reached slowly out to her hand, and though she flinched when she felt his touch, she let him help her up from floor. Her breathing slowed as he got her back onto the bed. He worked on her I.V. as she watched.

“I’m sorry.” Her voice was quiet, and she sounded embarrassed.

“Don’t be.” He tried to smile, but he was more shaken than he cared to admit.

“I don’t sleep so well anymore.” She let out a weak laugh, and he managed a smile that time.

“How often do you have nightmares?”

“A lot. Five or six nights a week at least. Thought they were going to kick me out of the shelter a few times recently.” She tried to laugh again, but it fell flat.

He wet a washcloth and cleaned the blood from her hand, and then he brought her a clean gown. He kept a steady hand on her elbow as he walked her to the adjoining bathroom, and he waited until she reemerged. She had little strength in her body at the moment, and he was terrified even changing her gown might tax her too much, but she managed. That is until she tried to walk back over to her bed.

Her knees gave out, and as he ran swiftly to her, he watched as her eyes rolled back in her head. He caught her before she hit the floor, lifting her into his arms. She felt as though she weighed nothing at all, and after he laid her gently in the bed again, he pulled the blankets up. He pulled the chair over and waited for her to wake. She did slowly, blinking back to consciousness, and when she saw him, she looked around confused.

“You fainted.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Stop apologizing. You’ve done nothing wrong. Now how about you get some rest? I’ll stay here while you sleep in case you have any more bad dreams.” He kept his voice quiet, and she nodded quickly as relief passed her face.

She had two more nightmares that night alone and two more the following night. He gave up leaving her side and ended up propping his feet up on her bed with his laptop in his lap. It didn’t take long for him to realize he much preferred to stare at her than check his e-mail or analyze test results, and by midway through the second night, he put the laptop away and gave into his desire to watch her.

He let his gaze trace every angle of her features, studying the plumpness of her lips, the length of her eyelashes, even the way her skin seemed to flow over her muscles and bones in such perfect smoothness. She was stunning. She didn’t deserve to have had that beauty used against her—abused and disrespected.

When she started to whine and whimper in her sleep again, he reached to the smooth skin along her cheek. She was nearly as pale as he was, and he loved the way her skin looked next to his. He loved the feel of it even more. He shushed her as he stroked, and her whimpers turned to quiet humming as she relaxed back into sleep.

Not desiring this woman was impossible. Her beauty begged to be exploited, and he knew, though he was succumbing to it himself further with every passing moment, that it was more a burden to her than anything else. There would always be a man, a monster of some sort in the world, waiting to take that beauty and victimize it. His heart raced for a moment as he watched her peaceful face. It was panic. He wanted to protect her. She deserved to be protected. But he wanted her too.

*

“Please may I take a bath now? I promise I’m stronger.” She didn’t feel very strong at all, but being in this man’s presence in her current state was torture. “I’m going to have rodents living in my hair soon.” He turned to her with an amused smirk from the counter where he worked on his laptop. She’d been watching TV on the wall mounted flat panel television by the hospital bed for nearly two hours. It was the longest she’d been awake in the past two days, and she finally felt ready to be alive again. She was tired of being sick, as though she’d made a decision to simply turn it off, but there it was. She was going to be well. And now, damnit!

“Are you sure you’re strong enough?” She didn’t care whether she was or not. She nodded her head, and he moved to the counter behind him, grabbing a cotton ball. She watched as he unhooked the I.V. from its line and swiftly pulled the line from her vein as he replaced it with the cotton ball. His hands looked so clean and perfect against her own. The sponge bath helped, but there was no fixing this kind of dirty but a bath. He held out his hand as she slid from the bed.

She was weak. More than weak. Her legs wobbled, and her joints ached. She was ready to simply curl up in a nice warm bed again in her exhaustion, but she’d prefer to be clean first. He led her from the room with a firm grip on her waist, and his other hand on her elbow. But he didn’t take her to the clinic’s bathroom. The clinic also connected to a small corridor that led back through a large and lavish office, lined floor to ceiling with bookshelves and then into an expansive bedroom she could only assume was his. She hadn’t seen his bedroom during her short stay with him before, and as they exited the office, she looked around his private space. It had the same tall ceilings and French doors that led to a balcony. Drapes hung from floor to ceiling, and they were open to the night beyond. The French doors stood wide open, and a cool breeze left her skin prickling in goose bumps.

His hand on her elbow moved to stroke her shoulder as the bumps popped from her skin, and she shivered. His bathroom adjoined the bedroom on the other side of the room from the office, and it was massive. The bathtub was a large soaker tub with a wide ledge across the front. He left her sitting on a small bench against the wall as he moved to run the water. She watched him. His skin was so impressively smooth, and it left her fingers itching to stroke his cheek. He bent over to the bathtub, adjusting and testing the temperature of the water, and her gaze traveled to his bottom. His pants were a gray wool, summer weight, and they showed the contour and strength of his buttocks in their slim fit.

Her skin was flushed and warm as she studied the strong cheeks under the fabric. God, she wanted to touch him. He was stepping out of the safety of that other world and straight into this one, challenging what she was willing to feel about him. It was trust, desire, want. When he turned to her, her eyes moved away from his body but not quick enough. He said nothing though, he simply watched her with his incredible grayish blue eyes while his jaw tightened again.

He approached, and after helping her to her feet, he reached to her shoulders. His fingers slipped beneath the thin straps of the gown as he started to ease them down her shoulders. A flash of panic hit like a jolt of energy through her system, and her hands flew up to grab his forearms. He didn’t flinch—didn’t react in any way—he just watched her steadily. He had the damn unnerving ability of showing no reaction to her he didn’t wish her to see.

“You’re far too weak to do this on your own. I’m a doctor, and I’ve seen every body imaginable, and that includes yours.” His voice was warm, almost seductive as he spoke. “Besides, your figure is really quite lovely.”

“Well, that’s not very doctorly.” Her voice was weak and raspy. She was trying to be sarcastic and strong, but it was lost in her nervousness.

“No, I suppose it isn’t.” His voice was suddenly as quiet and unsure as hers, but it didn’t stop him from patiently waiting for her to release her hold on his arms. When she dropped her hands to her sides, he slid the straps down her arms. Her breasts were slowly exposed, and she took a deep breath to calm herself. Her nipples were already tight, but as the cool air touched her skin and her nerves set in, her nipples became hard pebbles she could feel constrict and tighten by the second.

His eyes remained on hers, never straying below her neck as his hands pushed the soft fabric down to her waist. She was trembling and could barely meet his gaze. Her mind was betraying her, and desire coursed through her head. It was a desire that wanted to reach out and touch him, stroke his pale and perfect skin. She recalled longing like this in her former life. Long before Mason and his merry monsters. She’d wanted men like any woman did. She’d pined over a professor or two in her day, flirted on occasion at a party, even made out with a few guys over the years. And this need she felt to be close to him felt so very much like a long lost memory from that life—that carefree existence that enjoyed the touch of a man.

When he pulled her gown down past her hips, he leaned closer to her. Their cheeks nearly touched as he leaned down to push the fabric over her bottom, and he brushed his fingers gently over the skin of her buttocks. She gasped as his eyes moved to hers, and the fabric dropped to pool around her ankles. She stepped from it as he walked her to the bathtub, and he helped her to step into the incredible, perfect warmth of the water. She sank to her neck, letting it envelope her like a watery cocoon, and she closed her eyes and let her head fall back, wetting and clearing some of the muck from her long hair.

His hand touched her hair, stroking through the oily filth, and her eyes opened to find him still studying her face. As he grabbed a bottle of shampoo, she sat, pulling her knees to her chest and dropping her head to rest her cheek on her knees. He lathered and scrubbed and gently washed away the dirt of the streets. Her face was away from him, and she closed her eyes, imagining this touch on every last inch of her skin. It would feel amazing; there was no question about it.

She imagined him naked. She had no frame of reference, but she let her mind drift away to her safe world where she was allowed to want him. What must he look like naked? He had to be beautiful. She couldn’t imagine him anything but stunning. Amazing that such a stunning man was spending his time scrubbing the gunk from her body; even more amazing was that she was letting him, enjoying it even. She wondered if he would be large. She met a few unwelcome dicks during her time with Mason, and she didn’t like a single one of them, but when she imagined his, which had to be so much like theirs, it sent a pulse of warmth straight to the place between her legs that begged her brain to indulge in her safe world and let it invade her real world.

His fingers slowly pulled from her hair, and she turned to him. “Lay back. I’ll help you rinse.” He smiled even less than she did, and she liked it about him. Mason smiled at her constantly. But it was a sick, evil, and sadistic smile. She could almost see the demons bouncing around in his head, begging him to hurt her, but Quentin was so very quiet. Her image of his mind was peaceful and soothing. He wasn’t a weak man for his quiet demeanor. In fact, he intimidated her as much as anyone ever had. His strength was completely in his composure, and he didn’t need to announce it to impart it.

He ran his fingers through her long hair as she sank into the water. She arched her back to submerge the hair along her forehead, and as she did, the peaks of her breasts pushed up from the water. He moaned so quietly she almost missed it, and her eyes flew open to see his gaze trained on her hard and erect nipples. He didn’t look away from her breasts, and she didn’t try to hide herself. Her heart was pounding, and he must have heard it, but it was many seconds later before he let his gaze drift slowly up from her chest to meet her eyes.

“I’ll get you a clean gown.” He stood silently and walked from the room. She used the washcloth he’d set by the side of the bathtub to wash her body before he returned. When he appeared again, he helped her stand from the water, sending more goose bumps to cover her skin as the cool air touched her. She dried herself and dressed as he waited patiently for her to finish, and when he walked her to the same bedroom she’d been in a couple weeks before, her bag was there, empty and sitting on a chair.

“Your clothes are being washed. I’ll let you get settled in. There’s a TV if you’d like, but you still need to get plenty of rest. Let me know if you need anything.” And he was gone. She was alone. She was lonely, and she craved something she couldn’t possibly want.

Chapter 7