• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

“I’m going to . . . need your help,” he said as he surged forward and slid back.

“Anything . . . just don’t stop. . . .”

“Wouldn’t . . . dream . . . of it—” The rest of what he said was lost as the sex took control. “Oh, God . . . Bella!”

After they were finished, her male pulled back a little, his citrine eyes sparkling like champagne. “By the way . . . hi. I forgot to say that when I walked in.”

“Oh, I think you greeted me just fine, thank you very much.” She kissed his mouth. “Now . . . help?”

“Let’s get you tidied up,” he drawled, the light in that yellow stare of his telling her that the cleaning might well lead to more messiness.

Which it certainly did.

When they were both satiated and she’d had yet a third shower, she wrapped herself up in her robe and started toweling her hair. “Now, what do you need my help with?”

Z propped himself against the marble counter next to the sinks, rubbed his palm over his skull trim, and got dead serious.

Bella stopped what she was doing. As he stayed quiet, she backed up and sat down on the edge of the Jacuzzi to give him some space. She waited, hands clenching and releasing in her lap.

For some reason, as he sat there collecting his thoughts, she realized that they had done a lot in this bathroom. It was here that she’d found him throwing up after he’d aroused her for the very first time at that party. And then . . . after he’d rescued her from the lessers, he’d bathed her in this tub. And in the shower across the way she’d fed from him for the first time.

She thought of that rough period in their lives, her just out of her abduction, him struggling with his attraction to her. Glancing over to the right, she recalled finding him on the tile beneath an ice-cold spray, scrubbing at his wrists, believing himself unclean and unable to feed her.

He’d shown a lot of courage. Getting over what had been done to him enough to trust her had taken a lot of courage.

Bella’s eyes went back to him, and when she realized he was staring at his wrists, she said, “You’re going to try to get them removed, aren’t you.”

His mouth twitched into a half smile, the side distorted by the tail of his facial scar lifting. “You know me so well.”

“How will you get it done?” When he finished telling her, she nodded. “Excellent plan. And I’ll go with you.”

He looked up at her. “Good. Thank you. I don’t think I could do it without you.”

She stood up and went over to him. “You’re not going to have to worry about that.”

NINE

Dr Thomas Wolcott Franklin III had the second-best office in the St. Francis Hospital complex.

When it came to quality administrative real estate, the pecking order was determined by your revenues, and as chief of dermatology, T.W was behind only one other department head.

Of course, the fact that his department was such a good earner was because he’d “sold out,” as some of the academic stalwarts maintained. Under his leadership, dermatology not only handled lesions and cancers and burns in addition to chronic skin conditions such as psoriasis, eczema, and acne, but there was a whole subdivision that did only cosmetic procedures.

Face-lifts. Brow-lifts. Breast enhancements. Lipo. Botox. Restylane. A hundred other improvements. The health care model was private-practice service delivered in an academic setting, and wealthy clients loved the concept. The bulk of them came up from the Big Apple—at first making the trip for the anonymity of getting first-class treatment out of the tight-knit plastics community in Manhattan, but then, perversely, for the status. Getting “work” done in Caldwell was the chic thing to do, and, courtesy of the trend, only the chief of surgery, Manny Manello, had a better office view.

Well, Manello’s private bathroom also had marble in the shower, not just on the counters and walls, but really, who was counting.

T.W liked his view. Liked his office. Loved his work.

Which was a good thing, as his days started at seven and