Lover Unbound (Black Dagger Brotherhood 5)

"What," she muttered as she kicked her foot and her pant leg slid back down.

She didn't really have to ask, though. Hard-asses like him usually didn't appreciate women doing the crying thing, but assuming that was the case, he was going to have to suck it up. Anyone would be having trouble in her shoes. Anyone.

Except instead of saying anything about the weakness of weepers in general or of her in particular, he picked the plate of chicken up off the tray and started to eat.

Disgusted with him and the whole situation, she went back to her chair. Losing the razor had taken the starch out of her overt rebellion, and in spite of the fact that she was a fighter by nature, she was resigned to a waiting game. If they were going to kill her outright, they would have; the issue now was the exit. She prayed there was one coming soon. And that it didn't involve a funeral director and a coffee can full of her ashes.

As the patient cut into a thigh, she thought absently that he had beautiful hands.

Okay, now she was disgusted with herself, too. Hell, he'd used them to hold her down and strip her coat off like she was nothing more than a doll. And just because he'd carefully folded what she'd had on afterward didn't make him a hero.

Silence stretched, and the sounds of his silverware softly hitting the plate reminded her of horribly quiet dinners with her parents.

God, those meals eaten in that stuffy Georgian dining room had been painful. Her father had sat at the head of the table like a disapproving king, monitoring the way food was salted and consumed. To Dr. William Rosdale Whitcomb, only meat was to be salted, never vegetables, and as that was his stand on the matter, everyone in the household had had to follow the example. In theory. Jane had been a frequent violator of the no-salt rule, learning how to flick her wrist so she was able to sprinkle her steamed broccoli or boiled beans or grilled zucchini.

She shook her head. After all this time, and his passing, she shouldn't still get pissed off, because what a waste of emotion. Besides, she had other things she should be worried about at the moment, didn't she.

"Ask me," the patient said abruptly.

"About what?"

"Ask me what you want to know." He wiped his mouth, the damask napkin rasping over his goatee and his beard growth. "It'll make my job harder at the end, but at least we won't be sitting here listening to the sound of my silverware."

"What job do you have at the end, exactly?" Please let it not be buying Hefty bags to put her body parts in.

"You aren't interested in what I am?"

"Tell you what, you let me go, and I'll ask you plenty of questions about your race. Until then, I'm slightly distracted with how this happy little vacation on the good ship Holy Shit is going to pan out for me."

"I gave you my word - "

"Yeah, yeah. But you also just manhandled me. And if you say it was for my own good, I'm not going to be responsible for my comeback." Jane looked down at her blunt nails and pushed at her cuticles. After getting her left hand done, she glanced up. "So this 'job' of yours... you going to need a shovel to get it done?"

The patient's eyes dropped to his plate, and he forked at the rice, silver tines slipping in between the grains, penetrating them. "My job... so to speak... is to make sure you won't remember any part of this."

"Second time I've heard that, and I've got to be honest - I think it's bullshit. It's a little hard to imagine me breathing and not, I don't know, recalling with the warm and fuzzies how I was draped over some guy's shoulder, hauled out of my hospital, and drafted as your personal physician. Just how you figure I'm going to forget all of that?"

His diamond-bright irises lifted. "I'm going to take these memories from you. Scrub this whole thing clean. It will be as if I never existed and you were never here."

She rolled her eyes. "Uh-huh, ri - "

Her head started to sting, and with a grimace she put her fingertips to her temples. When she dropped her hands, she looked at the patient and frowned. What the hell? He was eating in his lap, but not from the tray that had been here before. Who'd brought the new food in?

"My buddy with the Sox cap," the patient said as he wiped his mouth. "Remember?"

In a burning rush, it all came back: Red Sox walking in, the patient taking her razor, her tearing up.

"Good... God," Jane whispered.

The patient just kept eating, as if eradicating memories were no more exotic than the roasted chicken he was sucking back.

"How?"

"Neuropathway manipulation. A patch job, as it were."

"How?"

"What do you mean, how?"

"How do you find the memories? How do you differentiate? Do you - "

"My will. Your brain. That is specific enough."

She narrowed her eyes. "Quick question. Does this magical skill with gray matter come with a total lack of compunction for your kind, or is it just you who were born without a conscience?"

He lowered his silverware. "I beg your pardon?"

She so didn't care that he was offended. "First you abduct me, and now you're going to take my memories, and you're not sorry at all, are you? I'm like a lamp you borrowed - "

"I'm trying to protect you," he snapped. "We have enemies, Dr. Whitcomb. The kind who would find out if you knew about us, who would come after you, who would take you to a hidden place and kill you - after a while. I won't let that happen."

Jane got to her feet. "Listen, Prince Charming, all the protective rhetoric is fine and dandy, but it wouldn't be relevant if you hadn't taken me in the first place."

He dropped his silverware into his food and she braced herself for him to start yelling. Instead, he she quietly, "Look... you were supposed to come with me, okay?"

"Oh. Really. So I had a 'Jack Me Now' sign pinned on my ass that only you could see?"

He put the plate onto the bedside table, shoving it aside as if he were disgusted by the food.

"I get visions," he muttered.

"Visions." When he said nothing further, she thought about the Mr. Eraser trick he'd pulled with her head. If he could do that... Jesus, was he talking about seeing into the future?

Jane swallowed hard. "These visions, they aren't sugarplum-fairy kind of stuff, are they."

"No."

"Shit."

He stroked his goatee, like he was trying to decide exactly how much to tell her. "I used to get them all the time, and then they just dried up. I haven't gotten one... well, I had one of Butch a couple of months ago, and because I followed it I saved his life. So when my brothers came into that hospital room and I had a vision of you, I told them to take you. You talk about conscience? If I didn't have one I would have left you there."

She thought back to him getting aggressive with his nearest and dearest on her behalf. And the fact that even when he'd been stripping her of the razor he'd been careful with her. And then there was him curling up against her, seeking comfort.

It was possible he'd thought he was doing the right thing. It didn't mean she forgave him but... well, it was better than his doing a Patty Hearst with no compunction at all.

After an awkward moment she said, "You should finish that food."

"I'm done."

"No, you're not." She nodded at the plate. "Go on."

"Not hungry."

"I didn't ask if you were hungry. And don't think I won't plug your nose and shovel it in if I have to."

There was a short pause and then he... Jesus... he smiled at her. From the midst of his goatee his mouth lifted at the corners, his eyes crinkling.

Jane's breath stopped in her throat. He was so beautiful like that, she thought, with the dim light of the lamp falling on his hard jaw and his glossy black hair. Even though his long canine teeth were still a little odd, he looked far more... human. Approachable. Desirable -

Oh, no. Not going there. Nope.

Jane ignored the fact that she was blushing a little. "What's up with flashing all those pearly whites? You think I'm joking about the food?"

"No, it's just no one talks to me like that."

"Well, I do. You have a problem with it? You can let me go. Now, eat or I feed you like a baby, and I can't imagine your ego would get off on that."

The little smile was still on his face as he put the plate back on his lap and made slow, steady work of the dinner. When he was done, she went over and picked up the glass of water he'd drained.