Ehlena took the blood pressure equipment from a drawer and ripped it open as she approached him. Touching him was always an experience, and she rubbed her hand on her hip to get ready. Didn't help. When she came in contact with his wrist, as usual the current that licked up her arm landed in her heart, James Browning the damn thing until the shimmy-shimmies had her sucking back a gasp.
With a prayer that this wouldn't take long, she moved his arm into position for the cuff and-"Good...Lord."
The veins running up through the crook of his elbow were decimated from overuse, swollen, black-and-blue, as ragged as if he'd been using nails, not needles on himself.
Her eyes shot to his. "You must be in such pain."
He rolled his wrist out of her grasp. "Nope. Doesn't bother me."
Tough guy. Like she was surprised? "Well, I can understand why you wanted to come in to see Havers."
Pointedly, she reached out and rotated his arm back around, gently prodding at a red line that was traveling up his biceps, heading in the direction of his heart.
"There are signs of infection."
"I'll be fine."
All she could do was raise her eyebrows. "You ever hear of sepsis?"
"The indie band? Sure, but I wouldn't think you'd have."
She shot him a look. "Sepsis as in an infection of the blood?"
"Hmm, you want to lean over the desk a little and draw me a picture?" His eyes drifted down her legs. "I think I'd find that...very educational."
If any other male had pulled that kind of line, she'd have slapped them down until they saw stars. Unfortunately, when it was that heavenly bass voice doing the talking and that amethyst stare doing the walking, she didn't really feel leched upon.
She felt caressed by a lover.
Ehlena resisted the urge to V8 her forehead. What the hell was she doing? She had a date tonight. With a nice, reasonable, civilian male who'd been nothing but nice, reasonable, and very civil.
"I don't have to draw you a picture." She nodded down at his arm. "You can see for yourself right there. If you don't treat this, it's going to go systemic."
And even though he wore fine clothes like every tailor's dream mannequin, death's cold gray cloak would not look good on him.
He held his arm against his tight abs. "I'll take that under advisement."
Ehlena shook her head and reminded herself that she couldn't save people from their own stupidity just because she had a white coat hanging from her shoulders and the letters RN at the end of her name. Besides, Havers was going to see that in all its gory glory when the doctor examined him.
"Fine, but let's take your reading on the other arm. And I'm going to have to ask you to take your shirt off. The doctor's going to want to see how far up that infection goes."
Rehvenge's mouth lifted in a smile as he reached for his top button. "You keep this up and I'll be naked."
Ehlena looked away fast and wished like hell she found him sleazy. She could sure use an injection of righteous indignation to help fend him off.
"You know, I'm not shy," he said in that low voice of his. "You can watch if you like."
"No, thank you."
"Pity." In a darker tone, he added, "I wouldn't mind you watching me."
As the sound of silk moving against flesh rose up from the exam table, Ehlena made busywork going through his chart, double-checking things that were absolutely correct.
It was weird. From what the other nurses had said, he didn't pull this lothario stuff with them. In fact, he barely talked to her colleagues, and that was part of the reason they were anxious around him. With a male this big, silence read as menacing. Fact of life. And that was before you added the tat/mohawk chaser.
"I'm ready," he said.
Ehlena pivoted around and kept her eyes pinned on the wall next to his head. Her peripheral vision, however, worked just fine, and it was hard not to be grateful. Rehvenge's chest was magnificent, the skin a warm golden brown, with muscles that were defined even though his body was relaxed. On each of his pecs he had a five-pointed red star tattooed on the upper part, and she knew he had more ink.
On his stomach.
Not that she'd looked.
Right, because actually, she'd been gawking.
"Are you gong to examine my arm?" he said softly.
"No, that's for the doctor." She waited for him to say, "Pity," again.
"I think I've used that word enough around you."
Now her eyes shifted to his. It was the rare vampire who could read his own species' minds, but somehow it didn't surprise her that this male was among that small, rarified group.
"Don't be rude," she said. "And I do not want you to do that again."
"I'm sorry."
Ehlena slipped the cuff around his biceps, plugged her stethoscope into her ears, and took his blood pressure. With the little piff-piff-piff of the balloon inflating the sleeve until it was tight, she felt the edge in him, the tense power, and her heart tripped over itself. He was particularly sharp tonight, and she wondered why.
Except that was not her business, was it.
As she released the valve and the cuff let out a long, slow hiss of relief, she took a step back from him. He was just...too much, all the way around. Especially right now.
"Don't be frightened of me," he whispered.
"I'm not."
"Are you sure?"
"Absolutely positive," she lied.
Chapter SIX
She was lying, Rehv thought. She was definitely frightened of him. And talk about a pity.
This was the nurse Rehv hoped he would get each time he came in. This was the one who made these visits even partially bearable. This was his Ehlena.
Okay, so she wasn't his in the slightest. He knew her name only because it was on the blue-and-white pin on her coat. He saw her only when he came to be treated. And she didn't like him at all.
But he still thought of her as his, and that was just the way of it. The thing was, they had something in common, something that crossed species lines and eclipsed social stratifications and bonded them together even though she would have denied it.
She was lonely, too, and in the same way he was.
Her emotional grid had the same footprint his did, Xhex's did, and Trez's and iAm's did: Her feelings were surrounded by the disconnected void of someone separated from her tribe. Living among others, but essentially apart from it all. A shutout, a castaway, one who had been expelled.
He didn't know the whys, but he sure as f**k knew what life was like for her, and that was what had first gotten his attention when he met her. Her eyes and her voice and her scent had been next. Her intelligence and quick mouth had sealed the deal.
"One sixty-eight over ninety-five. That's high." She ripped the cuff's lip free with a quick jerk, no doubt wishing it were a strip of his skin. "I think your body's trying to fight off the infection in your arm."
Oh, his body was fighting something off, all right, but it had f**k-all to do with whatever was cooking in his needle sites. With his symphath side battling the dopamine, the impotent state he usually existed in when fully medicated had yet to report in for work.
Result?
His c**k was stiff as a bat in his slacks. Which, contrary to popular opinion, was actually not a good sign-especially tonight. Coming off that convo with Montrag, he was feeling hungry, driven...a little crazy from the inner burn.
And Ehlena was just so...beautiful.
Although not in the way his working girls were, not in that obvious, over-the-top, injected, implanted, sculpted way. Ehlena was naturally lovely, with fine small features and that strawberry blond hair and those long, lean limbs. Her lips were pink because they were pink-not from some eighteen-hour, glossy, frosted grease coat. And her toffee-colored eyes were luminescent because they were yellow and red and gold all mixed together-not from a whole lot of paint-by-numbers shimmery shadow and slathered-on mascara. And her cheeks were flushed because he was getting under her skin.
Which, even though he sensed she'd had a hard night, didn't bother him at all.
But that was a symphath for you, wasn't it, he thought with derision.
Funny, most of the time he didn't care that he was what he was. His life as he'd always known it had been a constantly shifting mirage of lies and deceptions and that was that. Around her, though? He wished he were normal.
"Let's see what your temperature is," she said, bringing an electronic thermometer over from the desk.
"It's higher than usual."