Nightfall (2 page)

He looked straight into her eyes and lied again. “I took a tumble,” he said. His voice had an interesting note, not entirely American, though she couldn’t entirely place it. “Down a…cliff. Must have gotten cut up on the way down.”

“A cliff?” she said, and he nodded. “Sure, that makes sense. Because you were rock climbing?”

“Yes,” he said. Relief showed in his eyes, and in the way his shoulder settled back into the pillows. “Yes, I was rock climbing.”

“Totally nude.”

His face flushed scarlet. She tried not to laugh as he pulled the sheets back over his groin and crossed his arms tightly over his chest. “I’m sorry,” he said again. “I—look, are you going to call the police?”

“Should we call the police?” She asked. “Did someone attack you?”

“No one that you’ll be able to find,” he said, his voice quiet. Maybe he was just talking to himself. “No. Please don’t alert the police. I can handle this on my own.”

“Okay,” she said. The complete lack of any real mental health services in the town had meant that they’d all at least gotten some training on dealing with people who were in a mental health crisis of one sort or another, at least long enough to get them help if it was needed. “But if you tell me what’s happening, I might be able to help. Is there a gang or something? I mean, we’re a small town, but I’m not blind, I know that things still happen.”

His eyes met hers, and she felt like she was tumbling down into a deep well, falling past all the markers she knew in the world. She was going to crash when she hit the bottom, but as long as she crashed into him, she wasn’t sure she’d mind.

She tried to pull herself back. She wasn’t a schoolgirl anymore, and she didn’t fall in love at the drop of a hat. She didn’t let her emotions run her life. She didn’t have time or patience for the nonsense that created for her. She’d done it once, gotten drunk and gotten carried away, and now the best friendship she’d ever had was stilted and awkward. And besides, falling for a patient was easily one of the dumbest things she could do for her career. And it wasn’t like she had big, brave aspirations. Her mother wanted her to marry a doctor, and her father wanted her to pay off her loans from nursing school, but all she wanted to do was help people now and then. Make a difference. Leave some sort of mark on the world so that those who came after her, even if it was just those who lived in Sweetwater, would smile when they thought of her. She didn’t figure there was any other immortality worth striving for.

But his eyes. His eyes were gorgeous and green, and they pulled her towards him. Her feet moved forward one step, and then a second. Part of her mind wondered if he’d somehow managed to slip her a drug, but he looked just as confused and surprised as she felt, for all that his hand was coming up to caress the curve of her cheek.

Need overwhelmed him as the nurse leaned closer. She looked completely delicious, smelled better. But completely human, which meant that there was absolutely no reason for him to have this effect on her. When he was near other weres, beta females who had the potential to be Alpha mates, he would often find himself surrounded by women like this. Especially since Miranda had died. They could scent their own potential status increase on him.

But this woman smelled human. Which meant that he should have no more pull that he would on any other woman. And admittedly, he wasn’t painful to look at, and he’d never particularly lacked for partners when he wanted one, but she didn’t look like she was moving towards him entirely of her own choice. That made him stomach roil, as much as her lips were parted in invitation, and he fought to pull back.

Her cheek was silk under his hand, and she leaned into his caress like a kitten, gazing up at him through her dark lashes. The wolf snarled inside of him, hardening parts of him that he very much needed to not pay attention to right now. It snapped at him, telling him that she wanted this, that he could pull her into his lap and sate himself with her entirely, and she wouldn’t care, wouldn’t complain, would thank him for it later. Maybe, in years, she would shake her head ruefully and wonder what in the world she’d been thinking, but that would be the worst of it. She would love every second of what would transpire between them. He’d make sure of it.

But that wasn’t enough. He’d spent a very long time as that man, and he’d sworn to himself, after Miranda, that he wouldn’t be that man again. He’d had women in the past ten years—of course he had. But they’d been women who understood what they were getting into, what he wanted, the darkness he had within him. He’d avoided human women at every cost. She had no idea. He’d tear her into pieces, and she didn’t deserve that. Not in the least.

But it would have been so easy. So incredibly easy. Not even to slip inside of her, but just to run his fingers over her body, see her shudder with the need for release. Even that would sate him. For now.

No
, he snarled back at the monster that lived in his head. He fought to press it back into the cage he’d built for it, slamming the door shut, and putting the lock into place. The monster went wild, crashing against the bars of the cage and snarling and snapping at everything it could reach. The man was able to take a breath, however, his thoughts more his own.
This is wrong
, he told himself calmly.
No matter how true it is that she would enjoy it, taking it by force means that it’s a lie. That is not how things are done in the world
. He spoke to the wolf like one spoke to a child: gentle but firm. The wolf growled and raged against the cage, but it couldn’t escape the prison he’d created.

Well. Twenty-seven days out of twenty-eight, it couldn’t.

He stroked the woman’s cheek again, and she came back to herself, fast and nervous. She skittered back from him, blinking and jerking like she’d seen something that frightened her all the way through. He was careful to keep his body still and relaxed, quietly nonthreatening. “I’m very sorry,” he said, as she pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes and tried to collect herself. Her eyes flicked to him like she’d forgotten that he was there. He gave her a small smile that he tried to make as nonthreatening as possible.

“What just happened?” Her voice shook just a bit, but her tone was clear and quiet, which was probably a good sign. She didn’t sound like she was about to slide into hysterics, at least.

“You looked like you got dizzy,” he lied fluently. “You sort of sagged onto the bed, and I did my best to catch you. Do you feel all right?”

“Yes,” she said. She shook her head a moment, then smiled. “Sorry. It’s been a long shift. But that doesn’t change the fact that I should be taking care of you, not the other way around.”

“You’re doing a lovely job,” he said, giving her a flirtatious smile. A man’s flirtatious smile, one with the wolf carefully buried.

She responded after a moment, flashing a grin that tightened his body still further. He fought the urge to shift; right now, his cock was being reasonably still, and the last thing he needed to do was to encourage it to rise to full mast. His control was good, but not perfect. And she was lovely. She was honestly giggling at his comment and his gaze, brushing her dark curls back behind her ear like a coquettish girl. But as far as he could tell, her movements were entirely unselfconscious. She was just being herself. Which was honestly the most impressive aphrodisiac he’d encountered in years.

“Pain meds,” she said, forcing that professional mask back over her features. “I came in to check your pain and get you pain meds. I’ll be back.”

He watched her go, fascinated that even within her scrubs she managed to be so alluring, and considered briefly that maybe, for the first time in years, his wolf wasn’t the one who wanted this woman so badly. The wolf had a tendency to intensify any emotions that the man felt. And since Miranda died in that field, bloody and broken, the man had become extremely good at not feeling much of anything. It was the only way to handle the onslaught of grief that occurred when he so much as thought her name.

Only he’d thought it a handful of times today, and the pain—it wasn’t that it was less, or that it didn’t run just as deep as it always had, but it was farther away. It didn’t consume his heart and mind to think of the woman he’d loved once upon a time. He was able to think of her and smile, think of her and remember how she had held his hand and kissed his fingertips every time he’d left her to go out on pack business. He could remember that she was an amazing woman, a gorgeous woman, but she wasn’t perfect.

The shock of it was its own pain, but its own release as well. He found himself saying a prayer of thanks to a higher power that he’d stopped believing in ages upon ages ago.

He studied his heart, and for the first time in a very long time, he found it relatively whole.

Maybe that was why he wanted her so very much.

* * *

Roxanne leaned against the cabinet where the controlled medicines were kept and tried to focus her breathing. No one had ever pulled her that hard, not man or woman. She’d had her share of attractions, and she’d had her share of relationships that were romantic, sexual, and both together. But that pull—it was a bit like someone got a hook in her guts and was reeling her in. And yet the sensation had suddenly cut out, just as she gave in to it. He’d stroked her face, and she’d been swirlingly dizzy, but came back to herself quickly.

The man had seemed either just as upset or just as embarrassed about it as she was; he’d made excuses when she asked him what was happening. She had the idea that he’d stopped it. She might have climbed into his lap and ridden him until he cried uncle in another minute, but he’d shattered whatever connection had been between them. And she had a crazy idea that he hadn’t done it in on purpose in the first place. Because he’d been flirting with her when she left, giving her that grin, and if he thought she couldn’t see that he was at better than half-mast under the ridiculous hospital covers, he needed a wakeup call. But he’d done his best to approach her the right way. It didn’t remove the stomach-churning fact that he’d been able to pull her towards him in that way, but if it was an accident, it was a little better. And he’d stopped. That was something good too. 

“Is he that bad?”

Roxanne turned to see Izzy watching her. Izzy’s eyes were locked on Roxanne’s face, her arms crossed under her breasts. Izzy, for all that she was so much younger than Roxanne, had nominated herself Roxie’s protector at age 8 and hadn’t ever backed down from that task. Roxanne forced herself to smile, hoping that would reassure Izzy at least a little. “Pretty gross. Oozing wounds are not exactly my biggest turn on.” She forced a laugh, but the joke was too close to reality, and she winced a little inside.

Izzy, despite her friendly ease now, had grown up pretty rough, and she saw the flinch that Roxanne didn’t even want to admit to herself. “
Nena
, what happened? Did he say something to you? If he did, I’ll—” she spilled off into a stream of Spanish. Roxanne found herself smiling, and the shakiness faded. She’d picked up enough curses over the years to understand more or less what Izzy was threatening to do to his
verga
, and she laughed a little.

“No, Iz, nothing like that. He’s really disoriented, and I’m really tired, and I think I’m just—off. I wish it were time to go home.”

Izzy glanced at the clock on the wall, and then nodded. “Then it’s time for you to go home. I’ll cover the last half of Adrianne’s shift, if Caroline hasn’t found anyone else.”

Roxanne shook her head. “You just pulled a twelve. Another four is ridiculous.”

“Which is what I’ll explain to Caroline, only I’ll explain it louder than you, and she’ll find someone else, and I’ll go home too. But seriously, get out of here. You’ve got a lot of work this week, and you need some damn rest.”

She didn’t want to say yes, but the offer was so tempting. “Okay,” she said. “You check with Caroline and make sure she’s okay with it, and I’ll go deliver pain meds to 24. And then I’ll head out if she says that’s all right.”

“Deal,” Izzy said, holding up her fist. Roxanne tapped it, and Izzy was off. The back of her sneakers lit up like a little kid’s, and Roxanne found herself trying not to giggle again.

She got the pain meds Dr. Alexander had ordered out of the cabinet and went back into 24 a little calmer and a little more collected. “How would you rate your pain, one to ten?” she asked as the door closed behind her.

“I’m not in pain,” the man said.

Roxanne resisted the urge to roll her eyes. She had to find her nurse face, and she had to find it now, because the way his eyes were caressing the curves of her breasts was making wetness spill into her panties, and she had enough raw aching need saved up from before. “You’re cut up in a hundred places. If you’re not in any pain, they’re going to be convinced you have serious nerve damage, and that’s way less badass than it sounds in action films. Can you please just tell me where your pain is so that I can chart it?” She hated how brusque her tone was. This was the exact opposite of who she tried to be when she was at a bedside, but there was something about this guy. Something about her intense attraction to him—about the way her eyes kept tracing down his well-defined chest, his carved abs, the strong and wiry muscles in his arms—that was making her dizzy with lust in a way she’d never felt before. That pull had settled in her guts again, and even though it was much less intense than it had been before, it wasn’t something she could ignore. She wasn’t accustomed to wanting to crawl on top of a stranger, and it made her stomach twirl like the tea cups at the county fair.

“Call it a one, then,” he said. “I assume one means no pain?”

She took a closer look at him, looking for tattoos on his knuckles or wrists. “Are you straight edge? Or in recovery?”

He cocked his head to the side. “No, neither one. Why?”

She rattled the paper cup in her hand. “No pain means no happy pills. No one turns down the happy pills, especially not people who just got a couple hundred stitches. We had to stitch muscle. You should be screaming right now.”

He sighed, and she watched his eyes focus differently, more internally, for a moment. “I ache everywhere. I’m completely exhausted. Before I—uh, went rock climbing…in the buff—I was running through the woods.”

“How far?”

He shrugged. “One end to the other? I’m not sure. But I’ve always been a fast healer, and I promise you, I hurt, but I don’t hurt so much that I need pain medicine.”

“Are you worried they’ll make you cloudy?”

His eyes snapped up with an intensity that told her she’d guessed right.

“If you take them, you worry you’ll get too foggy to be able to watch out for yourself. You want to make sure that whatever—or whoever—put you here doesn’t come after you again.”

His nod came slowly, but it came.

“I can get you something else. Something that will help with the aches, but won’t mess with your head. Would that be a good compromise? Because if you are hurting, and you’re lying about it, that’ll slow down the healing, and that’ll keep you here longer. And with that look in your eyes, I know that’s not what you want.” She had a fascinating image of the fun she could have with his rugged body if he wasn’t tied down to that bed. She thought she’d probably start by taking him in his mouth, suckling him until he was crying out, twisting on the edge of release, and then she’d slow down, making him cry out with frustration, before she turned over and invited him inside of her. Mmm, yes. Yes, that fantasy would do very well. In a little while.