His gut clenched in pain and sympathy. And absolute horror.
This man had come here expecting sex. He’d done the hardest thing possible for a man to do—make himself vulnerable to another person. And he’d been killed in cold blood. In the house of the man who’d punched him hours before. He’d been used in some psychopath’s twisted idea of revenge.
The room narrowed around him, his vision going gray. Snow reached for his cell phone, feeling as if his arm moved through thick sludge as he slowly patted his pocket. He shivered once, twice. Then he couldn’t stop. His body quakes uncontrollably. Where was his phone?
Downstairs. He’d left it downstairs.
Snow turned away from the blood, only to face more blood. And the body. Dizziness swamped him and he closed his eyes tight to try and get control. When he blinked his eyes open and managed to bring them into focus, the first thing he saw was a gore-covered tooth.
He turned and bent over as acid boiled up into his throat. He vaguely registered the sound of feet coming up the stairs as he heaved.
“Police! Don’t move!”
But he couldn’t stop the fall to his knees as his stomach emptied.###
Jude woke up alone and cold. He thought about getting pissed, but realized the futility of giving in to that emotion when it came to Snow. It would be too easy to stay angry with the doctor all the time with that prickly personality of his. Jude had known he’d be difficult going into this, so being surprised that he’d sneaked out during the night was just stupid. So what if the man had run?
Jude could chase. He even liked the chase.
After last night, he knew Snow would be worth all the trouble it would take to catch that man. This thing between them burned off the charts. He hadn’t felt that kind of molten heat before in his life.
He wanted a lot more of that feeling.
A lot.
Jude rolled over and smelled the pillow Snow had used. His scent was faint, but there, and Jude buried his face in it and snuggled under the comforter. It didn’t escape his notice that the apartment was colder than it had been last night. He wondered what Snow had thought as he crept from the place. He’d certainly been quiet. Had probably dressed in the stairwell—which couldn’t be any warmer. He could see his breath in here.
Crap. That meant the heater had finally given up the ghost.
It would have been so nice to wake up to the warmth of Snow’s long, sexy body. In the early morning hours, right before they’d drifted off to sleep, he’d slid his leg between Snow’s and rested his hand on that taut stomach. Snow had tensed, then slowly relaxed, his hand moving in one long stroke down his back and ass. Jude smiled when he thought of the gift he’d left on Snow’s phone. That smile faded when he thought of how the man had clutched him in his sleep.
He couldn’t help but wonder what made the doctor seem almost fragile when at the hospital he’d most assuredly earned the nickname surgeon general. He had control freak written all over him. Yet last night, control was the last thing he’d wanted. The need in Snow’s eyes, the hunger—the man was starved for true human contact or affection and he didn’t even know it. He’d apparently been equating his soul-deep needs with the release of endorphins through pain. The signs had all been there.
Jude knew because his last serious boyfriend had been like that.
And it had broken them up in the long run. Jude didn’t mind asserting control in the bedroom, got off on it even. Hell, sometimes it came out of him without any sort of effort. But he was not into inflicting pain. Hated it even. Brian had needed the pain so he’d gone somewhere else to find it. And in the end, that had been perfectly fine with Jude.
Several times the night before, Jude had almost scrapped the idea of Snow altogether—especially when he’d first thought he was getting into that situation again. He’d recognized that look of reckless danger the second he’d seen Snow in the bar. But the way Snow looked at him in that alley had made Jude realize he didn’t have a choice when it came to the surgeon.
The whole ordeal at Southgate House had been the real clincher. It had been more than obvious that Snow hadn’t wanted Jude along, but the difficult man had trusted him to watch his back, to help him in a bad situation, when he didn’t know a damn thing about Jude. And while the whole thing had been a nightmare—well, the part where he pretended to be spoiled Eurotrash had been a little fun—he was honored that Snow had trusted him.