He crosses the bathroom and grabs a first aid kit from under the sink.
“Oh, I don’t think I need anything heavy-duty,” I say as he comes back to me. “Just some Band-Aids.”
He looks at my wrists and wipes them with an alcohol pad, and the sting makes me take my hand away.
“It’s all right,” he says. “Stay still.”
He’s so focused. It’s almost like I’m not even here. He seems dedicated to his craft, like a pianist in a jazz club who steps away from his instrument and sees that everyone has already gone home.
It wasn’t because they didn’t like his music. It was because the club had to close for the night. He was so focused that he didn’t realize the lights had turned off, all of the other musicians had gone home, and the audience had been forced to leave.
I look into the little first aid kit he has open between us.
“Wow,” I say, “this is some heavy-duty stuff.”
My eyes land on a pair of scissors and something that looks like pliers. A tiny pair of pliers. My stomach drops as he takes them from the case. His thick, tattooed forearms are like a weapon in their own right. I saw what they did to those ropes. But the pliers are an accessory every good doctor-turned-serial killer needs.
“Oh God,” I say as I scramble away from him. My chest is heaving up and down. “Are you going to pull my nails out one by one with those things? Are you going to rip my eyelashes out? Do you have a monster somewhere that you’ve constructed with different body parts from the people you’ve killed?”
He holds them up and laughs.
“Miss, these are tweezers.”
“Oh.”
“I swore an oath when I became a doctor,” he says and smiles. At me. With his eyes right on mine, softly, gently. Like I’m the only person in the world. “It was an oath to the Greek god Apollo that I would abide by the ethics of care.”
“Huh,” I say curiously. “For real?”
I guess we’re both trying to please the gods tonight.
“Yes, for real,” he says as he huffs out a laugh. He puts his hand on my forearm. “I’ll take good care of you.”
That touch lights me up like nothing has before. His touch shoots right into my brain, into my heart, between my legs. I can feel it. I clamp my knees together and suppress a whimper.
His eyes soak me up, and I revel in it. He lets out a deep, sharp breath as his eyes stay on mine for an extra beat. Then he goes back to fixing me up.
With precision, he wipes my other wrist with an alcohol pad. I let out a little gasp. It stings.
“Almost done,” he says. He wraps some gauze around my wrists and tapes it in place.
It feels so good to be taken care of by this man.
“I really need to know why you’re here,” he says as his green eyes swim. It’s like there’s a storm inside them.
“I’m here because you brought me here, remember?”
“No,” he says as he pulls off his glasses. “What the hell happened back there?”
I sigh. “It was a prank. A stupid, stupid prank.”
“So they did that you to you,” he says, his voice hitching in the back of his throat. “Without your permission?”
“Yeah. And it went really sideways, really fast.”
He looks so pissed-off. Like he’s going to go kill the people who did this to me.
“You are not going back to those people,” he says slowly. “And I’m not going to leave you.”