Her amber stare flipped up to his. "Your arm."
"No, your eyes."
She blinked, then seemed to shake herself. "I seriously doubt that."
"Then you underestimate your appeal."
As she shook her head and clicked one of the plastic covers onto the silver wand, he caught a whiff of her scent.
His fangs elongated.
"Open." She brought the thermometer up and waited. "Well?"
Rehv stared into those amazing tricolored eyes of hers and dropped his jaw. She leaned in, all business as usual, only to freeze. As she looked at his canines, her scent surged with something dark and erotic.
Triumph singed in his veins as he growled, "Do me."
There was a long moment, during which the two of them were bound together by invisible strings of heat and longing. Then her mouth flattened out.
"Never, but I will take your temperature, because I have to."
She jabbed the thermometer in between his lips, and he had to clamp his teeth together to keep the thing from deflating one of his tonsils.
S'all good, though. Even if he couldn't have her, he turned her on. And that was more than he deserved.
There was a beep, an interval, and another beep.
"One oh nine," she said as she stepped back and released the plastic cover into the biohazard bin. "Havers will be with you as soon as he's able."
The door clapped shut behind her with the hard syllabic smack of the f-word.
Man, she was hot.
Rehv frowned, the whole sexual attraction thing reminding him of something he didn't like to think about.
Someone, rather.
What erection he had instantly limped out as he realized it was Monday night. Which meant tomorrow was Tuesday. The first Tuesday of the last month of the year.
The symphath in him tingled even as every inch of skin he had tightened like his pockets were full of spiders.
He and his blackmailer had another one of their dates tomorrow night. Christ, how was it possible another month had gone by? It seemed like every time he turned around it was the first Tuesday again and he was making the drive upstate to that godforsaken cabin for another command performance.
The pimp becoming the whore.
Power plays and hard edges and base f**king were the currency of the meetings with his blackmailer, the basis of his "love" life for the past twenty-five years. It was everything dirty and wrong and evil and degrading, and he did it over and over again to keep his secret safe.
And also because his dark side got off on it. It was Love, Symphath Style, the only time he could be how he was with no holds barred, his one slice of horrible freedom. After all, much as he medicated himself and tried to fit in, he was trapped by his dead father's legacy, by the evil blood in his veins. You couldn't negotiate with your DNA, and though he was a half-breed, the sin-eater in him was dominant.
So when it came to a female of worth like Ehlena, he was always going to be on the far side of the glass, nose pressed up hard, palms spread with need, never getting close enough to touch. It was only fair to her. Unlike his blackmailer, she didn't deserve what he brought to the table.
The morals he'd taught himself told him at least that much was true.
Yay. Rah. Go, him.
Next tat he got was going to be of the frickin' halo over his head.
As he looked down at the mess running up his left arm, he saw what festered there with total clarity. It wasn't just a bacterial infection from him deliberately using needles that weren't sterile on skin that hadn't been hit with an alcohol rub. It was a slow suicide, and that was why he was damned if he was showing it to the doctor. He knew exactly what would happen if that poison got deep into his bloodstream, and he wished it would get off its ass and take over.
The door swung open and he glanced up, ready to tango with Havers-except it wasn't the doc. Rehv's nurse was back, and she didn't look happy.
Matter of fact, she looked exhausted, like he was one more hassle in her castle and she didn't have the energy to deal with the shit he pulled when she was around.
"I spoke with the doctor," she said. "He's closing in the OR now, so it's going to be a while. He would like me to draw some blood-"
"I'm sorry," Rehv blurted.
Ehlena's hand went up to the collar of her uniform and she pulled the two halves closer together. "Excuse me?"
"I'm sorry for playing you. You don't need that from a patient. Especially on a night like tonight."
She frowned. "I'm fine."
"No, you're not. And no, I'm not reading your mind. You just seem tired." Abruptly, he knew how she felt. "I'd like to make it up to you."
"Not necessary-"
"By treating you to dinner."
Okay, he hadn't meant to say that. And given that he'd just gotten all self-congratulatory on keeping his distance, he'd also made a hypocrite out of himself.
Clearly his next tat needed to be more along the lines of a donkey.
'Cuz he was acting like an ass.
In the wake of the invitation, it was entirely unsurprising that Ehlena stared at him like he was insane. Generally speaking, when a male behaved like he did, the last thing any female wanted to do was spend more time with him.
"I'm sorry, no." She didn't even tack on an obligatory, I never date patients.
"Okay. I understand."
While she got the blood-drawing supplies ready and snapped on a pair of rubber gloves, Rehv reached over to his suit jacket and took out his card, hiding it in his big palm.
She was quick with the procedure, working on his good arm, filling up the aluminum vials fast. Good thing they weren't glass and Havers did all the testing himself. Vampire blood was red. Symphath ran blue. The color of his was somewhere in between, but he and Havers had an arrangement. Granted, the doctor was unaware of how things worked between them, but it was the only way to be treated without compromising the race's physician.
When Ehlena was finished, she capped the vials with white plastic stoppers, snapped off the gloves, and went for the door like he was a bad smell.
"Wait," he said.
"Do you want some pain meds for the arm?"
"No, I want you to take this." He held out his card. "And call me if you're ever in the mood to do me a favor."
"At the risk of sounding unprofessional, I'm never going to be in the mood for you. Under any circumstances."
Ouch. Not that he blamed her. "The favor is forgiving me. Got nothing to do with a date."
She glanced down at the card, then shook her head. "You'd better keep that. For someone who might ever use it."
As the door shut, he crushed the card in his hand.
Shit. What the hell had he been thinking, anyway? She probably had a nice little life in a tidy house with two doting parents. Maybe she had a boyfriend, too, who would someday become her hellren.
Yeah, his being your friendly neighborhood drug lord, pimp, and enforcer really fit in with the Norman Rockwell routine. Totally.
He tossed his card into the wastepaper basket by the desk, and watched as the rim shot circled, then dropped in amid the Kleenex and the wadded-up papers and an empty Coke can.
As he waited for the doctor, he stared at the discarded trash, thinking that to him most of the people on the planet were just like that stuff: things to use up and throw away with no compunction whatsoever. Thanks to both his bad side and the business he was in, he'd broken a lot of bones and cracked a lot of heads and been the cause of a lot of drug overdoses.
Ehlena, on the other hand, spent her nights saving people.
Yeah, they had shit in common, all right.
His efforts kept her in business.
How. Perfect.
Outside the clinic in the frosty air, Wrath was chest-to-chest with Vishous.
"Get out of my way, V."
Vishous, of course, was having none of the back-off. Not a surprise. Even before the little news flash about the Scribe Virgin having birthed him, the f**ker had been a total free agent.
A Brother'd have better luck giving orders to a rock.
"Wrath-"
"No, V. Not here. Not now-"
"I saw you. In my dreams this afternoon." The ache in that dark voice was the kind normally associated with funerals. "I had a vision."
Wrath spoke without wanting to. "What did you see?"
"You standing in a dark field alone. We were all around your periphery, but no one could reach you. You were gone from us and us from you." The Brother reached out and grabbed hard. "Because of Butch, I know you're going out into the field alone and I've kept my mouth shut. But I can't let you do this anymore. You die and the race is f**ked, to say nothing of what it'll do to the Brotherhood."