Beauty Bites (39 page)

That unspoken testament of his love shook me and broke my hold on control. I held his hips for my own pummeling, churning against him until I was ready to shatter.

And then I did. Pleasure crested over me, around me. Through me. Waves of pleasure beat like heat on a summer’s day.

Ric rolled faster into me, a locomotive gearing up for its final run. “Sunshine. The feel of you, slick, hot, is enough to destroy me. May I?”

He could have been asking anything but his tongue ran the length of one fang and I knew he wanted to bite. I lifted my chin to expose my throat.

Hands in my hair, hips hammering mine, he pressed the tips of his fangs into the tender flesh of my neck. His cock swelled with release. As the last twangs of my orgasm shivered through me I began to throb with renewed anticipation, on the cusp of something even more shattering.

He bit down. His fangs pierced my skin like live wires. My blood ignited.

He thrust his cock to the hilt. I opened to him, taking every inch of him, sucking him in even deeper. He roared and began to come.

A second climax burst through me, brain and body shaking with it. His body quaked with mine.

He began to lap at my neck, tongue rough and hot. My blood sang, claiming him. Feeling him claim me.

He wrapped me in his arms, rolling his hips to draw out our pleasure. His tongue pressed against my neck. Gradually the hammering of my heart in my ears gave way to his more gentle purr.

Wrapped in each other, we relaxed into sleep.

As dusk darkened the sky, I awoke to a feeling of wellbeing I hadn’t experienced since The Incident. Maybe not ever. Wrapped in Ric’s powerful arms, the scent of his warm skin in my nose, the sound of his heartbeat under one ear and the lake’s far-off gentle lapping against the pier in the other, it was one of the most peaceful and contented moments of my life.

But peace only lasts so long before necessity takes over. I rolled off him. “Be right back.”

“Where are you going? Oh.”

I slipped on his shirt to visit the bathroom.

Elena met me as I was coming out. “My turn. Then I have some news that may affect all of us. Go get Twyla, would you? She’s not answering my knock. Well, not with anything but moans.”

I glanced into the living room. Bo was pacing. Aiden watched him with dark eyes, expression blank but I got the impression he was worried. Seeing Bo’s hunched shoulders I got worried too. I went to get Ric.

Twyla didn’t answer my knock so I pounded on the door with an empty bottle of merlot for nearly a minute. Then she opened, looking like someone had slugged her stupid with a happy bat.

Made me rethink my whole relationship thing with Ric. I’m not vain, but I
never
wanted to look that idiotic. But I was happy for her.

I went to sit next to Ric on one of the couches, tucking my legs under me. Twyla emerged with Nikos and they snuggled on the other side of the couch. It was still shocking how gaunt he was, how old he looked. But Twyla didn’t seem to care and nobody said a word.

Elena came out of the bathroom, and got right down to business. “I just took a phone call from my counterpart in the sheriff’s department. You remember the trolls? There was an irregularity with one of their phones. A file the size of a video was sent to an unknown party. To an untraceable number.”

“A video of what?” Hairs rose on my nape as I remembered the eavesdropper, who’d returned to see Nikos’s vampire blood pull Elena from the brink of death.

The confirmation was in her eyes. “The video itself was erased from the phone so we don’t know for certain. But yeah. I think we can be pretty sure it was the recording of the forest incident.”

“What do we do?” Twyla asked.

“I called the Ancient One,” Bo said. “Asked him if any of his techies can trace the call. He’s putting Steel himself on it.”

Twyla nodded. “If anyone can pull a miracle out of his ass, Logan can.”

“Until then,” Elena said, “we can only keep our eyes open. And wait.”

That was the only dark spot on a wonderful, triumphant day. After a hearty dinner, Ric drove the two of us to Chicago.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“You’ll see.”

He pulled into the parking lot of the hospital complex where I’d done my surgical rotation.

I stared out the window at the red brick and concrete children’s wing where The Incident had started the whole sequence of events. Had it only been a little over a week? “Teddy is here.”

“Yes.”

I turned to Ric with a confused smile. “You knew?”

“I found out. He’s being released tomorrow.” He swung into a spot.

“I didn’t bring any books to read to him.”

“I’ve got something else in mind.”

We got out, my brain churning on the question of why Ric had brought me here, and why now. But when we entered the hospital’s cool quiet halls, even after everything, the slight medicinal smell comforted me. “It’s well after visiting hours,” I said to Ric. “The nurses will know I’m no longer attached to Teddy’s case. We may not be able to see him.”

“We’ll see him.” Ric’s eyes flashed violet.

“Oh. Right.”

At the nurses’ station, one of the third shift nurses was standing, reading a chart. She had a short brown bob and blue scrubs. I thought about sneaking past her, remembered the v-eyes and cleared my throat. She raised her head and smiled. “Dr. Byornsson, good to see you again.” Seeing Ric, her smile brightened ten watts or so. “Who’s your friend?”

“Hi, Betty. This is Ric. We were in the neighborhood and I’d told him so much about the hospital he wanted to see it for himself. So since we were in the neighborhood, I thought, well why not stop by…”

I trailed off, because I’d been babbling, but also because Betty wasn’t paying attention. Her smile faded and her face went blank.

I switched my gaze to Ric. His eyes burned almost red. He said, “
You haven’t seen us
.” His voice echoed as if in a crypt.

Slowly, Betty turned away.

“What was that?” I whispered. “What are we going to do that you don’t even want anyone to remember we were
here
?”

Ric took my arm and led me toward Teddy’s room. “What you’ve trained half your life to do. Heal.”

All the patient rooms were singles, so at least Ric wouldn’t have to compel some poor child too. As he ushered me into Teddy’s room I heard
brrrt
,
brrrt.

Despite the late hour, Teddy was awake, shuffling a deck of cards the fancy way I’d taught him, ruffling deck halves together then settling them with a back arch. He was small for his age but happy and eager, with the curly hair of a spaniel puppy. His large dark eyes lifted the moment I entered. “Dr. Synnove!”

“Hello, Teddy. How’s it going? That shuffle’s looking pretty good.”

His hands were barely big enough to contain the deck, but he must have been practicing steadily since our last phone conversation. Bright, determined, focused. I wished with all my heart I really could heal him completely. But the nerve damage was too extensive for anything but a miracle.

I stopped abruptly. A miracle. Like the one Nikos had given Elena. I suddenly knew what Ric intended. I turned to him. “You can’t—”

“It’s all right.” Ric’s smile was gentle, reassuring. “I want to.”

“But you’re not millenniums old, and Bo’s not here to replenish you after, and the
cost
…”

He laid his hand on my shoulder, his warmth radiating through me. “If it’s any help, I don’t think it will take as much as Nikos.”

“Dr. Synnove?” Teddy sat still and small in the bed, his face puckered in a slightly worried frown. “What’s wrong?”

Poor Teddy. He’d already gone through so much. Did I want Ric to suffer? No. But did I want to heal Teddy? Emphatically yes.

And, from the nova in his eyes, Ric wanted to heal Teddy too.

I clicked off my fears and doubts, not Crisis Time but simple belief in Ric. “Nothing’s wrong, sweetheart.” I went to Teddy, gathered his small hands in mine and smiled. “In fact, everything is all right. This is Dr. Ric. He’s a specialist. He’s here to try to heal your leg.”

“Hello, Teddy.” Ric’s voice was deep and resonant. “We’re going to get you all better.”

Teddy’s worried eyes turned to Ric. “More needles? More peppermint air?”

“No needles.” Ric came to stand next to me. “No anesthetic. Just listen to my voice. Listen and let yourself float. Picture your favorite place. A warm, sandy beach, or a field, thick with golden summer grass.”

As Ric spoke, Teddy’s face, instead of the blank, slightly frightening mask that Betty’s had become, simply relaxed into a small smile. His eyes fluttered closed and he gave a contented sigh, as if snuggling up for a nice sleep.

Ric’s voice tapered off. I moved the tray out of the way. “Now what?”

“You open the skin to each area of damage. I’ll apply blood a little at a time until that area heals.”

Much better than the wholesale bloodletting in the north woods. “I’ll get his records to pinpoint the damaged areas. And an instrument tray to open. We’ll need to move him into the OR, and we’ll have to scrub.” I started for the door.

Ric stopped me with a touch. “I think he’ll be more comfortable here.”

“What about infection?”

“Not a problem, with my blood. Blood…” His eyes turned inward, then snapped back to me. “And you may not need the charts.” He spun toward Teddy and strode to the foot of the bed. Gently he lifted the covers from the boy’s legs. He rested his large hand on the boy’s right ankle and closed his eyes. “Yes. I can sense the problem areas.”

“How?”

“Blood flow. The capillaries are behaving differently around the damaged tissue.” He pointed. “Here.”

“All right. Let me get a tray.”

The surgical tools were counted and stored in a locked area but I knew the keycode. I set a basic open tray on a cart and wheeled it back to Teddy’s room. Leaving it near the bed’s foot, I checked the boy’s pulse, and pulled back his lids to check his pupils. Everything was normal.

Then I went to the sink and scrubbed. Maybe there was no risk of infection with vampire blood, but my hands were human. They were covered in germs.

“I found all the areas while you were gone,” Ric said. “This won’t take long.”

“Good.” I gloved, then uncovered the tray and picked up two scalpels, handed him one. “Where first?”

“Here.” Ric pointed.

I swabbed the area with disinfectant then made a tiny incision in the boy’s leg. Ric thankfully did not slice his wrist for blood. He cut his finger with the scalpel and squeezed a few red drops into the opening on Teddy’s leg.

It wasn’t as dramatic as with Elena, but it was still pretty impressive. The small incision immediately closed, neatly, like an invisible thumb smoothing a clay seam. The skin flushed, then puckered before settling back to healthy skin.

“Amazing,” I breathed. “Did you see that? The puckers?”

Ric had gone pale. “Synnove, I’m sorry. I thought it would work—”

“It
did
work. You know how your skin wrinkles from a long bath? Skin with nerve damage doesn’t.”

“Oh.” He smiled tentatively. Poor dear. He’d been crushed at the possibility that his healing hadn’t worked. It made me love him all the more. “Next spot?”

As I opened each small area, Ric released a few drops of his blood. Concentrated on those tiny areas, it took much less to heal Teddy’s leg than Nikos used to save Elena.

But even that little exhausted Ric. He collapsed in a chair while I cleaned up and removed the cart. Yet when it was time, he rose to hold one of the boy’s hands while I held the other, and said softly, “Wake up, Teddy.” I couldn’t help thinking that he would make a wonderful father some day.

Teddy’s lids fluttered open. “Dr. Synnove? Is it over?”

I was relieved to see clarity in his dark eyes. “All done. How do you feel?”

“Good.” He sat up. A slow smile lit his face and eyes. “Really good.” He flexed his right knee, then raised his leg. “It’s like I can talk to my leg again. Like maybe I can walk again.”

“I’m so glad you feel better,” I said cautiously. “But we should go slow—”

“I can feel my leg, Dr. Synnove.” He swung both feet off the bed. “I can stand, I know I can.”

“Wait…Ric!” I grasped the boy’s arm firmly. He was coming down off the bed,
now
, and I couldn’t stop him. I could only cushion the fall.

But he didn’t fall. He landed on both feet, wobbled between Ric and me, and straightened. Then he took one step from the bed. And another. Ric let go. And another. I let go. Teddy took another step, gaining confidence. He turned, then skipped a small step. “I can walk, Dr. Synnove. Dr. Ric, look! Look at me walk.”

Dr. Ric. Image, but also true. Not because he had the medical degree, but because he’d healed the boy.

And in healing Teddy, Ric had healed the worst of damage The Incident had done to me. Dr. Ric, because he’d healed my heart.