Authors: Amy Valenti
The only other possible explanation was that Scott was telling the truth. That he’d really been trying to help me. That there were really other unsuppressed medical professionals out there. That I wasn’t alone any more.
I hardly dared to hope, but I couldn’t stop the glow of optimism that was growing steadily stronger within my mind.
I needed to find Scott, but first I had to get through my shift.
* * * *
A few more hours of Dr Croft’s company cooled my jets. By the time I had finished my shift, I was hungry, tired, and reeling with all the new information I’d taken in during the day, medical and otherwise.
I headed straight home, grabbing some takeout on the way past the pizza place, and curled up on the couch with the biggest mug of tea I could make.
After the longest night in history, during which I tossed and turned, terrified and turned on and just plain confused, I dragged myself out of bed and slowly began to prepare for another day at the hospital.
Chapter Four
Scott was already in the room we used for pre-shift lectures, and I slid into the seat next to him with a bland smile. “Hi.”
“Hey.” He turned a warm smile my way, and I felt myself melting like ice cream in the sun. “You okay? You look tired.”
“I didn’t sleep too well.”
He read the edge to my voice correctly, and raised an eyebrow just a fraction. “Sorry to hear that.”
I bent over my textbook, pretending to be immersed in the section on heart surgery as I scribbled a note to him.
I saw a trauma surgeon and a pharmaceutical nurse together in a storeroom yesterday—the same day you told me you’re not one of the Focused and neither am I. That’s a really big coincidence. Did you expect me to get a GOOD night’s sleep? I don’t even know what to believe anymore. Are you trying to mess with my head? What did I do to deserve that? What the hell is going on?
After a quick glance around to make sure no one else was watching me, I slid the note across to Scott. He went still as he read it, and icy fear washed over me. Had I said too much, given him a definitive confirmation that I wasn’t suppressed?
He wrote something in return and passed it over in a slow, smooth movement that wouldn’t catch the eye of anyone else in the room. I stared down at his sprawling handwriting.
Maybe you just didn’t see it before because you thought it couldn’t happen. Maybe yesterday opened your eyes.
I know somewhere we can talk. Follow me after the lecture—stay a couple of paces behind me.
I glanced over at him, gave a quick nod and concealed the note between two pages in my textbook. He shot me a small, approving smile then turned his attention to the tutor at the front of the room.
The lecture mainly consisted of recapping things we’d studied before, and though my attention wavered I still managed to answer a couple of the tutor’s questions correctly. Towards the end of the session, Scott slid another note across the table to me.
You get the cutest little frown on your face when you’re concentrating.
I tucked the scrap of paper away without looking at him, willing my face into blankness and bending over my textbook. Inside, though, elation rushed through my blood and made me tingle from head to foot.
My fingers itched with the urge to write him a note back, but there was no way I could risk flirting with him. I had to stay on my guard. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw his lips twitch in a smile, and he wrote something else and slid it over to me.
You can thank me later.
I scowled at the diagram we were meant to be studying. It was the only way I could stop myself from grinning like an idiot.
After the lecture, Scott took his time gathering his possessions. I followed his lead, making sure every pocket of my satchel was meticulously organised and rising to my feet as he made for the door.
Scott led me across the hospital, seeming to make a beeline for the medical library where students studied before and after shifts, but then turning off down a narrow corridor and through a door marked ‘No Admittance’. I wanted to ask him if the rules just plain didn’t apply to him, but, as the door swung closed behind me and I drew level with him, he seemed suddenly closed off, even distracted.
This room was filled with comfortable-looking couches, and in one corner a middle-aged woman sat behind a desk, studying her computer screen. She looked up sharply as we entered, then relaxed at the sight of Scott.
“Beth,” he said in greeting, and indicated me. “Holly Trent.”
I raised a hand in an awkward wave, and Beth gave me a quick smile before entering my name into her computer. “Five and a half months until your first heat phase, correct?”
“Ummm…yes.” I looked from her to Scott with a frown, confused and a little embarrassed.
“You slipped through our net.” She gave me an appraising once-over, then nodded at my companion. “We’ll discuss it another time. I’m sure you have some…talking to do.”
She stood up and headed for the door without any further explanation, and I stared after her, trying to put these strange events into some sort of context. “Scott…”
“I’ll explain.” As the door swung shut after Beth, he took my hand. Startled by the unexpected contact, I almost snatched my arm back, but my self-training kicked in out of habit and I just blinked at him, waiting for the promised explanation to materialise.
He pulled me over to the nearest couch and beckoned for me to sit. Once I did, he sat beside me, so close that his knee brushed my thigh. “I promise you’re safe here, Holly.”
“How do I know I can trust you?” I wanted to relax against him, let him magic all my cares away—but life didn’t work that conveniently, in my experience. “You show up in my class with tattooed wrists and flirt with me, and then you drag me over here to some restricted area of the building, and now you want me to…” I trailed off, realising that my imagination was getting ahead of me. He hadn’t said outright that he planned to kiss me, touch me, fuck—
“Only one way to know for sure.” Sensing my mistrust, he kept his distance, his expression somewhere between curiosity and longing. “It wouldn’t take much to prove to you that I’m not one of the Focused.”
Imagining exactly what that would entail, I closed my eyes, turning my head so he wouldn’t see me bite my lip. Here he was, the guy of my dreams, sitting right here asking me to make out with him…or more. It seemed way too good to be true. It had to be a trick… right?
“Let me guess. You have cameras hidden somewhere in this room, and then you’ll try to blackmail me into giving you all my money.”
Scott stared at me as though the thought hadn’t even occurred to him. I wanted to believe him. I really, really did. But what if he was an actor, hired to trick me into admitting that I was lying to the university? I couldn’t throw away my dreams just for the sake of a raging libido.
He sat back, holding up his hands as if to prove that he meant no harm. All that achieved was to make me fixate on how they’d feel running up my thighs, and I tried not to squirm.
“Okay, Holly. We’ll do this your way. What do you want to know?”
I wanted to know a lot of things—some of which I didn’t even have coherent thoughts about. Whether he was a good kisser was right at the top of the list, but I couldn’t risk it. “Why haven’t you been in any of my other classes?”
“Because there were delays in my three-strikes treatment. I took a semester out. Between strikes two and three, the committee interceded with one of their own doctors and I got a free ride to the tattoo lab—no questions asked, no procedure attempted.”
“Committee?” There was an organisation that interceded in these things? Where the hell had it been when I’d been going through my treatment?
He glanced towards the door, seeming amused. “You were going through three-strikes and you’ve never heard of them? Beth will be over the moon. She’s always fretting about the university getting wind of the committee’s work.”
“What committee?”
Why didn’t they help me?
I bit back the words, still too cautious to risk saying them aloud.
Sensing my anger, he took my hand without thinking. It was such a natural response that I started to really believe in him—the Focused were never so quick to use physical contact when comforting someone. “I don’t know what happened in your case, I swear. I didn’t even know you were in my class. All I did know was that you went to the university, and when I checked you out, you checked me out back, even with these.”
He ran his fingers lightly across the underside of my tattooed wrist, and I swallowed a sigh out of habit. He continued stroking softly as he said, “I told Beth about you and she asked me to find you. I planned to stake out the med library after my class, see if you came in. I didn’t know you’d just land in my lap like this.”
More provocative words. He definitely knew what he was doing to me. I risked a look up into his face and his striking blue eyes were intent on mine. Anxious and unspeakably aroused at the same time, I whispered, “Stop it.”
He withdrew his hands immediately and my mind cried out a protest.
Don’t stop!
“A-are there a lot of you? People the committee has saved?”
He shrugged. “Not that many. Enough to count. Just because your body’s resistant to a treatment, that doesn’t mean you can’t focus enough to help people. Thinking that way is just plain stupid.”
I nodded—the first indication I’d given that I agreed with him—and he gave me a slow, irresistibly attractive smile. “Atta girl. We’re gonna help you. You’ve fooled them for this long, and I don’t know how you’ve done it. But one day you’d have slipped up. We can stop that from happening, with a little work.”
“What kind of work?”
Scott took my hand again and, before I could protest, he brushed his lips lightly over my knuckles. “Body language, associative thought patterns, resistance through acclimatisation…” He watched me intently, tracing circles on the back of my hand with his thumb. “That last one can be fun.”
I had no doubt about that. “And you’d be my trainer?”
“So to speak. If you want me, that is. If there’s nothing there, you can always request another trainer.” He seemed a little insecure, almost. “Is that what you want?”
I shook my head, suddenly speechless, and he grinned. “Me neither.”
For a second we just stared at each other, the air seeming to warm a degree or two as the tension between us grew. Then Scott leaned in towards me, a little tentatively, as if he was still unsure of his welcome. I swayed forward as if magnetised and his fingers brushed the underside of my jaw a split second before our lips met.
He was better than I’d imagined—slow at first, gauging my reaction, then growing more confident as I responded. When he teased my tongue with his for a brief moment before withdrawing, something snapped inside me.
It had been almost eight months since I’d last been with anyone. Too long, far too long. Maybe before I’d undergone the three-strikes treatment I’d have reined in my desires a little. Not now. I pressed against him, slipping my arms around his neck, and he leant backwards until he was stretched out on the couch, pulling me on top of him.
His body heat warmed me, and beneath his shirt I felt toned muscle that shifted as he slipped his arms around my waist. I kissed him harder, running my fingers through his hair, and he moaned against my lips, bucking his hips up against my body. He most definitely was
not
suppressed, and, as I felt his hard cock press into my thigh, I wanted him more than I’d ever wanted to be a doctor.
I’d never felt anything this intense before; not even close. Maybe it was the celibacy playing tricks on my mind, but I didn’t care if Beth—or anyone else—walked in on us. The head of the damn hospital could have barged through the door, and I wouldn’t have even looked up. I just wanted more.
“Holly…” His voice was breathless against my ear, and I ground against him in response, moving so that his tantalising hardness brushed my clit and instinctively tilting my hips.
“I want—”
“I know.” His voice was low, desperate in a way that made my entire body thrill. “We can’t. Not here.”
I whimpered, and his answering laughter just made everything ten times more unbearable. “Soon. I promise. But we both have shifts starting in ten minutes. If we don’t show up, they’re gonna get suspicious.”
I’d entirely forgotten about my shift with Dr Croft. “Fuck!” He was right, I knew he was, but that didn’t mean I had to like it.
Scott kissed the sensitive spot just below my ear. “Come on, we gotta sit up.”
Feeling more self-conscious by the second, I did as he asked, sliding off the couch to sit on the floor. Scott pushed himself upright and sat out of arm’s reach, readjusting his clothing, then running a frustrated hand through his hair. “God…”
“I’m sorry.” Wait, why was I apologising? It wasn’t as if I was the unwilling one. Not that he was unwilling…quite the opposite, in fact.
Okay, stop thinking about that. You need to calm down!
“Yeah, ‘cause it was all your fault.” His voice was mildly sarcastic and I couldn’t help but laugh. My attraction to him wasn’t just physical—he wasn’t my usual type but the fact that he had a sense of humour was a big turn-on.
This really wasn’t helping. “I think I should start walking. It’ll probably calm me down more than staying here will.”
“Good idea. Make sure you check your hair in the mirror first. Sorry about that, by the way.” His grin was anything but apologetic.
I got to my feet—a little shaky, but not a total basket case—and went over to the mirror by the door. It might have seemed like a strange thing to have hanging in an administrative room like this, but, if things like what had just happened to us were commonplace in here, it made sense.
My hair was a total mess, and I pulled my brush from my bag with a sigh of mock irritation. “You know, if I was a little more precious about my appearance, you’d be due a good slap for this.”
“Come over here and say that,” he said, his voice a lazy drawl. I looked over my shoulder to find him watching me appreciatively, and turned back to the mirror with a shiver of lust.