Total pages in book: 107
Estimated words: 98561 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 493(@200wpm)___ 394(@250wpm)___ 329(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 98561 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 493(@200wpm)___ 394(@250wpm)___ 329(@300wpm)
“Everything okay, Doc?” asked the guard.
My head jerked around and I had to blink a few times before I remembered how to speak. “Yes. Yes! Everything’s fine.”
“You want me to stay?” he asked.
The prisoners don’t get much in the way of privacy or dignity, I figure the least I can do is let them discuss their medical problems with me without a guard listening in. So I don’t ask for a guard to be present unless the prisoner’s known to be dangerous. And Gabriel wasn’t.
At least, not dangerous in that way. The thought of being alone with him made my stomach flip-flop.
“No, thank you,” I told the guard. “We’ll be fine.”
The guard nodded. “Regs say the door stays open. And I gotta cuff him.” He went to cuff Gabriel’s hands.
“I’ll need to examine his abdomen,” I told him.
The guard waited while Gabriel shrugged his jumpsuit down to his waist, then stripped off his white tank top. Then Gabriel obediently held his hands out in front of him and the guard cuffed them. Gabriel’s face was a careful mask: he looked nonchalant, almost bored. And this whole time, he still hadn’t spoken. It was as if he was waiting for us to be private and that idea made me go heady. God, what’s happening to me? This isn’t a good idea. Tell the guard you’ve changed your mind—
Too late. The guard ambled out into the hallway to chat with the other guards.
And we were alone.
The room felt instantly different. I was aware of every little noise: the quick little breaths I was taking; the slower, calmer sound of Gabriel’s breathing; the rattle of the handcuff chain as he adjusted his position. My face flushed and I looked everywhere but at him. Then, finally, my eyes flicked up and I was looking right into those incredible eyes. He’d dropped the nonchalance and the raw need in his gaze took my breath away. He looked like a wolf again, single-minded and hungry. Hungry for me. And at the same time, there was a…flutter. An urgency, a hint of nervous energy that didn’t fit with his cocky confidence.
Then he glanced down at his naked chest and grinned. “So, Doc, when do I get to see you naked?”
My face flushed. I swallowed and it turned into a hot throb that went right down my body, leaving every inch of my skin super-sensitive. I didn’t trust my voice so I simply pointed him towards an exam area. I slid the curtains closed behind us and then we were alone and private.
I should have been nervous. He was a male prisoner, he was bigger than me…that’s why the guard had left the door open, so he could hear if I yelled for help. But there was something about Gabriel: an aura. Sure, he was a thief, a trickster, a master manipulator. You couldn’t trust him. But I knew he’d never hurt me. I couldn’t explain it, but I was sure.
Gabriel sat down on the gurney, swung his legs up and stretched out. He gave me another of those wolfish smiles and I suddenly realized I was smiling back at him. Have I been doing that every time? I quickly forced my face straight. His smile turned into a smirk.
I bent over him to examine his wound.
“Did you always want to be a doctor?” he asked.
Be professional. Don’t flirt. But answering a question was okay, right? “Yes,” I told him carefully. “My father’s a doctor.” I gently started cutting away the dressing. “What about you?”
“What about me, what?”
“How did you…” I gestured at his tattoos, his prison jumpsuit: his life.
“How did I become a thief?” I was looking at his wound but I could hear the grin in his voice. “You want the heart-rending tale of how my life went astray?”
I finally looked up at him. And nodded.
“Aw, hell, Doc, my life didn’t go astray. I’ve always been bad.” He pinned me with those amazing eyes, God, the raw intelligence there, the sense that his brain was going a million miles an hour. “When I was seven, I stole flowers from the buckets outside florists, took them downtown and sold them to commuters to take home to their wives. In middle school, I paid the smart kids for their homework and sold it at a profit to the others. In high school, I stole the test answers every year until the final test, and I only stopped then because I was too busy sleeping with my teachers.” He chuckled, a gloriously warm sound that I felt deep in my chest. “My folks named me after an angel. They should have picked someone from the other side.”
He gazed at me and I felt myself falling into those amazing eyes. “Did I grow up poor? Sure. But so did everyone in my neighborhood. My dad was a barber: we did okay, compared to a lot of folk. I wasn’t bad because we were poor, I was bad because it was fun.”