Dr. Manello shot her an are-you-fucking-serious. "After you had open-heart surgery. Yeah, right."
"Feeding? But I could...feed more."
"That'll help, sure. But you know what else is ammmmaaaazing?" He lifted his head to the ceiling and got rapturous. "Staying the fuck in bed."
"I heal faster...if I feed."
"What's the rush? None of you are going back out in the field anytime soon." Abruptly, the surgeon shut his mouth, as if that were information he was not authorized to share. "Anyway, take a load off, eat chocolate pudding to soothe that throat I intubated, and we'll see how you go."
"Feeding, too."
"Fine, yeah, sure, take as many fucking veins as you want. But whether you turn yourself into Frank Langella or not, I'm only clearing you when I'm good and goddamn ready."
"Do you always curse...at your patients?"
"Only the ones I like."
"Lucky...me." But she smiled. "Do I...say thank...you...now?"
"Are you going to cry like a sissy if you do? 'Cuz, no offense, I'm a sympathetic weeper and I'd just as soon not have to go into the weight room looking like someone Mayweather'd me in the face."
"I never cry."
"Well, you've got a big heart, I'll tell you that much. I've seen it up close and personal." Dr. Manello put a hand on her foot and gave her a little squeeze. "You hit that call button if you need anything. Ehlena is right next door. I'm working out for the next hour or so, and then I'll be sleeping across the hall just in case you spring another leak. Not that I'm expecting that."
"Thank...you."
"You are so welcome," the surgeon said. "I love a good result. And let's keep it that way during recovery, okay?"
"Yes, Doctor."
"Good girl." He smiled. "I mean, good badass boss lady."
As her surgeon headed for the door, Novo admitted to herself that he was right. It was way too ambitious on her part to think she'd be able to fight in two days. The pain in her chest was incredible, the kind of thing she felt up in her molars and down to her toenails, even with all the drugs she was on. There was no way that was backing off by next nightfall.
She looked at Peyton. He was sitting in that chair like he was on the verge of bursting to his feet, his torso leaning forward, his hands planted on his thighs as if he were going to push himself up.
"What?" she asked him. "You look...as if you want...to be called on in class."
"Chocolate pudding."
Novo tried to take a deep breath and just ended up wheezing. "What...?"
"He said you're supposed to eat it for your throat. I'll get you some."
"No." In fact, the more she thought about it, the more she wanted to gag. "Oh, no. Stomach...no."
"I just want to help somehow."
She stared at him for a while. In all the ways that mattered, Peyton was the very thing she detested in a male, all that glymera bullshit wrapped up in a package that, as much as she tried to deny it, even she recognized as attractive.
He was her sister's type, as a matter of fact.
Good thing Sophy was never going to meet him. Or Oskar would learn firsthand how it feels when someone you think loves you treats you like you're an iPhone 5 in an X world.
Actually, wasn't that a tempting fantasy...
What was the question? God, her brain was fuzzy. Oh, right...Peyton was everything she hated about wealthy high-society types who were too good for everyone else around them--but there was one part to all that which did work for her.
His blood was liable to be hella pure, to the point of being medicinal.
"What can I do?" he asked. "And if it's leave you in peace, I can do that for you, too."
In the back of her mind, a warning went off, the little ring-a-ding-ding pointing out that maybe, just maybe, it might be better for her to never know what he tasted like.
Although, come on, she'd already learned her lesson with males, and it had cost her a piece of herself. Literally.
She was not that stupid--and she really fucking wanted out of this bed.
"Let me...take your vein."
As she said the words, Peyton's eyes flared like that was the last thing he had ever expected her to say.
"Please," he said roughly as he extended his wrist to her.
Except he immediately retracted his arm and brought his own flesh to his lips. His brows tightened only a fraction as he bit into himself, and then he extended the punctures over to her.
Her jaw cracked as she tried to open her mouth, and things seemed hinged in a bad way by her ears, maybe part of the whole emergency intubation. But she forgot about all that as a drop of his blood landed on her lower lip.
The scent alone was like food in a stomach when you were weak from hunger, everything waking up with vitality--no, fuck that. It was like a hit of cocaine. And then she was extending her dry tongue and licking--
Dimly, she was aware of groaning as her eyes rolled back in her head...and not because she was dying. Oh, no, she was suddenly very alive. His taste. His taste was like a crash cart hooking up to her sliced-and-diced heart, the jolt that went through her chest, cranking her entire circulatory system into a gear with so much more power.
"Take from me," he said from a great distance. "Take it all..."
As he lowered his arm down, she formed a seal around his vein. Her first couple of draws were sloppy and uncoordinated--she cured that quick, though. Before long, she was taking the kind of long pulls you might if it had been years since you had been properly nourished.
Holy...shit...she had never had this kind of sustenance before. Craeg and Boone had volunteered earlier, back when she had been in and out of consciousness. And prior to that? It had been other civilians, just like herself. But Peyton was high-test to all that discount gas, to the point where the singeing path burning its way into her gut made her break out in a sweat--and sure enough, alarms began to go off, her heart thundering behind that recently sawed-open sternum of hers.
She really didn't care if she stroked out. Or if her cardiac muscle exploded all over everything. Or if her head popped off her spine, her feet grew fifteen sizes bigger, or she went blind, deaf, and mute.
Instinct, bred into her species, took over, the hunger owning every part of her.
And then her eyes locked with Peyton's.
She told herself this was about getting well, triumphing over her injury, making herself stronger. But the more she drank of him, the more she took of him into herself, it was clear there was another drive at work.
He was a meal she feared she was going to want again. Even when her survival was not at stake.
And she wasn't going to need only blood.
Down the corridor, in the weight room, Ruhn lay with his upper body on a padded bench, his legs bent, his feet planted on the floor mats. The bar he gripped with his hands weighed fifty pounds or more and was made of iron. The disks racked on either end totaled some seven hundred pounds.
As he popped the load off the supports, he held it up above his chest and breathed deep as he steadied all that weight. Then he brought the bar down to his pecs, controlling the descent, a triumph of strength over gravity. With first the right hand and then the left, he realigned his grips a little...and then he pushed up, taking the bar high as he exhaled with a schhhhhhhhht. And then down. And then up. And then down...
He kept going until those pectorals began to seize and his biceps and triceps trembled and his elbows burned...and still he continued, to the point where he need to arch his spine to get the bar to its apex.
Sweat dotted his brow and then ran down into his hair and his ears. His thighs ached. His lungs ceased to work. His heart didn't so much pound as blow up with every beat.
And still he did not stop.
The idea that he had been attracted to someone of the same sex was something he had never confronted before. Sure, he was aware that those liaisons occurred, but he'd always assumed it was just something the aristocracy indulged. Where he came from? As
a lowly civilian from a traditional background?
No, his parents would never have approved of this, his father especially. That male had been very adamant about what the proper roles were for both sexes, and they had not included masculine coupling. He had also been clear about the expectations for each person in the family, mahmen, father, daughter, son.
And you wanted your elders to approve of you, especially after a youth where you were bigger than everybody else and shy as a fawn in social situations.
In fact, Ruhn had nearly killed himself to live up to what his father had needed from him, what his family had required. The idea of letting them down--
Wait, why was he thinking like this? As if he had already had sex with someone of the same...well, sex, as it were?
Because you want to kiss him. Admit it.
As the thought went through his head, he threw his no-I-don't into the bar, shoving the weights up with the same kind of power he'd had when he'd first started. He absolutely did not want anything from that male. At all. Because if he did? Well, he'd already been through the nightmare of discovering a new, unacknowledged part of him, and that had been a horrible experience, to say the least.
He was not going through that again.
Nope--
All at once, his arms gave out on him, the muscles failing, the weight going in a free fall that resulted in the bar landing directly on his chest. The pain was instant and paralyzing, those seven hundred and fifty pounds compressing his lungs as sure as if a building had fallen on him.
Instantly, a face appeared overhead. "Help me get this off you--come on, push! Goddamn it, PUSH!"
It was the surgeon, Dr. Manello.
As Ruhn began to black out, he was dimly aware of a piercing alarm in the weight room--no, it was a whistle. The human was whistling through his front teeth as he tried to relieve some of the pressure by straddling the bench and pulling up on the bar with both hands.
It did help. Ruhn could breathe some and his vision cleared a little.
Two more people came running in and then the crushing load was gone off of him. He still couldn't inhale right, though. Had he broken his entire upper torso?
Dr. Manello's face came back, real close. "I am not opening another chest cavity up tonight, do you hear me?"
And then there was a mask over his nose and mouth, a forceful stream of oxygen making his cheeks blow out and his throat go dry. The air tasted weird, like there were pencil shavings in it or flecks of tin--and that, coupled with the plastic form-fitting piece over his mouth and nose, made him feel like he was suffocating worse than he had been when he'd been left alone.
When he tried to push the mask away, strong hands prevented him.
But he was even stronger. A surge of pure panic shot him upright in spite of the people around him, and he tore the oxygen feed free.
To settle any arguments to the contrary, he opened his mouth and dragged all the air in the weight room down deep. Immediately, there was a horrid cracking sound, like an oak branch snapping in half, and a lightning bolt of agony accompanied the noise--still, his light-headedness fled like an intruder chased away, his heart hammering in an even rhythm.
"Well, there's that approach to it, too," Dr. Manello muttered. "Is it all right if I take a look at you?"
As Ruhn was still having to concentrate to get the inhale/exhale thing right, he simply nodded.
"Can you lie down for me?" the doctor asked.
Ruhn shook his head. Nope, no way. The panic would come back and take over--and with a shiver of claustrophobia, he looked at the door. Thank Fates that it had a window out into the corridor, and he reminded himself that there was a place to escape out of--
Someone came at him with something.
With a quick mortal reflex, he slapped a grip onto the wrist and bent the arm in its joint socket so hard and fast that whatever person was attached to it went down on the mats.
"Whoa, easy..." The Brother Rhage broke the hold and put his body in the way. "Hey, look at me. Come on, son, you focus on me now."
Ruhn blinked. Blinked again. Tried to follow the command, but it was impossible. Rhage was jumping around like water on a griddle--oh, wait. Ruhn was shaking. Yup, those huge feet of the Brother's were not moving; Ruhn was the one with the over-motorization.
"Where are you in there?" the Brother murmured. " 'Cuz I need you to come back so you don't hurt the doctor, 'kay?"
Something was wrong with his hearing. The volume was going up and down on the world, words fading in and out of mute with a randomness that required him to fill in the blanks.
Ruhn breathed in and out some more, and then he looked down, to where Dr. Manello was examining his own forearm like he was wondering if it was broken.
"I'm so sorry," Ruhn choked out. "Oh, dearest Virgin, I didn't mean..."
The doctor smiled up at him. "Nah, it's okay. Boundaries are good. Just next time, tell me to back off first before you strong-arm me, and then if I don't listen, go MMA on my ass. So are you ready for me to listen to your heart? This is not going to hurt you."
The human held up a little metal disk, which appeared to be attached to a cord that...went into the doctor's ears.
"Have you never been examined before?" Dr. Manello said softly.
Ruhn shook his head.
"Okay, this is a stethoscope. I put it here," the male pointed to his own chest, a little off of center, "and I listen to the beat. It's non-invasive--which means it doesn't hurt or cut into you. I promise."
Ruhn shuddered and then nodded--not because he wanted anything anywhere near him, but rather because he'd been unforgivably rude in hurting the man and wanted to make up for that somehow.
And it looked like submitting to whatever that was was his only chance.
"Can you sit up straighter for me?"
As he complied, pushing his spine higher, Rhage seemed to be encouraging the others who had come in to leave--and for that, Ruhn was grateful. What he needed right now was less sensory input, not more, and as someone who suffered from shyness, all those pairs of eyes staring at him, even if it was with compassion, were too much to handle.
"See? Nothing to worry about."
Ruhn looked down. The disk end of the instrument was on his pecs and the doctor was staring off to the side, as if he were concentrating on whatever was being transmitted to his ears.
"Does it hurt to take a breath?" the doctor asked. "Yes? Can I take off your shirt so I can see what's going on?"
Ruhn nodded before he could think better of it, and Dr. Manello and Rhage each took the bottom of his muscle shirt and peeled it slowly upward.
Like a young, Ruhn held his arms up for them--before he remembered why his shirt had to stay on.
Both of them gasped and froze.
And immediately, Ruhn wanted to curse. He'd forgotten about the markings on his back.
Damn it.
--
After Novo was finished feeding and had fallen into the restless sleep of the injured and healing, Peyton stumbled back to the classroom on numb feet, shaky legs, and a vertigo-scrambled inner ear. As he closed himself in, he wondered why the tables and the chairs, the desk and the blackboard, all looked completely unfamiliar, like he'd never been in the room before.
Made no sense. He'd been gone a half an hour, tops, and his short-term memory informed him that everything was exactly as he'd left it.
Then again, he was what had changed.
Turning the lights off and rolling onto the desk, he felt like he was nothing but bones in a loose sack, everything hard-edged and not well connected. Jesus Christ, what had just happened back there? Whatever, sure, on the surface, Novo had taken his vein, and that hadn't been the first time a female had done that to him. And hello, she was in a hospital bed, hooked up to machines.
The experience, though? The feel of her lips on the skin of his wrist, the subtle pulls, the lick of her tongue when she was finished?
Fuck his drug addiction. Give him a lifetime of
that and he was never going to need another line of coke again.
Closing his eyes, he relived every part of it, from when he had scored himself to that first drop that had landed on her lip. Sensations rippled through him, heating his blood, making him even harder.
He fought the arousal.
He lost.
When he had been at her bedside, he had managed to keep things under control, rearranging his cock discreetly and staying tight. Here by himself in the dark? He felt like a fucking man-whore, but he was never going to sleep again unless he took care of things.
With a rough shove, he pushed his palm down the front of his combats and the instant contact was made, an orgasm exploded out of him, memories of Novo from class, sparring, out in the field, flashing through his mind, keeping things going. He even went back to when he'd been inside her, her bare sex accepting his penetrations like she had been made for him and him alone.
Okay, that was not such a great image, given that she'd only lain there.
Staying away from that one, he stuck to the others as he gave himself more access, ripping open his fly with two brutal hands, shoving the waistband down over his ass. With a grunt, he twisted to the side, his torso torquing as he gripped his shaft and worked himself even harder, the desk cool under his hot cheek, his free hand curling around the edge and squeezing so hard, his forearm nearly snapped in half.
And still he kept coming.
When he was finally drained, he closed his eyes and just breathed for a while--until he realized he'd made a goddamn mess all over himself and the front of his pants and the goddamn desk.
Thank God it was the middle of the day. With any luck, he could sneak down to the locker room, grab some towels and a set of scrubs, and get back here without anyone seeing him.
So yup...it was time to get up.
Uh-huh.
Right now.
Instead, he stayed where he was and wondered what would it be like to feed from her and actually remember it...her blood down the back of his throat, her body underneath his as he rolled her over and went for her throat.
He needed to go there. And not because he was shot in the head and in a medical emergency.
Yet even as the conviction went through his mind and started to rewire things with all sorts of purpose-driven, results-oriented, get-naked-soon goals, he knew none of it was ever going to happen. She had made it clear all along that he wasn't her type--hell, even if she said she wanted to fight with him again, she didn't even like him. More to the point, their paths were going to stop crossing when he left the program.