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It was a dated space, something right out of the 90s.
From the ugly sand-colored linoleum to the dark faux wood cabinet and sink area, and the halfway painted walls in a light blue color, and even to the table itself that I was on with its pale green vinyl material.
I half-expected that the waiting room out front would have those round-backed, rounded-armed, mismatched-colored cushion chairs.
The fluorescent light overhead had a wooden frame where several moths found the end of their days.
It even smelled like a doctor’s office. A strange mix of plastic and antiseptic with a trace of blood.
Blood.
In this case, my blood.
My gaze shot down my body, making dread spread through me. Because my clothes were gone. Everything except for, it seemed, my panties and bra.
A thin sheet was draped over me to keep off the chill of the air conditioning in the room that seemed to be set to Arctic.
Through that thin material, I could see a bulge around my thigh.
Bandages?
My hand went to inspect instinctively, but the motion was halted by the handcuff around my wrist.
Taking a deep breath, I tried to move my other hand, feeling my shoulder cry out in objection, but not nearly as sharply as before.
Slipping the blanket to the side, I saw gauze wrapped entirely around my thigh.
They’d… treated me.
Why would they shoot me, only to take care of me after?
As if sensing the direction of my thoughts, the door creaked open, and someone leaned their head in.
There he was.
The sexy older man who’d picked me up and carried me around.
I wasn’t exactly accustomed to being carried. In fact, no man had ever even attempted to pick me up before. Yet this one had scooped me up like it was nothing at all to do so.
There absolutely should not have been a strange fluttering in my chest at the memory. But there was no denying it was there, either.
He said nothing as he observed that I was awake, just moved silently into the room and over toward the cabinets, fiddling around with something. But the exam table was faced away from him, so no matter how much I tried to crane my neck to see what he was doing, I succeeded only in making my shoulder hurt.
“Stop moving around,” he said in a deep, smooth voice that had shivers coursing through me.
“Why am I here?” I asked, watching as he moved into my field of view.
“To get those bullets plucked out of you,” he said.
It wasn’t just what he said, but the way he said it. Like it was no big deal. Like it happened every single day.
“This isn’t a hospital,” I said, looking around.
“No, it’s not,” he agreed as he wiped a thermometer in an alcohol swab. “Open,” he demanded as he moved in at my side.
And what did my damn traitorous mouth do? Yep. Opened right up for him.
I tried to tell myself it was because I genuinely did need to know if I had a fever or not, if I was dealing with a possible infection from some back-room, makeshift surgery to remove the bullets. But even I knew it was more like a knee-jerk reaction to something firm in his voice, something that brooked no argument.
