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He was right. I didn’t. Any of it. And God, was I mortified that he couldtelljust by looking at me.I must look worse than I thought.
“So, just take a breath. Relax. Let your body do its thing,” Lachlan said. His voice was pitched low, almost breathy, and it imbued my senses with a rush of calm.
As my body unraveled the tension that had coiled it tight, I got enough oxygen to my brain to realize how damned awkward this whole situation was. I tried to smooth it over with snark. “Next, you’ll tell me we’re doing yoga with goats in the morning. Namaste.”
He gave me a look like he knew exactly what I was doing. But it amused him all the same. “If you promise not to call whoever that asshat is tonight, then I’ll go with you and do sayasanas with goats.”
“Pinky promise?”
He hooked a pinky around the hand of my bruised, IV arm. “Sure. Pinky promise.” He paused, and then shook his head. “You really are a kid.”
I sniffed in mock outrage. “How dare you. I have a credit score. And a juicer.”
“Do youusethe juicer?”
“Of course not. I’m a cool adult. I eat marshmallow cereal for breakfast and cut the crusts off my sandwiches,” I retorted.
“That explains a lot,” he said with a roll of his eyes. His pinky was still around mine, and he gave it a playful squeeze. “How are you feeling?”
Surprisingly, not bad. I felt like maybe my fever was down to a manageable level, and I could talk better. I shifted my sore shoulders, “I think… better. A lot better.”
He nodded. “Good. Fluids and medicine aresupercomplicated remedies. You definitely couldn’t have done that on your own.”
I jerked my hand away from his, giving him a glower. “When you say it that way, I sound like a doofus. I’m just busy. And… frugal.”
“Water is free,” he drawled.
“You know what else is free?” I asked, starting to lift my middle fingers.
He pinned them to the bed at my side, and the motion pushed me down into the pillows. Lachlan leaned over me, his eyes shimmering with humor. “I can think of a lot of things that are free. And healthy. And fun.”
I exhaled a short breath, staring at him. I licked my bottom lip with a dry tongue. “Like… common sense?” I quipped.
His smile flashed white in the shadowed room. “Hm. Common senseishealthy.” His eyes darted down my body and then back to my face. “In moderate amounts.”
Arousal flared to life inside of me.
Lachlan leaned back, releasing my hands, and then stood with a stretch. My eyes followed every sinew and taut muscle like he’d attached strings from my pupils to his lean, solid body. With a groan, he bent to the table with several white, packaged things on it, and held up a rectangular lollipop with a silver wrapper. “How’s your throat?”
“Uhm, sore-ish?”
He unwrapped the candy and then handed it to me. “Put that near the back of your throat, as much as you can stand it, and suck on it for ten or fifteen seconds. It’s going to taste like you’re sucking ink from a pen but try not to get that all over your mouth.” His eyes glittered. “I just got you talking again. I’d hate for you to get all tongue-tied.”
I swallowed hard against the swollen tonsils in my throat. He was watching me, his hands low on his narrow hips, his eyes intrigued.
I slowly hovered the candy into my mouth, avoiding my tongue and sticking it right in the back of my throat. I gagged a little, just enough to make me cough softly, and his eyes widened.
Hah, I thought with a little smug satisfaction.So, I’m not the only one.Although, what he saw in the bedraggled mess I must have looked, I couldn’t begin to guess. Maybe he had a thing for beat-up strays.
I sucked on the lollipop, and we kept eye contact. It sent ripples of heat straight between my legs, and I swirled the acrid candy around the back of my throat. It began to numb everything pretty quickly. With one hard swallow, I popped the candy out of my mouth. My brows lifted slowly. He almost looked angry. I handed him the candy, my expression overly innocent. “Thanks.”
Lachlan took the sucker, and I saw a muscle work along the hard ridge of his jaw before he popped open a pill bottle and dropped the Novocain lollipop into it. He dragged in a breath through his nose, and then like a mask, he shuttered whatever he was fighting against. Dr. Cade clicked the pill bottle closed and placed it gently on the table. “Now you’ve had some Novocain, I can get some food in you.”
I made a face. Nausea still bounced around in my gut, and I couldn’t imagine actually trying to swallow something past the inflated balloon in my esophagus. But Dr. Cade didn’t take “no” for an answer. Naturally.
He brought me a bowl of soup that wasn’t even hot. He said lukewarm was better for my throat. It was brown and green with little, floating grains of something, and a lot of vegetables. I gave him a “what the fuck?” face.
“It’s lentil soup,” he said, as if it were the most obvious thing the world.
