Rush (Men of Rapture #1) Read online

  He doesn’t fit.

  “Turn in the last driveway on your left,” he says, grunting as he sits up straighter and cradles his abdomen. “When you get to the garage, take the road beside it and follow it all the way to the back. If you don’t mind, I was hoping you’d pull across the grass to get me as close to the door as you can.” He turns his pretty eyes toward me, all gold-filled and mesmerizing. “I promise it’s well-manicured and won’t hurt your car.”

  “Not a problem,” I reply, slowing to turn into the drive.

  It’s long and lined on each side by lush, mature Dogwoods. Their sprawling branches splay against a backdrop of sweeping grass hills that beckon me toward a rooftop in the distance. I’m unprepared for the splendor that greets me as I top the final hill. The home is huge, large enough to be a palace, and built from a mixture of natural stone and concrete. Colorful autumn blooms form intricate patterns in the surrounding gardens, and sturdy green hedges define walkways and seating areas. A large three-tier stone fountain takes front and center, its size in perfect proportion to the mansion itself.

  “Keep left,” Rush directs, pointing toward the part of the drive that leads to the biggest garage I’ve ever seen. “Follow that road to the pool house.”

  As I navigate the car onto the smaller drive, I’m silent, absorbing every new puzzle piece as it comes. The shock from his original announcement is nothing when comparing my initial thoughts to the reality before me. This is so much more than I expected, and now I only crave to know more. To unwrap the deep, dark secrets that haunt the man beside me.

  “Looks like I can get pretty close,” I muse, mostly to myself.

  “The closer the better, doc,” Rush says, giving me a cutesy smirk. “Getting out of this car is probably going to kill my ass.”

  I pull to a stop next to a tall hedge and only a few feet from an already open gate that clearly leads to a pool area. The top part of a slide can be seen over the well-manicured bushes, but I worry less about how grand it is and more about how I can help my patient from the car.

  Switching off the engine, I turn to him and lift a bottle of pills from my scrub pocket, shaking them. “Getting you out of this car is going to be a pain, but I brought something to give you after you’re settled. I’m hoping it’ll help you rest today.”

  “Aw, doc,” he says, tilting his head and palming his chest. “You shouldn’t have.”

  “You aren’t making this easy.” I roll my eyes and get out of the car before going around and opening his door. “I could’ve just let you suffer,” I say, leaning down and adjusting his seat as high as it will go. “Maybe I still will.”

  “Suffer is my middle name,” he replies, turning and anchoring his right foot on the ground. “No pills are gonna to change that.”

  I don’t respond, unsure how, as I lean down and gently move his left leg so he’s positioned to stand. “Are you ready?” Without verbal confirmation, I pin myself to his side and lift his arm across my shoulders. “One, two, three …”

  “Shit, shit, shit,” he utters as he stands and settles his weight between me and his uninjured leg while also grabbing the open door for extra support. “Gimme a minute, please.”

  I’m silent and patient as he gathers himself, then soft and encouraging as we slowly work our way inside the gate and toward an extravagant pool house. It’s concrete and glass, sleek and modern, while also being on the small side.

  “The keypad.” He points to a black glass panel mounted on the back side of a column that supports the patio roof. “1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6,” he says as he punches each number. “In case you ever need them.”

  At the tone of his voice, I lift my gaze to his face. His eyes spark with innuendo and his grin is naughty, but I don’t shy away. I hold his stare as I refuse to allow him to retreat behind his force field. “That would imply I have intentions of returning,” I say, my tone all business. “As soon as I get you settled, my job here is done.”

  “You wound me, doc.” He grabs his chest, faking heartbreak, before reaching over and sliding open the door just enough for us to hobble through. “Here I am letting you in, allowing you to see things no one else ever has, and you’re ready to abandon me outright. That’s cold. Real fucking cold.”

  He’s joking—I think—but there’s also an air of truth to his words, a level of knowing. He’s playing me hard, betting on my curiosity to kill me, and the sad part is, it probably will. I can’t, in good conscience, leave him to fend for himself, and the bait he’s dangling makes the prospect of seeing this through all the more enticing.

  “Fine,” I mutter petulantly as I search for the nearest place to drop his sorry, conniving self. “I’ll come back and check on you a time or two, but as soon as you’re on your feet, I’m done here.”

  When he responds, his words are low, and his lips are so close to my ear it sends a trail of goose bumps scattering down my arms. “Or we can really start to have some fun.”

  I pretend to be wholly unaffected as I guide him the last two steps to his bed and dump him on his tight ass. Ignoring his grunt, I cross my arms in a huff. “I’m not some toy, Rush! I’m a woman. A professional. One who’s crossed a line to help your shady ass, so I’d appreciate it if you’d drop the bullshit and treat me as such.”

  “Whatever,” he says, rolling his eyes like my words mean nothing. “Maybe you should remind your body because I know an interested woman when I see one.”

  My jaw drops, stunned by his audacity and a little shameful of my own reactions to him. I can’t deny how physically attractive he is, even in this state, but that doesn’t give him the right to constantly ignore every word that leaves my mouth.

  Stepping closer, I lean down to whisper in his ear. “You’re a beautiful man, Rush, and I am physically attracted to you.” I lift my head to meet his eyes. “But it takes more than good looks to impress me. My mind controls my libido, not my body, and the only thing it feels for you is pity.”

  His face stays impassive, but I can see just the slightest tightening around his eyes as they roam my face. “Don’t turn this into a game, doc, because I’m the master of my realm.”

  I search his eyes, looking for any hint that he’s joking, but I can’t find a single iota of humor. He’s dead serious, and that’s a little scary. It’s a game. His every insinuation is designed with one goal in mind. The score. It makes perfect sense, really, after what I witnessed in the alley. Play by the rules, and he’ll let you think you own a piece for a few blissful moments, but you never really do. It’s just wishful thinking. There’s probably nothing but a disastrous trail of broken hearts in his wake.

  Closing my eyes, I break the stare-down and retreat. “Let me get you some water so you can take something for the pain.”

  I move around the sheer room divider and toward the kitchen, which is on the opposite side of the vast studio-like living area. As with everything else, the interior and finishes are extravagant. Marble and stainless highlight the kitchen, while a humongous TV mounted against the wall dominates the seating area. There’s only one closed door, and my guess is it leads to a lavish bath.

  After making a glass of ice water, I think ahead and grab the largest bowl I can find before moving back to the sleeping area. “Here you go,” I say with a smile as I set the glass on the nightstand. “Take these”—I shove two pills into his hand—“and I’ll be right back.”

  The lavatory is just as spectacular as I expect, but I don’t waste much time exploring. I add a squirt of his usual body wash and fill the bowl with warm water, sloshing it to make suds, before grabbing a clean washcloth from the pantry and returning to his bedside.

  Seeing him like this, relaxed back with his eyes closed and a peaceful expression is almost enough to make me forget what he’s really like … but it’s only almost. Because as surely as I think it, his eyes open and that damn pretentious, know-it-all smirk curls his lips.

  “Looking at me that way doesn’t help,” he says, and his voice is soft, hone
st. “I keep telling myself I’m going to leave you alone, but every time I try, that fucking spark crackles between us, and it’s hard to ignore.”

  “I’m not going to deny it’s there.” I sit beside him and brush his hair from his eyes so I can clean the dried blood from his brow. “But we’re two people with different objectives, so just let me help you, and we can both get back to our regularly scheduled lives.”

  “Sounds doable.”

  “Good.” I smile, prompting him to sit up and remove his blood-stiffened T-shirt. “Get this off, and I’ll help as much as I can before I go.”

  “Always trying to remove my clothes,” he jokes, and that’s all it is. A perfectly placed joke that’s bereft of his usual innuendo.

  Progress—at least until his shirt hits the floor.

  The air thickens a noticeable degree as I stare, dumbfounded, at the display of artful perfection before me. Bold, colorful geometric shapes emanate from the tip of a rope-like pattern that’s mostly hidden by his waistband and create an abstract pathway across his abdomen. They spiral across the tight planes and swirl upward before expertly becoming one with the lower mane of a roaring lion head. It sweeps across his chest, teeth bared and snarling, with a colorful mane of fire that licks over his shoulder and up his neck. It’s intricate and awe-inspiring and just so damn pretty.

  He flexes his chest, which only causes my eyes to jump to the two silver rings that protrude from his hardened nipples. “Here, let me get that,” he jokes, reaching for the drool on my chin.

  I jerk away and hold up my hands. “Okay, sorry. That was a momentary lapse.”

  “More like minutes.” He grins and gives a casual shrug. “But I’ll try not to let it go to my head.” He taps his temple. “This one, anyway.”

  I snap the wet washcloth against his arm. “Do you ever stop?”

  He pauses, his forehead crinkling as he thinks through the question. “I’m not sure who I’d be without that part of myself.”

  “Maybe you should try to find out,” I reply as I lean forward and carefully start wiping the dried blood from his skin.

  It only takes me a few minutes to get the stains off his abdomen and upper arm before I rinse the rag and hand it to him to clean his hands. All of this is done without much conversation, as we’re each lost to the task at hand. By the time we’re finished, though, tension has already filled the quiet space.

  I hurriedly get up and remove myself from the tight atmosphere by taking the bowl to his bathroom and returning with it refilled and a new cloth. “This is for your leg, if you feel up to getting those scrub pants off today.”

  “What?” he asks, and I brace myself because I know it’s coming. “You aren’t gonna help me, doc?”

  I look at my empty wrist. “No time. I should already be at work, and I still have to clean up the mess you made.”

  “You’re no fun.” He pouts, resting his head back and closing his eyes. I turn to leave, but he grabs my hand. “Let me give you the codes again.” He takes a notepad from the nightstand drawer and scribbles two sets of numbers, though I don’t know how he thinks I’d forget the one to the pool house. “See ya soon, doc.”

  I slowly back away as his eyes fall closed again. “If I’m not back tonight, I promise I’ll check on you before work in the morning.”

  His eyes flutter open. “Got somewhere else to be?”

  “Not yet, but I will have.”

  Shit. Why am I being so forthcoming?

  “Oh?” His gaze rakes over me, and I feel it everywhere.

  It spurs me into responding in the most absurd yet truthful way. “I have to offload this extra tension somewhere.”

  I turn and escape before he can form a reply. Little does he know, but this hookup has been on the agenda ever since I witnessed him in the alley. This encounter has only sped up the need.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Sleeping

  RUSH

  Being up all night, combined with the pain killers, makes for heavy eyes and a tired mind. I want to fight it, to press the doc about her evening plans, but I just can’t get my fucking mouth to cooperate. My tongue is thick and heavy, and my lips won’t move no matter how hard I try. Her triumphant smirk is the last thing I see before I float off into dreamland.

  Many hours later, I wake sore and stiff, groaning as I roll to my back and pry open my eyes. It looks to be late afternoon or evening, judging by the sun’s position in the sky, and I gotta piss like a fucking Russian race horse. I pull myself into a seated position, my back resting against the soft leather headboard as I breathe deeply to quell the steady throb in my thigh.

  “Fuck,” I mutter, slapping my hand against the bed, annoyed with this overwhelming feeling of helplessness.

  Gritting my teeth, I swing my legs over the edge of the bed, and it isn’t too bad. The pain is manageable—until I try to stand. A ferocious growl rumbles through my lips as I try to suck it up and trudge forward, but it’s too much for me to power through. I lift my foot and hop toward the wall.

  After a breather, I continue along the wall toward the bathroom door. Each bounce only exacerbates my need to piss, and if I wasn’t so disgusted by the idea, I’d whip out my cock and take a leak in the sink. As it is, I hobble the rest of the way to the toilet and kick off the scrub bottoms before taking a seat. The relief of finally being able to piss overrides the pain, and I bask in the reprieve.

  My eyes fall to my thigh, and I get my first good look at the wound. It’s closed up tightly with perfectly aligned stitches that span only a few inches, but the whole area surrounding it is swollen. There’re varying shades of dried blood spattered on my leg and trailing down past my knee.

  All in all, I’ll fucking live.

  Grateful there aren’t any tattoos in the area, I lean back to assess the damage to the one on my stomach, and I smile as another round of relief moves through me. Doc’s got skills. Some-fucking-how, she’s aligned the skin on either side to create a perfect match. Aside from the thin, angry line, the image itself is undisturbed. On a whim, I lift my arm and inspect it, too.

  Perfect.

  I can’t help but smirk as I think of her smart mouth handing me my ass several times, while apparently also doing a fucking bang-up job on taking care of me. A modicum of guilt creeps in, but I shove it away by reminding myself this is who I am, and to pretend otherwise is a lie.

  I eye the shower, and it’s tempting, but I don’t know if I’m allowed to get the stitches wet, so I opt instead to brush my teeth and get my ass back in the bed. It takes more energy than I expect to scrub away the taste of sleep, so by the time I’ve hopped back to the bed, my thigh is burning and I feel weak.

  The fresh bowl of water and clean washcloth call to me from the nightstand, and beside it sits a full glass of water and two small white pills. Again, I smile. Even though I was an ass, she’s still making sure I’m taken care of. If I was a mature, caring man, I’d see it for what it is: her being nice to a pathetic fucker who practically blackmailed her. But I’m not. I’m an asshole who uses women, and every new thing I learn about her makes me want to fuck her more.

  To play the game to its end.

  Even as I grab the cloth and wring it, my mind replays the highlights of our encounter, and there’s no denying how the appendage between my legs swells. Frustrated my cock thinks it’s sixteen again, I ignore the beast and scrub at the dried blood. Once my thigh is clean, I toss the rag back into the bowl and down the pills before lying back and pulling the sheet over me.

  The next time my eyes open, it’s dark and quiet. I turn to the nightstand, and the clock reads two in the morning. Disappointment burns its way down my throat, and a growl rumbles in my stomach. I glare toward the kitchen as I mentally picture the distance and decide it isn’t worth the hassle. Rolling over, frustrated and a little bit angry, I squeeze my eyes closed again.

  My dreams are a fucked up landscape of real and fantasy, past and present, love and pain and loss, loathing and lust. I toss
and turn as I jump from scenario to scenario, woman to woman, without rhyme or reason. It all swirls together in a jumble of images I can’t control—and then I want out. Her face, the ring, the laughter and tears—they display like an old home movie, complete with those two famous words.

  The end.

  I jerk awake with a gasp, my eyes popping open to bright sunlight and my mouth snapping closed to catch the drool. I’m momentarily disoriented and then immediately thankful when I realize it was all a dream. I groan as I roll over, wiping my hands across my face, and detect the hint of something new.

  Bacon.

  That’s when I hear it. Movement in the kitchen as a soft voice hums a tune I’m unfamiliar with. I instantly know who it is, and my chest swells with a strange feeling I pass off as relief. I am starving, after all. Salivating actually, which is why I don’t waste a second in swinging my legs over the edge of the bed.

  “Shit!” I hiss, shooting my eyes toward the kitchen. Doc’s standing there with a spatula in her hand, giving me a testy brow. “Sorry,” I grumble, sliding backward and pulling the sheet back over me. “I’m so hungry I forgot about the pain.”

  “I didn’t really think that through very well, did I?” She gives me a sheepish shrug before her eyes trail toward the cooktop and widen. “I’m remedying that now, though.”

  She moves out of my sight, but that ends up being a good thing. The smell of bacon and eggs causes my mouth to water at the same time a loud growl erupts in my stomach. It’s fucking embarrassing, but I’m so goddamn hungry I can’t be bothered to care. Cabinets open and close and silverware clinks against a plate while her feet shuffle around the kitchen like she owns the place.

  When she reappears, my focus is torn between the wooden tray of food she’s carrying and the woman herself. I obviously choose the woman. She’s dressed in pink scrubs today, but this time, her hair is piled on top of her head in a messy bun with haphazard strands flying around her face. Her smile is eager, as if she’s as excited for me to eat as I am, and shit … she just looks bright and happy and kind.