Page 25 of No Asylum Here

Was this new doctor the latest accessory to my punishment? Either way, he would have warned her about me.

“I’m not sure what strings you had to pull to get Doctor Rook to loosen his grip on my dick and assign you as my new shrink, but if you send me back now, he might not think you’re qualified to treat me after all,” I drawled in my toughened baritone. “You don’t want him to change his mind, do you?”

I wasn’t sure if the manipulation would work, but I had to give it a stab. It had been ages since I’d been let out of the isolation ward, and from the light leaking through the burlap fabric over my head, I gathered this doctor’s office had a window.

The sunlight probably wasn’t real. It didn't matter. I ached to feel the warmth on my face.

“He’s a tricky son-of-a-bitch, Dr. Beckett. Maybe it would be best if Dr. Rook remained⁠—”

“Quiet. I–I’m trying to fucking think.”

It sounded as though the doctor was having a panic attack. “Have the nurse send up the file for the patient in my chair. In the meantime, get her out of here. Leave Patient Seventeen where he is for now.”

The orderlies grunted in response and wheeled me to the middle of the room. Vague shapes and shadows shuffled in my shrouded vision. The door closed, leaving me alone with the single silhouette of a woman. She breathed heavily, as if trying to collect herself.

I tilted my covered head as much as the strap pinning my head allowed. “Are you scared, Dr. Beckett?”

It wasn’t the first thing I expected to say to Rook’s latest hire. They were never scared, or if they were, they hid it well.

This woman didn’t.

Her heart hammered so hard in her chest, I could practically feel it on the tip of my tongue as I flicked it out to taste the air we shared.

“I am,” she admitted after several seconds of tense silence.

“Of what?”

“Myself, I think. My head isn’t… I haven’t been well. I’ve been…” she trailed off, like she was debating telling me. “Seeing things.”

“You’re at Saint Bart’s, Doc.” I snickered. “What did you expect? A normal hospital?”

“Is this place haunted?”

Now it was my turn to pause, allowing the silence to stretch between us. Well, dig me up and fuck my corpse sideways.

She didn’t know.

Rook hadn’t told her yet.

Meaning she was fresh off the mortal plane. And she couldn’t have taken both doses of the Treatment yet, either. Why in this festering shithole was Rook assigning me a doctor that hadn’t completed her transformation yet?

“Something like that,” I growled. “Whatever you did to land yourself here, I hope you deserved it. For your sake.”

The dark outline of her figure took a step toward me, then another.

My tongue flicked out of its own volition to run over my lower lip, and my mouth salivated at the scent tickling my nose.

Christ. She smells good. Almost…familiar.

“You’ll keep your distance if you’re one of the smart ones. I’m chained up for a reason, Doc.”

She paused at my warning, guised as a taunt.

“Seems like an awful lot of trouble to go through to keep a single man held down.”

I shrugged as best I could in my straitjacket, making my chains jingle. “Yeah, well. I’m something of a Houdini, let’s say.”

“No man is that strong.”