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And I got the feeling then that this was a side of himself he wanted me to see before he showed me the other one. And it was that other side which equally excited and terrified me.

I knew that when his head came down, and his eyes snapped open, and they weren’t calm anymore.

“Your touch is a dangerous game, little nurse,” he warned, but it was what he said next that confirmed I was right…

“One I intend to play very, very often.”

17

THERE WILL BE BLOOD

ANNA

One I intend to play very, very often.

The second he said this I let go of him.

Not out of bravery but because of that word…

Often.

Because he wasn’t talking about today at all. He was talking about all the times after this one. About a standing arrangement I had never agreed to and couldn’t get out of. Which was why my arms slid off his skin as if this would let him know my thoughts on the matter.

Although really, I didn’t know what I expected that to achieve, as he had already made it clear if he wanted something to happen, he would simply make it happen.

I got one step away from him. One whole step, with the water running between us and my heart beating like something was trapped. I stood there with my hands curled at my sides as though a foot of wet tile was any kind of protection at all. Surprisingly, he watched me do it. He didn’t stop me or reach for me. As if there was something almost indulgent in the way he let me have this step. The way you let a dog run all the way to the end of its leash. Before he took it back, and he did this with only two words,

“My turn.”

Two words said quietly and with a certainty in his eyes that were still focused solely on my face. I swear that I felt the whole room change temperature because of it. As up to that point there had been a pattern to it that I could follow. He caught me, he cornered me, he made me hold on to him. Terrifying, every bit of it, but there were rules in it somewhere.

But his ‘my turn’ had no rules in it at all.

“What?” I whispered fearfully.

“You’ve been so good for me,” he stated as he closed the step I had taken, and he took his time about it. Then as his hands came to my waist, I shouted,

“Wait!”

“I have waited four days,” he said it against my hair, and there was something almost wounded in it. As though the waiting had been done to him rather than chosen. Then he gathered the wet cotton of my scrub top up in both fists before he lifted the fabric slowly over my hips. And that was the moment my body finally caught up with what was happening to it.

So, saying to hell with the rules of his game, I fought him. Properly this time, not the tidy little struggle in the infirmary. I got both hands up between us and shoved, and when that did nothing at all I went for his face. I felt my nails catch him somewhere along the jaw and I was glad that this time, I was the one who finally got to mark him. I got one arm free and swung at him with everything I had.

He caught it out of the air like a man catching a thrown ball, his large hand covering my fist in its entirety.

“Shh, calm yourself,” he whispered down at me, and the anger I had braced for never came, like he had known I would try and fight him one last time.

“Get off, get off me!” I shouted as my anger flared brighter.

“Hush now,” he said, and it was the calm of it that frightened me most. Not strained, not irritated, not even mildly annoyed. I was fighting him with everything I had, and he was speaking to me in the voice you would use to settle a horse. And somewhere underneath the panic I understood that this was because I was not actually a problem. A problem would have required effort. Hell, the brute most probably enjoyed watching me struggle.

He gathered my other wrist without any effort, brought both of them together into one hand, and held them up between us. Then he looked at them the way a man looks at a problem he has already solved.

“Stop. You are going to hurt yourself.” It was the first time all day that his voice had gone hard, and it landed like a hand coming down on a table.

“And I will not have that.” Then he reached down, without letting go of me, and picked something up off the wet tile. It took me a full second to understand what it was, and when I did, something in me went very quiet.

It was a roll of gauze.