to the door, fumbling at it. ‘So sorry, I seem to be clumsy today.’ He finally got free of the curtain and out the door.
‘I’ll bet twenty dollars that he comes back with the wheelchair and the idea that he’ll take you to X-ray personally,’ Edward said.
I frowned at him, but I could feel the texture of Dr Cross’s hair on my fingertips. The sound of the shower stopped. Micah would be out soon, but if I had a cracked pelvis sex seemed like a bad idea.
‘I forgot to ask about getting the IV taken out.’
‘You forgot a lot of things,’ he said.
I sighed. ‘It wasn’t on purpose.’
‘You captured him at least twice with your gaze, Anita. You vamped the vampire.’
‘Not possible,’ I said.
‘Yeah, neither is you healing a silver bullet in a little over twenty-four hours.’
We looked at each other.
The door opened, letting out a puff of steam and the sweet smell of clean skin and water. I turned to see Micah standing in fresh jeans and T-shirt. His hair was almost black when it was this wet, and straighter, so you could see that it reached midback on him, instead of the inches shorter it would be when the curl contracted it all up. The unbound wet hair I liked; the clothes … I was disappointed. I’d really wanted him to come out naked and wet, and the moment I realized that I knew I was in trouble, because that would have been completely inappropriate in front of Edward.
‘I need to feed soon,’ I said.
‘Did the doctor say you could have solid food?’
‘No,’ I said.
‘What did he say?’
Edward answered. ‘That he wants an X-ray to make sure the crack in her pelvis healed along with the bullet wound. He’s supposed to send a technician to wheel her down.’
‘But he wouldn’t take the IV out?’
‘She forgot to ask,’ Edward said, ‘and he forgot to offer.’
Micah frowned from one to the other of us. ‘What did I miss?’
‘She captured the vampire doctor at least twice with her gaze. He damn near groped her.’
‘Was he inappropriate?’ Micah asked as he moved to the couch and the overnight case.
‘Not as inappropriate as the ardeur wanted him to be,’ Edward said.
Micah looked at me. ‘Anita, is he right?’
I sighed and slumped down on the pillow. ‘Yes, I think so.’
‘We’ve got a twenty-dollar bet that Dr Cross decides to wheel her to X-ray personally.’
‘I didn’t take the bet,’ I said.
‘Because you know he’s coming back through that door for you, and you also know that you cannot be alone with him.’
Micah sat down on the couch to put on socks and a pair of ankle-high boots. ‘She’s not usually drawn to vampires without a connection to Jean-Claude.’
‘I can only tell you what I saw,’ Edward said.
He pulled the jeans’ straight legs down over the boots so that his legs were one nice, long line, or as long a line as our inseams could get. He stood up, smoothing down the jeans, checking his belt with its silver buckle. He’d tucked the forest-green T-shirt into the jeans. The shirt made his eyes much greener, sinking the gold into the background. The green-gold of his eyes was like some humans with gray-blue or green-blue eyes, the color changing with mood, clothes, so that one minute the eyes were one color and the next the other, and sometimes all at once. I wondered if the gray in Dr Cross’s eyes would do that in the right shirt?
‘Wow,’ I said out loud.
‘What?’ Micah asked, as he walked toward the bed.
‘I just wondered if Dr Cross’s eyes would change to more gray if he wore a gray shirt the way the green makes your eyes greener, and not as gold. I just met the man; I shouldn’t be thinking about dressing him to match his eyes.’
‘No,’ Micah said, ‘you shouldn’t.’ He was at the bedside now.
I reached for his hand and he gave it to me. The moment our hands touched, heat leapt from me to him, a flare of power that marched down our bodies in a wash of goose bumps.
Micah jerked his hand out of mine. ‘Shit!’
‘I didn’t do it on purpose,’ I said, but my voice was breathless with the rush of power. I wanted to pull his shirt out of his pants. I wanted him to climb into the bed with me and let his wet hair spill across my body.
‘Stop it, Anita, stop projecting your need!’ He backed away from the bed. I could