Lover Unleashed (Black Dagger Brotherhood #9) - J. R. Ward Page 0,117

a sharp inhale, and then, “But of course. You shall do as you wish.”

Qhuinn stared at the hard line of her chin. “That’s supposed to help you.”

She glared over her shoulder. “It does not—for then you would leave me with nothing. Your choice, my repercussion.”

“It’s your life. You can choose.”

“We shall not speak of this anymore.” She threw up her hands. “Dearest Scribe Virgin, you have no idea what it is like to desire things you are not fated to have.”

Qhuinn let out a hard laugh. “The fuck I don’t.” As her brows popped, he rolled his eyes. “You and I have more in common than you think.”

“You have all the freedom in the world. What could you possibly want for?”

“Trust me.”

“Well, I want you and I cannot have you. That is not of my choosing. At least by servicing you and the others, I have a purpose other than mourning the loss of something I dreamed of.”

As Qhuinn took a deep breath, he had to respect the female. There was no pity party going on over there at the window. She was stating the facts as she knew them.

Shit, she really was precisely the kind of shellanhe’d always wanted. Even as he’d been fucking anything that walked, in the back of his mind, he had always seen himself with a female, long-term. One with impeccable bloodlines and a lot of class—the kind his parents would have not only approved of, but might have respected him a little for getting.

That had been his dream. Now that it had shown up, however . . . now that it was standing across his bedroom and looking him in the face . . . he wanted something else entirely.

“I wish I did feel something deep for you,” he said roughly, meeting truth for truth. “I would do almost anything to feel what I should for you. You are . . . my fantasy female. Everything I always wanted, but thought I could never have.”

Her eyes got so wide they were like two moons, beautiful and shining. “Then why . . .”

He rubbed his face and wondered what in the fuck he was saying.

What the fuck he was doing.

When he took his palms away, there was a slickness left behind, one that he refused to think too much about.

“I’m in love,” he said hoarsely. “With someone else. That’s why.”

THIRTY-ONE

Commotion out in the hall. Scrambling footsteps . . . low cursing . . . the occasional dull thud.

All the noise woke Manny up, and he went from out like a light to fully conscious in a split second as the parade of sound passed by in the corridor. The disturbance continued onward before it got cut off sharply, as if a door had been shut on the show. Whatever it might be.

Straightening from where he’d put his head down on Payne’s bed, he looked at his patient. Beautiful. Simply beautiful. And sleeping steadily—

The shaft of light smacked him right in the face.

Jane’s voice was strained as she stood in the lee of the doorway, a black cutout of herself. “I need another set of hands in here. Stat.”

No asking twice. Manny shot for the door, the surgeon in him ready to go to work, no questions asked.

“What we got?”

As they rushed along, Jane brushed at her red-stained scrubs. “Multiple traumas. Mostly knives, one gunshot. And there’s another being driven in.”

They broke into the exam room together, and God . . . damn . . . there were wounded men everywhere—standing in the corners, propped on the table, leaning down on the counter, cursing while they paced. Elena or Elaina, the nurse, was busy getting out scalpels and thread by the dozen and the yard, and there was a little old man bringing water to everyone on a silver tray.

“I haven’t triaged yet,” Jane said. “There’re too many of them.”

“Where’s an extra stethoscope and BP cuff?”

She went over to a cabinet, popped a drawer, and tossed both over. “BP is much lower than you’re going to be used to. So is the heart rate.”

Which meant that, as a medical professional, he had no true way of judging whether they were in trouble or not.

He put the equipment aside. “You and the nurse had better make the assessments. I’ll do prep.”

“Probably better,” Jane agreed.

Manny stepped up to the blond nurse who was working efficiently with the supplies. “I’m going to take over from here. You help Jane with the readings.”

She nodded briefly and got right to work

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