myself in the lab and set everything up, putting the blood bags out in a row so that I could just switch them without taking the needle out. I pulled a rolling chair over to the lab table and sat. I didn’t bother with disinfecting my inner arm or with a tourniquet this time. I was highly resistant to infection, and there was no way I could deal with that tight rubber band around my arm for the amount of time this would take. Strangely enough, that sticky, pinching, constant pressure was the part of this whole process I hated the most.
I inhaled deeply, trying to unravel some of the knots in my stomach.
Here goes…
I stuck myself—and missed.
Fuck. My hand shook. The air in here tasted like metal and death.
Muttering a curse, I got up and opened the whole series of doors again, renewing the air in the sealed-off lab attachment with the fresher air from the rest of the Endeavor. I stood at the entrance and kept watch, hoping no one would come this way and wonder why in the name of all the Powers I’d laid out a syringe and five empty blood bags.
No one showed up at the back of the ship, and after six minutes and thirty-two seconds of wide-open doors, I began the process of sealing them all up again. It smelled and tasted somewhat better in the lab now, but when I punched in the lock code and the final door barreled shut with a hydraulic whoosh, I still felt like a coffin had just slammed down its lid.
I took two steps before abruptly turning and going back to the lock. I changed the code to something I thought Jax could guess. It felt too stupid to lock myself in here and draw five bags of blood without the possibility of someone being able to get into the lab if I didn’t come out.
I went back to my grim setup and tried again, overcoming my jitters with concentration. It was a physical effort to steady my hand as well as a mental one. Like the previous time, I got my blood flowing on the second try.
A dull lump of panic thickened my throat as I leaned back in the chair, trying not to look at the plastic bag that was slowly inflating with blood. It wasn’t terrible to watch. It was actually kind of mesmerizing. But I closed my eyes and pictured open spaces instead. Quickly, that turned into picturing Shade Ganavan with his lush mouth all tangled up with mine and his big hands covering my breasts.
Daydreaming about Shade and steamy, urgent grinding and take-me-now kisses up against a dark wall helped distract me and pass the time. I kept an intermittent eye on the level of the bags as they filled up, so I’d know when to switch. By the start of the fourth bag, I felt like utter crap, and even remembering the hot, sexy slide of Shade’s tongue against my night-chilled skin didn’t help. I started breathing faster but felt lethargic. My heart pounded, trying to circulate my reduced blood.
Halfway through the fifth bag, I felt myself really going south. I pulled the needle from my arm, capped off the bag, and collapsed back. My vision darkened, and that was that.
* * *
I woke up with drool on my face and a painful crick in my neck. I wiped off my chin with a hand that shook. After a moment of blinking at the harsh overhead lighting and fighting the urge to vomit, I reached for the bottle of water I’d left on the table next to me. I was hardly able to close my hand around it, and unscrewing the top was a challenge I hadn’t anticipated, one that left me panting and almost falling straight back into another nonnegotiable nap.
Once I finally got the cap off, I drained the bottle one slow sip at a time, working through the nausea that kept roiling up. Every second that passed made me more and more desperate to get out of the sealed-up metal box, but I needed to replenish my fluids first, or I risked not even making it through the first door, let alone the rest.
The next twenty minutes turned into a personal challenge in mastering the anxiety I always felt when I was shut inside a closed space but not flying. This time was made even worse by being light-headed and weak and having an actual locked door