stared up at Jasper and suddenly the pain dissipated almost instantly. Emotions swamped me. Memories of that long ago time, the hours I’d spent with this man, all the ways he’d submitted to me for the few years we were together. The defiance, the punishment, the amazing sex.
His hand shifted to my head, pressing lightly as though feeling for…
“I’m not concussed,” I stated, trying to turn my head away.
Jasper was having none of it, his other hand pressing against my jaw and holding my head still. “Headache?”
I met his gaze once more, and my inner Dominant sat up straight, rejecting the firm hand keeping me in place.
“Yes,” I bit out, reaching for his hand, curling my fingers around his wrist, intending to pull it away, but he stopped me, his grip loosening.
“I’ll be gentle, Ransom.”
He stood there, staring down at me as though he was waiting for my approval. I gave it to him in the form of a quick nod before I closed my eyes again.
If he expected me to get through this examination, no way could I watch him while he did it.
*
Jasper Tate
From here on out, I was going to insist Talon give me more information about the people he wanted me to check out. Had I known Ransom Bishop was the injured man who needed my attention, it was possible I would’ve donned a parachute and jumped out of the plane. Hippocratic Oath be damned.
Okay, maybe not. But at the very least, I would’ve prepared myself for seeing him again. Never in my wildest dreams would I have expected to come face-to-face with the sexy Dominant who’d turned my world upside down and left me flailing.
Not in this lifetime.
But this wasn’t a social call, and I didn’t need to know what the man had been doing for the past nine years just to diagnose what plagued him. My IQ was in the genius range; surely I could accomplish this task without being sucked into the past, dredging up memories better left buried. Hell, I’d graduated high school at fourteen, finished medical school by the time I was twenty-two. This I could handle.
When Ransom’s grip loosened on my wrist, I lightly swept his hair back from his forehead, inspected the small gash near his hairline. It didn’t look too bad. Mostly superficial. Stitches weren’t needed, but I would clean it and keep an eye on it.
“Where do you hurt?” I asked as I gently swept my fingers over the bruise on his face once he stopped glaring up at me, his eyes closing tightly.
“Everywhere.”
“More specific.”
“Every-fucking-where.”
Despite my efforts, I smiled. The man was very much the same as I remembered. Still ridiculously attractive even when his hard-chiseled face was slightly rounded from swelling, tinged black and blue, his brown hair longer than I remembered and currently sticking up every which way.
“Back, shoulders, legs?”
“Yes.”
“Head?”
“Both of them, yes,” he growled softly.
Of course Ransom would go there. I hadn’t been referring to that part of his anatomy, but leave it to my former Dominant, and the only man I’d ever loved, to turn a perfectly innocent examination into something sexual. That was the way Ransom Bishop operated. From the first day I met him, his internal setting had been adjusted to sex, and it looked like it was still dialed there.
Not surprising. This man was one of the most sexual beings I’d ever come into contact with. Sometimes to distraction.
“You going to help me with that, too, Doc?”
His words were slurred, which had me a little worried, otherwise I would’ve come back with a quip.
I considered giving him some pain meds and letting him sleep it off until we reached Sapphire Island. If we didn’t have six more hours in the air, perhaps I would’ve done just that. Unfortunately, based on what Zion had told me about the state of Ransom’s car after the fact, it was possible he had internal injuries and, at the very least, a concussion. Leaving those unattended wasn’t something I could do in good conscience, which meant I would have to do an exam now.
“I need you to take off your shirt,” I told him.
“Uh-uh.”
“Ransom, there’s no way for—”
“You want it off, gonna have to cut it off,” Ransom grunted.
Well, shit. “Hurts that bad, huh?”
“Yes,” Ransom muttered. “Shoulder. Ribs.”
At least he’d gotten a bit more specific.
Reaching for my medical bag, I retrieved the fabric shears I kept there. It only took a few minutes to get the ruined button-down shirt cut away. If that tux was