made him feel his vulnerability more than anything else. His faith was strong. His love for Marissa was even stronger. His control over destiny? Big nope on that one.
After a moment, she stirred against him, her lips pressing into the front of his shirt at his sternum. Then she released a button and kissed a little further down, on his diaphragm. Then… she shifted her body between his legs, sliding off the sofa so she was kneeling in front of him. As her hands traveled up his thighs, he felt things stir in a place he’d been a little worried about ever working right again.
A rumble rose up his throat. And he repeated the sound as her hands went to the Hermès belt he wore.
“I’m sorry you were hurt,” she murmured as she undid the supple leather strap. And started working on the button of his fly. And the zipper.
Butch’s pelvis rolled and he braced his arms, his hands sinking into the soft cushions. “I’m not that hurt.”
Marissa eyed the enormous erection that begged for any morsel of her attention. “So I see. But how about I kiss it to make it feel better anyway?”
“Fuck… yes, please…” he breathed.
* * *
The St. Francis Hospital System’s Urgent Care facility was only about ten blocks from the medical center’s campus, eight blocks from the CCJ’s newsroom. So it was a toss-up. Given how tired Jo was, she couldn’t decide whether she should walk or drive, but the day was sunny and warm for March. Under the theory that scurvy was a possibility after the long winter in upstate New York, she decided to hoof it. Unfortunately, she forgot her sunglasses in her car, and halfway between her office and the doc-in-a-box, she came to a decision tree. Did she go back and get them? Or soldier on?
You’re going to die.
That mysterious man in leather’s bald statement, spoken in his deep, accented voice, spurred her on in spite of the way the sunlight stung her eyes—sure as if her mortal hourglass was running out of sand, and she needed to go faster to make it to medical help before she went into multi-organ failure.
Not that she was catastrophizing at all.
Nah.
Wincing up at the sky, she cursed and put her hand up to her aching forehead. Screw her liver, kidneys, heart, and lungs giving out. She was liable to have her head explode, parts of her gray matter becoming airborne shrapnel as the tumor she was clearly growing under her skull like a fat August tomato spontaneously quadrupled in size.
By the time she pulled open the glass door to the clinic, and stepped inside its Lysol-scented air, she was nauseous, a little dizzy, and a whole lot convinced it was cancer. Of course, the fact that she hadn’t slept since the night before, and she’d seen her first decapitated corpse, and she was sad for Bill and Lydia, was likely not helping her hypothetical CNS non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
Thank you for that differential diagnosis, WebMD.
Offering a wan smile to a receptionist who seemed absolutely uninterested in receiving anyone, Jo wrote her name on the lined sheet that read “Sign In Here” and then gratefully sank into a plastic chair directly under the TV. There were two other people stationed at quarantine-like quadrants around the waiting area, as if no one was sure who had what communicable disease, and therefore, nobody was taking any chances catching something they didn’t already have.
She closed her eyes and breathed through her nose. When that did nothing to quell the rolling swells atop the bilious green sea in her stomach, she tried cracking her lips and redirecting her inhales and exhales through that route.
“Ms. Early?” the receptionist said some time later.
After checking in with her driver’s license and her insurance card, it was back to waiting, and then she was finally in a room. The male nurse who took her weight, her vitals, and her temperature seemed nice enough, and she prayed she didn’t throw up on him.
“So,” he said as he entered her blood pressure into her electronic chart, “tell me a little about what’s been going on.”
“Is my blood pressure, okay?”
“It’s on the low side. But your oxygen stats are great and your pulse is fine. You’re running a low-grade fever, though.”
“So I’m sick.”
He stopped typing into the computer and faced her. He was probably thirty, and he had a good haircut, a precisely trimmed beard, and eyes that were not anywhere near as tired as she felt.