Once I get home, Aunt Ellie says I look pale, and insists I drink her special herbal tonic that tastes like licorice and old cheese. I have a shower, washing the hospital smell out of my hair and skin, then sit in bed watching an old Star Trek episode.
I’m not really paying attention to the figures moving across the screen. Saxon fills my head, as if I’m seeing him on a cinema screen forty feet high. His lips on mine. His big body pressed against me, making me forget my surroundings.
I’ve never done anything like this before. Always kept a strict line between me and my patients, never blurring the boundaries. Nursing is everything to me. I get so much satisfaction from helping people and being part of a team. My job is my safe space in a world that’s thrown a lot of chaos at me since I was sixteen.
Memories flash into my head. Having to move to Prephis when my parents died, changing schools and living with Aunt Ellie. Blade going off the rails, causing havoc, then finding a girlfriend just as wild as him. Always worrying about what my brother would do next. Then, her accident and that terrible darkness in his eyes.
Blade started out full of praise for The Order, then after a while he began to criticize how they ran things. He said his Prez was too much of a control freak, someone who ruled with an iron fist. I took my brother’s side, of course. Why wouldn’t I?
And now I’ve not only kissed a patient but the one person who my brother believes is determined to get rid of him. I’ve betrayed my training and my own family. For what? Physical attraction? A connection? My core clenches at the memory of Blade’s hard cock pressed into me. His lips on mine, his warm, leather and wood scent consuming me as his tongue explored my mouth.
The door swings open and I sit up as Aunt Ellie comes in.
“Not asleep yet, dear?”
I shake my head.
“Turn off that show. You’ll go to sleep faster without that racket.” She walks over to switch off my laptop.
“No, it’s okay. It’s comforting for me to have some noise in the background.”
She smiles. “You’re still a little girl sometimes, Kaia. Your Mom used to tell me you always had to have a light on somewhere.”
My chest aches at the mention of Mom, but I smile back. “Yeah, I don’t like the dark.”
“Okay, well I’m leaving now. Let me know if you want me to bring anything back. Get some rest.” She closes the door softly, and a few minutes later her car starts up outside. Aunt Ellie works part-time stacking shelves on the night shift at the big supermarket just outside town.
My aunt may tease me about my fear of the dark, but it’s not funny to me. I like having people around me and not being alone. It’s one of the reasons working at the hospital is so appealing. Mom was the same. She always wanted more kids, to have a house filled with children running in and happy voices. She would tell me that I’d have lots of grandkids and she’d help me look after them. That I should wait for my Prince Charming and the fairytale.
A tear drops down my face, blurring the screen in front of me even more. I’d love a big family of my own, but all I do is worry about Blade and work.
Kissing a patient, no matter how powerfully I’m attracted to him, is just a distraction. It has to be. There’s no chance of a fairytale ending with a bad-boy MC president. Especially not one who wants to see my brother dead.
At some point, I drift off to sleep. I wake up with a start, conscious of someone tapping my arm.
“Kaia, be quiet.” It’s my brother’s voice. The clock on my laptop shows it’s a couple of minutes past four in the morning.
“What?” I sit up in bed and he pulls me down.
“I said,shut the fuck up. They’re outside.”
“Who’s outside?”
“I don’t know. It’s probably some guys from The Order. Or it could be the cartel.”
I turn my head to his. The whites of his eyes flash in the dark.
“Thecartel?” I whisper.
He nods. “They’re probably looking for their pills. Worth a few hundred thousand. Haven’t had a chance to sell them yet.”
A flame of anger rises from the pit of my stomach. “You’ve put all of us in danger now. Don’t you realize they could kill me too? Or Aunt Ellie?”
Conern flashes over my brother’s face, so quickly that I question whether I’ve seen it.
“I can handle it.”
“No, you can’t.” A low voice from the corner of the room makes us both stiffen.
