Page 35 of Rock Bottom

“Wattson.”

I snapped my fingers. “That’s it. I’m going to call him to come down here and have a look at you.”

“Dante, it’s just a little cough and sniffle. I’ll be right as rain tomorrow.”

I crossed my arms. “Don’t make me give you a stern reprimand. You’re seeing a doctor if I have to tear this room apart to find my phone. But I don’t want to do that. Don’t make me.”

Church squinted at me before snorting once and lying back against the headboard. “Top drawer of the dresser. Not a word about anything else in there or I’m tossing your phone in the hot tub.”

I arched an eyebrow, but inside, I was all butterflies. Church was letting me go digging around in his underwear drawer for treasure. I hope there’s some booty in there, I thought and went over to the dresser.

When I pulled it open, I almost had to clutch my chest in surprise. I’d expected the dildo. That wasn’t a surprise. I mean, who doesn’t have one or two of those in their underwear drawer? Sitting between the impressively large purple dildo and my phone was the Rolls Royce of wand vibrators, the kind you had to plug into the wall.

Be still my horny little heart. Can this man get any more perfect? I shot a curious look over my shoulder, picturing a whole new scene in my head: him tied up and blindfolded with that vibrator tied up against his cock. How many times could I make him come before he was a sobbing mess begging for mercy?

“Not one fucking word,” Church growled, his face bright red.

“I didn’t say anything.” I grabbed my phone and shut the drawer. I smirked and leaned against the dresser. “But since we aren’t going to talk about it, I can’t tell you that you’ve got good taste.”

He warred with himself for a minute, blushing even harder before he turned away. “Thank you,” he said and finished off his tea.

I chuckled and went off to call the doctor.

“Take a deep breath for me?” Wattson pressed the cold stethoscope against my bare back.

I flinched and avoided looking at Dante, who stood in the doorway. His face was pinched with worry. He hadn’t stopped fussing over me since last night. Every six hours, he was there with a pill for me to swallow and tea to drink it with. At midnight, when I wasn’t better, he dragged in a chair and declared he was sleeping next to me. At least he’d listened to reason when I rejected the idea of him sleeping in the bed with me. Did he want to catch whatever I had? The man was daft, but he was a bloody decent nursemaid.

When I woke early that morning with red splotches around my lips and on my throat and a dry cough that wouldn’t go away, he called Wattson a second time and shouted for him to come over. The night before, Wattson had told him to give me more pills, make sure I stayed in bed, and to call back if I wasn’t better by noon.

The hives had spread since then, covering most of my face and throat, but they didn’t itch. They were painful, almost like burns, and my chest felt like a baby elephant was sitting on it.

“Hmm.” He moved the stethoscope from my back to my chest. “And you say it started yesterday?”

“Yesterday afternoon,” Dante supplied. “Before three-thirty.”

Wattson’s sharp green eyes cut to Dante. “Let him answer, please.”

I opened my mouth to answer but doubled over coughing as soon as I tried to suck in a breath. Wattson frowned and went to dig around in his bag of equipment at the end of the bed.

“He’s been this way all morning,” Dante said. “Last night, it was just the cough and a fever. He got better after I gave him Benadryl and aspirin, but then he started wheezing overnight. I gave him more, but it’s only gotten worse.”

Wattson came back with a gray-blue inhaler. “Know how to use this?”

I frowned, but nodded and took the inhaler. The pressure in my chest released almost immediately once I used it.

I gasped in a breath and fell back against the headboard. “Fuck. What was that?”

“Albuterol.” Wattson held up the inhaler. “Should help with the breathing, but we need to find the source of the problem. What are you allergic to?”

I frowned and shook my head. “Nothing that I know of.”

Wattson turned my face to one side, examining the red hives. “Did you eat any nuts?”

“I wish,” Dante grumbled from across the room.

My face flamed bright red. “I don’t have a tree nut allergy, Wattson.”

“What did you eat directly prior to the onset of your symptoms?”

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