Page 15 of Desperate Desires

Chapter 5-Shelly

The hours ticked by slowly and I was both elated to see him doing well and put down at the fact I had no idea what to do with him.

I mean, I knew what to do with him. But that was my sex-starved brain talking and not my highly educated professional one.

While he slept, he looked like some preternatural being. Splendid as an angel with perfectly carved features, a strong chin, straight nose, and cheekbones that could cut glass.

I already knew his lips were soft, yet firm, and the color of his irises were impossibly saturated, the blue so deep it rivaled oceans.

Even with bandages and scars marring his skin, I was impressed by his contoured physique. Smooth ivory skin stretched taut over the rippling muscles that covered his long frame.

He had dozens of tattoos carved into his skin. The line work was simply gorgeous. He had one prominent design on his chest, a snake circling what I thought was the sun, but it could have been the moon, with flowers all around it.

The flowers should have made it look feminine, but it didn’t. In fact, they only seemed to enhance his blatant masculinity.

Beneath it were the words No Bad Days. I liked the sound of that. A grin whispered across my face, and I was tempted to trace the letters, but I refrained.

Barely.

His brows furrowed in dreams, the tension knitting across his forehead as though he were locked in some private struggle.

I couldn’t help but wonder if he was hurting—physically, or just mentally.

Poor man. He needed rest. I mean, even in sleep, his mind couldn’t seem to escape whatever haunted him.

The thought made something in my chest tighten, a quiet ache I couldn’t quite name.

Like I cared about him. This stranger who quite literally barged into my life.

Suddenly, the lines on his face eased, and his features softened into the calmness of sleep.

I watched in quiet fascination as the worry melted away, replaced by something peaceful, almost boyish.

And once again, I was struck by just how breathtaking he was—handsome in that effortless way that could steal your breath when you weren’t looking.

He had the kind of face you could get lost in, studying each angle, each curve, as though it held answers to questions you didn’t even realize you’d been asking.

I’d seen handsome men, but none of them drew me the way he did.

I shook my head, trying to clear it of all those silly, girlish fantasies.

It didn’t matter if he looked good or not. The man was a patient, not a prospective date.

Focus, Shelly.

It really had been too long since I’d gone out with a man. Almost a year, now that I thought about it.

The last guy who’d asked me out was a colleague, and I’d turned him down faster than a cat could blink. As for my attending’s blatant and inappropriate staring, I just ignored him.

I’d worked at hospitals for years and there was no way I was getting into the revolving door of workplace romances that so many of my colleagues engaged in.

Aunt Agnes might be a cold-hearted bitch, but there was one saying she had I’d never forgotten.

Don’t shit where you eat.

That was one of those golden rules too many people ignored.

I was a damn good doctor and whether I chose surgery or pediatrics or whatever for my specialty, I was not going to, and I would never ever, shit where I ate.

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