Page 14 of Chasing Temptation
“Lucky for you, I’ve got a gentle touch.” She winks at me and I can’t help but laugh. I regret it instantly, a sharp pain radiating from my wound and through my entire body. It’s all forgotten though when she pulls my hospital gown from me and a warm torrent of water cascades over my shoulder and down my arm. It’s fucking heaven.
“That temperature okay?”
“Incredible.” I let my head fall back and focus on the feeling of the last few days washing away, forgetting that I’m stark bollock naked in front of a stranger. To be fair, I’ve been naked in worse situations.
It’s over all too soon. Shelly helps me shave off some of the scruff covering my jaw, and when I eventually emerge, albeit slowly, from the bathroom, I feel like a new man. Well...one in more pain than he’d ever admit and who is about to pass out from exhaustion.
It’s not until I stop at the bed that I realise we’re not alone. Sitting in the chair, Quinn is waiting for me. My breath catches that she came back, and I really accept how afraid I was that she wasn’t going to reappear. A lump clogs my throat and my eyes sting. It’s not a feeling I’m very used to, but I’m so fucking relieved to see her.
“Quinn,” I whisper, too exhausted to even say her name out loud.
“You look better.” Her eyes hold mine as Shelly helps me back into bed.
“I’ll leave you to get some rest. Buzz if you need anything.”
“Thank you.” She nods at me and disappears through the door, leaving me alone with my girl. “Come here.” I’m surprised she hears me it’s so quiet, but after a beat, she lifts herself from the chair and just about manages to climb onto the bed with me.
She rests her head down on the pillow next to mine and our eyes hold. I’ve not got the energy to tell her what I want to, so I just have to hope she can read it in my eyes.
I’m desperate to reach over and pull her body to me, closing the inch of space she’s kept between us, but just as I think about moving my arm, my eyes fall closed and I’m lost to sleep once again. Who knew having a shower was such a fucking effort?
* * *
It’s latewhen I come to once again. Quinn is back in her chair beside me, my entire body aching with the loss of her next to me.
She must feel my stare because her head lifts from the book she’s reading and she graces me with a smile that makes my breath catch. It’s the most genuine one I’ve seen since we returned from our trip to Stratford-upon-Avon.
“How are you feeling?”
“Lonely. Where’d you go?”
“Just here,” she says with a laugh and shake of her head. “We haven’t all been knocked out by surgery and pain killers.”
“No but—”
“Not now, Joe. Not here.” Her tone is harsh yet cold, and I can’t help but agree. I’d also like to be somewhere a little more private to have that painful conversation.
“Good evening,” a male nurse I’ve yet to meet sings, walking into the room with a tray full of hospital food. “I managed to work my magic and get you two a little extra.”
“Thank you, Harry,” Quinn says, wheeling my little over-the-bed table thing for him to place it on. Clearly he’s been here before.
His eyes linger on Quinn just that little bit too long, and my blood starts to boil. “How are you feeling now?”
“I’m fine,” she replies unconvincingly. “It’s him we need fixing.”
“If you need anything, you know where I am.”
“Thank you.” The way she smiles at him makes me wonder if she knows him.
Harry drops the tray on the table and, after checking that I’m okay, leaves us to it.
“You know him.” It’s not a question.
“I do. I used to work with his mother. He was a student at Earlington, but that was long before I was teaching there.”
“I see.”
She sits forward on the edge of her seat, her eyes narrowing as they study my face. “Is that a little jealousy there, Mr. Kingsman?”
