Page 106 of Deadly Attraction
Chapter Twenty-two
Click, click, click…
Emma woke with the taste of blood in her mouth. Metallic, bitter. Her jaw tightened. She wanted to spit.
But her head felt too heavy to turn, her lips too dry to purse. Her brain floated inside her skull, unfocused, fuzzy—an abnormal feeling that scared her on some primitive level. She wasn’t the floaty, unfocused type.
Click, click, click…the sound reverberated inside her skull, adrenaline firing somewhere in her solar plexus. But the rest of her weighed 200 pounds. Her chest didn’t want to inflate, and when she forced it to, pain radiated from her ribcage, pulsing with every beat of her heart. Her ribs seemed to have a band around them. When she tried to open her eyes, her eyelids felt leaden and unresponsive.
The clicking gave way to a distant beeping sound. The sound triggered a memory of white sheets, nurses.
Sedatives sending her into a free-float.
A hollow ache in her lower abdomen.
Agony clawing at her heart.
The baby.
Her chest hiccupped, hands digging into the bed. The action sent a spike of adrenaline through her system and another memory clicked into place.
She was in the hospital again, but her heart didn’t feel like it had been ripped to shreds. She didn’t feel empty inside…if anything, she felt…satisfied.
That couldn’t be right.
Something had ended, but not the life of an innocent, unborn child. Whatever that something was, it gave her peace.
For a moment, she gave herself over to the floaty feeling. Letting go felt good. She didn’t want to think, didn’t want to be stuck in the past, remembering Skye’s death.
The darkness tugged at her, promising peaceful sleep. Her body longed for it, reminding her of her post Mitch-induced orgasms—a buoyant sensation as if she were defying gravity.
Mitch.
Her chest hitched again, and it took three tries, but she managed to pry her eyelids open. Everything was blurry and she shut her eyes against the light coming through the window, the monitor beeping along with her pulse rate as anxiety tripped under her skin.
“Hey, beautiful.”
The voice sounded far away, but happiness filled her. The owner of that reassuring voice took her hand and gave it a squeeze.
Biting her lip, she forced her eyes open. Forced them to stay that way as Mitch’s face swam into view, hovering above her. “MMM—Mitch?”
Her voice cracked, his name only a whisper.
He brought her hand up to his lips, kissed her knuckles. “Boy, am I glad to see those crazy eyes of yours.”
“Crazy…”—she had to swallow—“eyes?”
He chuckled. “The first time I saw you, I couldn’t decide if your eyes were green or brown. You were standing in the light of your porch light and those eyes totally mesmerized me, Emma. I fell for them first, then the rest of you in quick succession.”
Her brain tried to follow his words, but the connections were a mess of gossamer threads that stretched, tangled, and broke apart the more she forced her brain to function. The only thing that popped into her mind was a fact. “They’re hazel.”
Her voice was scratchy, like she hadn’t used it in eons. He released his grip on her and disappeared from view for a moment, then came back with a paper cup filled with water.
He maneuvered the straw to her lips. “Have a drink, but go easy. You’ve been heavily sedated and your stomach’s empty.”
Even the slight movement of lifting her head made her flinch, but the water tasted so much better than the metallic tang in her mouth. She sipped greedily.
“Not too much, Doc.”
