Chapter 4
T he woman sitting on my lap is a goddess.
I told myself after that first night, I wouldn’t seek her out.
Now I can’t stay away. It’s been a constant battle not to touch or kiss her or steal an innocence she all but admitted she still has.
She’s funny and insanely smart and incredibly talented and fiery and absolutely fucking stunning.
Nothing I just told her was a line or a lie.
She’s the package, the one every man dreams of meeting and making their own.
I cannot remember a time I have wanted—been this fucking drawn to—a woman.
I spend time with her—all damn day—and then I say goodbye, but when I reach my room, I miss her.
I miss her when I’m not with her. I think about her when I’m not with her.
And that’s not something that’s ever happened to me before. Ever.
Because, like I said, she’s a goddess.
She’s helped me to smile again when no one else has been able to. She’s helped me see things differently, gain a perspective I felt was lost on me. She’s helped me to forget how my world is in limbo, possibly over… until now.
Tiny fingers run along my scar, and I hiss out a breath. Not because it hurts, but because it’s her touching me there and I’m already semi-hard just from her sitting on me. Hell, just from being near her, I’m always semi-hard.
“Tell me,” she persists when I don’t answer her.
“Why do you want to know?”
After it happened, there were some reports in the media. ‘Luca Fritz steps in and saves a woman and child, shot and injured in the process.’ But what no one knows is what happened before and after. The NDAs our family attorneys made everyone who knew sign.
“Because in case you missed it, I care about you. I care about you a lot. Some might call it a girlish infatuation. Others might call it something else, but the point is, you don’t talk about it, and you need to talk about it and since I care about you the way I do, you know you can trust me.”
I do trust her.
It’s been a week and I already feel as close to her as I do to my brothers and Rina.
I can talk to her about anything, and she does not judge me. It’s the same with her. Every fucking word out of her mouth makes me like her, want her more. Can you fall for someone in just seven days? Someone so completely wrong for you?
Why does she have to feel so right?
The hand on her thigh slides upward only to glide back down, and for a moment, I revel in the feel of her soft flesh. Already knowing—especially with her like this—I’m nearing the end of my willpower.
I swallow, my throat suddenly bone-dry. “I was leaving the hospital late at night, heading to the parking garage, when I heard a noise in an alleyway that cuts between two of the buildings. There was a man yelling at a woman in Spanish, pointing a gun at her, and she was crying, begging with him, as she tucked a little girl behind her body. The girl was bleeding profusely from her arm and her forehead, crying and shaky, pale as a sheet and tacky with sweat from the blood loss, but clinging to her mother for her life.”
“Then what?” Raven urges when I fall silent, picturing that moment.
A moment that changed my life, but I can’t find it in me to regret it.
I’d do it again, especially since it led me here, to this moment with her.
It’s also led my mind to other things. Thoughts.
Ideas. I just need to get back to Minnesota to make them a reality.
“I didn’t hesitate,” I tell her, lost in the memory of that night.
“I didn’t think twice. The little girl was obviously very hurt and desperately in need of medical attention.
I was petrified the man was going to kill them both.
I stepped between them, asked him in Spanish to lower the gun.
Told him I’d help them. That I was a doctor, and I could help. ”
Raven sucks in a breath and holds it, her eyes troubled as she stares down into mine.
“The second I told him I was a doctor, the gun went off and hit me in the shoulder. He instantly realized what he’d done, freaked out about shooting a man, and ran off.
I don’t remember much after that. I helped the woman and child into the hospital, listened as she told me her husband was afraid they’d be deported if she got the child help, and then hours later I woke up in recovery. ”
“What happened to the man?”
This is the part that few seem to understand, and I refuse to comment on it publicly. “They found him, but I didn’t press charges.”
Raven stares straight into my eyes until some sort of understanding passes over her features. “Okay. Then what?”
“The surgery had been successful, but I was stupid, and I didn’t rest or rehab it the way I should have, anxious to return to my rotation and the OR.
Arrogant. I was so fucking arrogant, thinking I was invincible.
I ended up getting a staph infection. A bad one.
I passed out at work with a fever of a hundred and four and woke up nearly a week later with my parents and siblings by my side, learning I’d been intubated and placed in a medically induced coma.
Now I’m here, lucky I’m alive but stuck on medical leave, forced to rest and rehab.
I’m not allowed to return until I pass medical clearance and that includes being able to use and manipulate instruments with a steady, competent hand. ”
“Because you’re a neurosurgeon?”
“Yes. Steady, perfect hands and accuracy are the name of my game.”
“And you’re worried you won’t ever have that again?”
I stare up into her eyes and utter a truth I haven’t even admitted to myself. “Yes. I’m worried I won’t ever have that again. My hand shakes when I hold it in certain positions for too long.”
“That’s why you’ve been depressed.”
It’s not a question, but I answer her all the same.
“That’s part of the reason. Getting kicked out on medical leave, told I can’t return until I’m one hundred percent when I might never be one hundred percent is another.
I don’t know what I’ll do if I can’t go back, Raven.
I don’t want to be a neurologist. I want to be a neurosurgeon.
It’s what I’ve spent the last four years of my residency doing. ”
“Are there exercises you could do to help?”
“Yes, and I’ve been doing them.”
“Are you getting better?”
“Yes, but not as fast as I had hoped.”
She smiles down at me. “Then you need to learn to be patient, Luca. You of all people understand how the human body heals and trying to speed up a process that’s not meant to be sped up already cost you once.”
It sounds so simple when she says that. But it’s not. “What would you do if you injured yourself and couldn’t play cello anymore?”
She considers this with honest intent. “I’d be a mess.
I’d mope and feel sorry for myself. But then I’d get the fuck over it and do whatever I had to do to get myself able to play again.
Because playing is my life. And if at the end of it I couldn’t, at least I’d know I gave it my best shot and I’d find something else musically related.
Like maybe I would teach kids how to play instead of performing.
Not what I’d choose for my life, but still in the game. ”
“You think I’m being petulant?”
She laughs lightly. “A little. I get why you’re depressed, and I get why you’re feeling hopeless. But what are you doing to fix it? Are you doing all you could?”
I don’t know. I got here with no motivation to do anything other than feel sorry for myself. But with her… with her, I want to be better. I want to be everything she thinks I am. She stares at me with stars in her eyes and I want to be deserving of that.
She’s the kid and I’m the adult and yet with every moment I spend with her, I feel less and less of our age gap.
I want her. But what happens if I do get myself back on track and back to Minnesota?
What happens when she goes to London in August?
What happens when our dreams take us in opposite directions?
I don’t want to hurt her.
I never thought about it all that much before. I always made it clear, medicine first, casual dating, no attachments. If the woman got hurt or I moved on before they wanted me to, I would remind them of that. I never made promises I didn’t keep.
But with Raven, I find myself wanting to make promises I know I’ll break.
How? “What are you doing to me, Little Bird?”
“Same thing you’re doing to me.”
Shit. We’re both fucked now.
In her next breath, she pulls her shirt up over her head, tossing it near mine, and then she’s on me. Her large, soft breasts covered in her bra hit my chest and before I can formulate an argument or the will to stop, my hands are in her hair and her lips are fused with mine.
It’s instant. Brilliant magic. And I know in this moment, I’ll never be the same again.
I’ll never feel this feeling when kissing another woman again.
I can appreciate the rise and fall of her chest against mine, how she sucks in a deeper breath every time we deepen our kiss as if she never wants to come up for air again.
I expected hesitance. I expected uncertainty and learning.
There is none of that. This is passion unleashed.
Uncaged. This is hands and tongues and lips and teeth. This is sound and breath and touch.
My tongue swirls with hers, my head angled, needing to crawl as far inside her as I can. Her taste is incredible, the way she sucks on my tongue and nibbles on my lip and pushes her lush lips bruisingly against mine… mind-blowing.
Beads of sweat are forming on my brow, my hands trembling as I do all that I can to hold this position. To keep them in her hair and away from the clasp of her bra. The button of her shorts.
As if sensing my fight, she whispers into me, “Touch me, Luca. Take me. I want it.”
Fuck. Just fucking hell fuck.
“Has anyone ever touched you, Little Bird?”