CHAPTER 5 #2
Without breaking eye contact, he reaches for the top button of his shirt. He moves slowly, deliberately undoing each button down his chest. He pulls the ruined fabric off his shoulders and tosses the blood-soaked silk onto the floor.
I bite the inside of my cheek. His torso is a massive, towering landscape of hard muscle and violence.
He flexes his chest as he leans back on his hands, the movement causing the fresh blood to ooze faster from the gunshot wound on his right side.
Steam practically rises off his warm skin in the cool, climate-controlled air of the bay.
He is weaponizing his own vulnerability, using his sheer physical presence to intimidate me.
"You like what you see, Margarita?" he asks, catching my gaze dropping to his abs. "Don't look away."
"I've seen anatomy before," I snap back, walking over with a handful of betadine-soaked gauze.
"I’ve had worse than a liver shot," he taunts.
He isn't lying. My breath actually catches in my throat as I get close enough to see his ribs.
A horrific, jagged expanse of white, roped burn scars carves across his entire left side.
It looks like a topographic map of a fire.
The skin is puckered, melted, and grafted in ways that tell a story of unimaginable, permanent agony.
My surgeon's eye traces the edges of the skin grafts, evaluating the depth of the initial third-degree destruction.
I lean in closer, my face inches from his skin, completely forgetting my anger for a split second as morbid, professional curiosity takes over.
I can faintly smell old smoke lingering on him, a ghost scent trapped in the scar tissue.
"Who did this to you?" I ask, my voice dropping its defensive edge.
"Fire. I can tell," he mocks my earlier clinical tone. "It doesn't matter who. Just fix the bullet hole."
I blink, stepping back, instantly regretting giving him even an ounce of empathy. I turn my attention to the angry red bullet hole on his right side. The skin around the entry wound is inflamed, pulling hard against the black nylon sutures I put in forty-eight hours ago on my basement table.
I dab the cold betadine around the edges. He doesn't flinch. "It’s infected," I state, keeping my voice steady. "I have to debride it. I need to cut away the necrotic tissue before I restitch."
I pick up a pair of surgical forceps and gently pull on a loose thread of the suture to test the tension, watching his face closely for a pain reaction. Nothing. His jaw is set like granite.
I reach for the syringe of lidocaine.
"I don't need numbing," Damon says, his hand shooting out to grip my wrist, stopping me from uncapping the needle.
"It's a surgical debridement, Damon. I'm cutting your flesh off."
"Do it raw." He drops my wrist. "I want to feel what you do to me."
He is completely insane. He leans forward, his face inches from mine, invading my space entirely. "Touch me," he growls.
It’s not a request for a medical exam. He grabs my gloved right hand and forces it flat against his bare, warm, heavily scarred chest. I try to pull back, but he holds my hand there, pinning it against his pectoral muscle.
I can feel the heavy thud-thud of his heartbeat pulsing directly into my palm.
The smell of his skin mixed with the sharp antiseptic of the room is dizzying.
My fingers twitch involuntarily against his muscle, my pulse jumping visibly in the vein of my neck.
"I am touching you," I say, my voice tight.
"Feel that?" he asks softly, his thumb rubbing over the back of my knuckles. "That's the only thing that's real. Your hands are shaking, Margarita."
I yank my hand out of his grip, stepping back and grabbing the surgical scissors. "Shut up and let me work."
I dig into the wound. I start cutting away the dead, inflamed edges of the bullet track.
It is bloody, delicate, agonizing work. I know exactly how much pain I am causing him right now, cutting un-anesthetized tissue.
Damon doesn't make a single sound. He doesn't grit his teeth.
He just sits there, his chest rising and falling rhythmically, staring down at the top of my head.
His eyes track every microscopic movement of my fingers.
The silence in the room is heavy, broken only by the wet squelch of the gauze and the sharp snip-snip of the surgical scissors.
The metallic tang of fresh blood spikes in the air.
A single drop of my own sweat rolls off my forehead and falls straight onto his rigid abdomen. He watches the droplet track down his skin, disappearing into the waistband of his jeans, without moving a single muscle.
"Am I hurting you?" I ask, unable to handle the intense, quiet scrutiny.
"You couldn't hurt me if you tried," he answers smoothly. "Keep going."
I finish clearing the dead tissue and grab the needle driver.
I start to restitch the site, my hands moving fast. Because of the angle of the tear, I have to step between his spread knees to get leverage.
I am forced to stand directly flush against him.
My hands are working mere inches from his groin as I secure the deep dermal stitches.
The air feels charged, static sparking every time my scrubs brush against the rough denim of his jeans.
I have to lean my body weight against his solid thigh to get the angle right for the final loop.
"Hold your breath," I instruct, pulling the nylon tight.
He exhales instead, a hot rush of air hitting my cheek. "I like when you're this close."
"Shut up, Damon."
I tie off the suture and snip the excess thread.
I grab a massive roll of pressure bandage to wrap the torso.
To apply it correctly, I have to pass the roll of gauze from my right hand to my left hand behind his back.
I step entirely into his space, practically embracing him.
I reach around his wide back, pressing my chest flush against his bare chest. For a fleeting, humiliating second, my face is buried directly in the crook of his neck. His skin is radiating heat.
"You're almost done," he murmurs, his chin brushing the top of my hair as I pass the gauze around his ribs.
I pull the wrap tight, stepping back just slightly to loop it around again. The scratchy gauze makes a rhythmic rasping sound as I work.
"You smell like my clinic used to," he notes, his voice a low rumble in his chest.
I reach around him for the final pass, my nose brushing his pulse point. "You smell like fear," I lie.
I finish the bandage, slapping a long piece of medical tape down over his ribs to secure it.
I smooth the tape flat, my gloved hands lingering on his skin for a second longer than necessary.
The tactile sensation of the hard muscles under my palms grounds me, a stark contrast to the chaos in my head.
I finally step back, my chest heaving like I just ran five miles in the dark.
I grab the cuffs of my latex gloves and peel them off with a violent, rubbery snap. I toss them into the red biohazard bin in the corner, the metal lid clanging shut loudly. I look down at my bare hands. They are still shaking.
"It's done," I say, grabbing a towel to wipe down the counter. "Don't get it wet."
"I know the rules, Doctor," he replies.
Damon slides off the exam table. He stands up to his full height, instantly dwarfing me.
I have to tilt my head back just to keep him in my line of sight.
He doesn't bother putting a clean shirt on.
He takes a step toward me, reaching out.
I brace myself, but he just catches my chin in his large hand.
He tilts my face up, his thumb brushing over my lower lip—right over the exact spot he kissed me in the cell.
He runs his eyes down to my neck, inspecting the faint, yellowish bruises he left there two days ago like they are trophies on a shelf.
"You did well," he says.
I slap his hand away. "Don't touch me."
He chuckles, a dark, hollow sound. "I'll touch you whenever I want."
He steps in closer, leaning down until his mouth is hovering right next to my ear. His voice drops into a low, gravelly promise that vibrates straight through my boots.
"If you run," he says slowly, enunciating every single word, "I will hunt you down to the ends of the earth. And when I find you, Margarita, I will break your legs so you can never walk away from me again."
The threat is absolute. It strips away any delusional hope I had of finding a blind spot in his security. He pulls back just enough to look me in the eye. His gaze pins me to the floor.
"Do you understand me?" he demands. "Say it."
I stare into the black void of his eyes. "I understand."
Damon holds my gaze for three more seconds, asserting his total ownership, before he simply turns around and walks toward the exit.
He steps out into the hallway and leaves the heavy steel door wide open.
A stark, visual reminder that it doesn't matter if there’s a lock on the door or not. There is nowhere for me to go.
I stand alone in the center of the blindingly bright medical bay. I am surrounded by my tools, my element, my trade. I grip the cold steel edge of the examination table to keep my knees from buckling entirely.
"He's going to kill me," I whisper to the empty room. "Or I'm going to kill him."
I look down at the floor. A single, dark drop of his blood is smeared across the pristine white tile, catching the glare of the overhead LEDs. "God, help me."
I stare at the blood smear for another long minute, analyzing the oxidation of the edges, before I finally push off the table. I'm going to need to find a mop.