Adriana #2
“It was an accident,” she murmured, taking another sip of the disgusting coffee.
“Like the one you had last night. An eight-car collision, piled up on each other. I had three pediatric arrests come through in twenty minutes. I ran it exactly by the book. Every compression was depth-verified by the monitor. We pushed all the right meds. I did everything right. And they all died anyway.”
She leaned her head back against the vinyl padding of the seat, her jaw trembling.
It wasn’t as if she hadn’t seen more than anyone’s fair share of death and disaster in the course of her career in emergency medicine, but that particular night had been gutting.
She’d never shared that story with anyone.
She didn’t have anyone to share it with, even if she’d wanted to .
. . and that didn’t seem like a good enough reason to share it with him, yet she had anyway.
The ambulance was silent as Trapp took the exit. Welcome to Cambric Creek. Silent, until they reached the first intersection.
“It was a call for an accident, further up the highway than we were last night. Well into Greenbridge Glenn, past the resort. It was technically Station Two’s, in Starling Heights, but we were called for the assist. But then another call came through, just outside their city limits, still pretty deep country.
Dispatch had me go around the pile-up on the highway and get to this domestic, multiple minors involved.
I was first on scene. Wait for LE to secure; they call us in a minute later.
No active danger . . . because there were no survivors.
Later, I found out it was a custody dispute.
I’ll never stop seeing that scene in my head. ”
For the rest of the shift, she shadowed close behind him, staying well enough out of his way that she didn’t need to be told, assisting at his elbow, handing over supplies from his bag when he allowed it, taking note of the way he conversed with patients of every species.
He was friendly. He was charming. He set people at ease with his bright smile and sparkling eyes, distracted the elderly with stories only someone who’d lived in Cambric Creek his whole life would know, and was aggravatingly just as proficient chatting with the two children they encountered through the course of the shift.
All the while, his charting was impeccable, his field triage quick and clean, making the job look easy to untrained eyes.
She knew better. Adriana knew how hard it was to make this sort of work look effortless, and to do so while keeping up an easy patter of conversation and no sterile field?
She knew without question that he would have been an excellent doctor.
It made that far-off daydream she’d had about them seem cruel in retrospect.
Cruel because it could have come true, in a different reality.
Maybe if you’d been someone different. Maybe somewhere else, in some other reality, the different versions of you made it work.
***
She’d been blindfolded. It was the first and last time Adriana had ever found herself in such a position — blindfolded, pressed against the wall, her arms extended and loosely tied, her legs pushed open until her knees bumped the concrete on either side of her body.
“You’re stalling, Adi.” His voice had been a hum at her ear, one of his flashcards scraping lightly over her skin, down through the valley between her breasts, stopping once it reached her navel.
“We’ve been on the pathology of the bundle branches for forty minutes.
If you can’t recite the conduction block parameters, you’re going to bomb the morning rotation, and I’ll be forced to find a study partner who can keep up.
” The last was a hot whisper at her collarbone, his lips grazing her skin, making her whimper.
“I’m not stalling,” she’d snapped, her voice falling into the defensive petulance that she only ever displayed with him, when she felt that chasm between their bank accounts was too wide to contemplate. “I’m only making sure that—”
Her voice died, her head lolling when she felt his teeth grazing her clavicle, his tongue dipping into the hollow at her throat. Her hands shook in their bonds, desperately wanting to touch him.
“I don’t know how the fuck I’m supposed to concentrate,” she gritted out, breath pitching when he pulled back.
She should never have agreed to it in the first place.
He was quizzing her on the cardiac conduction system.
For every right answer, he removed a piece of her clothing.
When she had pointed out that she never made him strip study, Trapp had countered that he took his clothes off for free, and besides, he knew everything that would be on the exam.
His arrogance had been enough to make her agree, fists balled, until he had stretched her arms out, loosely tying her hands. Now he was tracing the alphabet at the soaked gusset of her panties as he waited for her answer, making her spine ripple every time he bumped her clit.
“Originates in the . . . sinoatrial node,” she’d panted, her voice tight, the clinical terms coming out in a rapid, breathless cadence.
“Traverses the interatrial septum.” She cut off on a wheeze, her back arching when what could only be his nose brushed against the damp cotton, pulling back when she stopped.
“And?”
“It . . . it ensures synchronized atrial contraction.”
He inhaled against her, tongue replacing his finger, tracing over her cotton-covered clit. “Your heat is coming. Do you want me to fuck you through it?”
Adriana whimpered, startled at the sound, jumping when she realized she was lying against the blue vinyl seat of the ambulance.
She had fallen asleep. That’s a hell of a dream to be having a foot away from him.
That night still lived in her memory as one of the most erotic encounters of her life, but it didn’t do any good to daydream about it now.
Something was wrong.
She realized it as she shifted in her seat, the ambulance interior pitching, vertigo making her spin.
Adriana whimpered, cramps seizing her, deep and aching, twisting her insides until she was panting.
She felt soaked. She was too hot; her pulse was too fast. Are you dying?
Is this a heart attack? Her mind raced through the symptoms. Peritonitis, appendicitis, severe ischemic pancreatitis.
Or something else . . . She had been on the verge of her heat that long-ago night with him, just before the moon, and it was just before the moon again, she realized in stricken horror.
She had been on heat suppressants all her life. The instant puberty struck, she was on that foul-tasting little pill, her and every other girl she knew. There were already too many mouths to feed in the pack. It wouldn’t do to go bringing another unwanted one into the picture.
She was having a breakthrough heat, and it was because of him.
His nearness, his wolf, the mouthwatering way he smelled.
It had been a mistake to put them in such close quarters these last forty-two hours with the moon nearly upon them.
That’s what you get for letting a fucking shifter and an orc make decisions.
She swallowed hard, reaching out blindly for the water bottle she’d finally been allowed to put in the cup holder beside her. Trapp took it, holding it out to her.
“What’s wrong—”
His eyes were locked on her face, too intense, squinting slightly as he took her in. He had to be able to smell her. In the back, Oleg lounged in the medic’s chair, playing a game on his phone, completely oblivious.
She held her breath as Trapp leaned in closer, over the console between them, ever closer, until he was able to sniff her neck. His eyes were black, blown out like a shark’s, and she whimpered again.
“Oleg, why don’t you go grab us a box from OhDoh?” Trapp’s voice was controlled, but he didn’t take his eyes off her as he called back to the troll. “Actually, why don’t you get a box for the station, too. You know the chief loves those fry cakes.”
In the passenger bay, Oleg perked up immediately. “Yeah. Yeah, I can do that. Any requests?”
“Whatever you think sounds good. Just make sure it’s fresh. No doughnuts from the case.”
She watched through heavy-lidded eyes as he passed the troll a handful of bills. She held her breath until Oleg clambered down from the rig, jumping when Trapp’s big hand landed on her wrist.
“C’mon. We don’t have a lot of time.”
Adriana realized how bad off she was when she tried to stand and immediately lost her balance, the cab spinning. Trapp caught her by the shoulders and eased her back down into her seat before exiting the ambulance. She panted as the passenger-side door opened, Trapp catching her again.
This can’t be real, she thought, allowing herself to be led to the back doors.
She had to still be dreaming. There was no way he had triggered a breakthrough heat in her, despite her suppressant, no fucking way.
But it was real enough when he lifted her easily into the back of the ambulance, settling her onto the stretcher. Just like a doll.
Her head lolled as she watched him rifle through the small cabinet, coming out with a vial. Adriana was wheezing by the time he had pulled a sterile, wrapped syringe from his jump bag and a rubber tourniquet to tie around her arm.
“We keep Suppresene in the rig,” he murmured, measuring a dose from the vial, tapping the side of it to ensure there were no air bubbles in the syringe.
Her mouth dropped open, fingers flexing. This was how he was helping her. Professional, courteous, respectful. Absolutely the right call; it showed that he was, indeed, the better medical professional, even after all these years. But it was not what she fucking needed from him.
“Oh. Oh, okay, I-I thought you were going to . . .”