Lover Mine(68)

Doc Jane resettled the sheet where it had been. "Can I palpate your belly?"

"Knock yourself out."

Xhex stiffened at the idea of being uncovered again, but Doc Jane just stretched the sheet flat and pushed and prodded. Unfortunately, there was no hiding the winces, especially as things headed to her lower stomach.

The doc settled back and stared straight into Xhex's eyes. "Any chance you'll let me do an internal exam on you?"

"Internal as in . . ." As she got the meaning, Xhex shook her head. "Nope. Not going to happen."

"Were you sexually assaulted?"

"No."

Doc Jane nodded once. "Is there anything I need to know that you haven't told me? Pain in any particular place?"

"I'm fine."

"You're bleeding. I'm not sure you're aware of it. But you're bleeding."

Xhex frowned and looked at her trembling arms.

"There's fresh blood on the insides of your thighs. Which is why I asked if I could do the internal exam."

Xhex felt a wash of dread come over her.

"I'll ask you one more time. Were you sexually assaulted." There was no emotion behind the clinical words, and the doctor had guessed right. Xhex wouldn't have been interested in any hysteria or drippy, over-the-top pity.

When she didn't reply, Doc Jane read into the silence correctly and said, "Any chance you could be pregnant."

Oh . . . God.

Symphath cycles were weird and unpredictable, and she'd been so caught up in the drama of the capture and captivity, she hadn't even thought about the repercussions.

At that moment, she despised being a female. She truly did.

"I don't know."

Doc Jane nodded once. "How can you tell if you are?"

Xhex just shook her head. "There's no way I am. My body's been through too much."

"Let me do the internal, okay? Just to be certain there's nothing going on that I can feel inside. And then I'd like to take you to the Brotherhood compound and do an ultrasound on you. You were really uncomfortable when I went over your belly. I had V come with a car--he should almost be here by now."

Xhex was barely hearing a word that was being spoken to her. She was too busy tracing back over the last couple weeks. She'd been with John the day before the abduction. That last time. Maybe . . .

If she was pregnant, she flat-out refused to believe it had anything to do with Lash. That would just be too cruel. Too fucking cruel.

Besides, maybe there was another reason for the bleeding.

Like a miscarriage, part of her brain insisted on pointing out.

"Do it," Xhex said. "But make it quick. I don't deal well with this shit and I'm going to flip out on you if it takes longer than a few minutes."

"I'll be fast."

As she closed her eyes and braced herself, a quick slide show set up shop in her head. Flash: her body on a stainless-steel table in a tiled room. Flash: her ankles and wrists locked in place. Flash: human doctors with spastic, lookie-here eyes coming at her. Flash: a video camera in her face and panning down. Flash: a scalpel catching the light from above.

Snap. Snap.

Her lids flipped open at the sounds because she was unsure whether what she'd heard was in her head or in the room. It was the latter. Doc Jane had her latex gloves on.

"I'll be gentle," Jane said.

Which would be a relative term, of course.

Xhex fisted the sheets and felt the muscles that ran up her inner thighs spasm as she went rigid from head to toe. The good news with the frozen-stiff act was that it cured her of that stutter. "I'd rather you be fast."

"Xhex . . . I want you to look right at me. Right now."

Xhex's scattered stare swung around. "What."

"Hold my eyes. Right here." The doctor pointed to her peepers. "Hold 'em. You lock on my face and know that I've had this done to me, okay? I know exactly what I'm doing, and not just because I've been trained."

Xhex forced herself to focus and . . . Jesus, it did help. Meeting that evergreen stare did help. "You'll feel it."

"Excuse me?"

Xhex cleared her throat. "If I'm . . . pregnant, you'll feel it."

"How."

"When you . . . there'll be a pattern. Inside. It won't . . ." She took a shallow breath, drawing on the tales she'd heard from her father's people. "The walls won't be smooth."

Doc Jane didn't even blink. "Got it. You ready?"

No. "Yes."

Xhex was in a cold sweat by the time it was over and that rib she'd broken was screaming from her sawing gulps of air.

"Tell me," she said hoarsely.





TWENTY-THREE





"I'm telling you . . . Eliahu is alive. Eliahu Rathboone . . . he's alive."

Standing in his room at the Rathboone mansion, Gregg Winn stared out the window at some of South Carolina's signature Spanish moss. In the moonlight, the shit was creepy as a shadow thrown by no discernible object . . . or body.