The Heroic Surgeon(21)

“If you’d rather go to a hotel…” Her gaze anxiously scanned his face. She must have misunderstood his chaos for she stopped, squeezed her eyes and swung away to make a silent yet eloquently furious self-berating gesture. “Of course you would. I don’t know what I was thinking, bringing you here. I guess I didn’t want to lose time searching for a hotel, checking into one…”

Wet heat detonated behind his eyes, corroded twin paths down his cheeks. He lunged after her, caught her around the waist from the back, his arms crushing her into him. Trembling, gasping, he carried her to the bed, pushed her down and covered her. He wanted to shield her, contain her, squash her into him, hide her inside his body.

She squirmed beneath him, panted, “Dante, if you don’t want to leave, then let me loose—let me, please…”

He opened his mouth on her pulse, seeking every confirmation of her existence and life and something bitter mingled with her sweat in his mouth. His tears. Or hers? “Next time, tesoro. Next time.”

He wanted to tear her clothes off, but couldn’t. She didn’t have much to replace them with. He could give her all she needed. Oh, how he wanted to lavish everything he was and had on her…

His dexterous fingers were useless with emotion, snarling over undoing her shirt buttons. She was trapped beneath him yet going a better job than him. He pulled back, freed her from that memorized khaki shirt. She’d aroused him with it during the hostage situation, beyond his comprehension. He remembered his confusion about her keeping it on in the deadly heat. And now he’d seen her without it, he knew why she’d kept it on. Her semi-naked body would have driven the militants to extremes, would have driven them beyond caution, beyond survival even to get their hands on her body, to spend their sick lust…

A sob tore out of him, came out a roar of rage and sorrow. His blood was congealing. He had to protect her, to honor her, to give her anything she needed. But how could he ever do that when he wouldn’t be there for her? If not tomorrow then soon anyway? He just had to find a way. He would…

She half turned in his arms and they snatched feverish kisses and caresses, gasped and groaned and writhed together in a tangle and somehow ended up naked. He turned her again, lay over her back, clamped himself around her, arms and legs. Protecting, warding off the world. She squashed herself against him, demanding him, giving him herself. “Dante—darling, just take me…Don’t hold anything back!”

He took her. Gave her himself. Held nothing back. His roar harmonized with her moan as he invaded her, as she consumed him. He had to plunge deeper into her being, surrender further. Had to give her what she was desperate for, all he had to give, his passion, full release and succor.

His rhythm built, her cries rose—and then it all detonated. The annihilating ecstasy that would silence agony, assuage need, wipe out existence.

They convulsed together until their cries were of desperation for the pleasure to subside, the keening edge to blunt. He poured himself into her in burst after draining burst, wished he’d disintegrate inside her.

With the last pulse of pleasure he collapsed on top of her, drove her into the lumpy mattress. A relieved sound poured out of her when his full weight bore down on her. He understood it. The same sound was welling out of him at feeling her precious body cushioning him, completing the intimacy, anchoring the magic of what they’d just shared.

They didn’t speak. There was nothing to say. They just rested, regained their breath then loved again. And again.

Then it was dawn and they hadn’t slept. The first bleak ray of light came through the grid window, portending the end. Gulnar was draped over him, her lips working patterns around his wound. She suddenly spoke, her satin voice cracked and thick with her abandon in his arms. “Sorry I brought you here. This place…really stinks…”

He dragged her up, swallowed her faltering words. “I’ve had all-luxuries suites, Gulnar. Color coordinated, silk sheets, incense burning, lights of a hundred artfully arranged candles, mirrors, water beds, music—and none of it matters. Only you, experiencing you, your mind-blowing beauty—your desire, feeling you, just the luxury, the magic of your pleasure and fire and life, Gulnar. I’ve never known such hunger, never had such satisfaction then such desperation all over again. Never, Gulnar…”

She turned in the curve of his still trembling body and murmured in his chest, “I’ll just sleep till…”

She didn’t complete the sentence.

Till what? Till he left?

He could tell she didn’t really fall asleep. But she was giving him a way out without a confrontation. Without a goodbye.

He took it. At eight a.m., when he finally mustered enough will and co-ordination to move, he slipped from around her. It felt as though he’d snatched off his skin. He stood there dressing, his eyes hot and wet as he looked at her, twisted in the bed sheets, voluptuous, innocent and the one and only thing that mattered. Nothing else would matter again.

He paused at the creaking door, wished she’d call him back. That she’d at least sob in her pretense of sleep, give him a sign she wished he’d stay…

What was he thinking? That she’d want him to stay so he could tell her he couldn’t? Soothe his torment and add to her suffering? But she wasn’t suffering—was she…?

Just get out of here!

He did, stumbled out of the derelict building and into the ugly light of a new barren Azernian morning, truly lost for the first time in his life.

Where did he go from here? And why?

He’d just left all reason—and all his reasons—up there in that squalid room.

Gulnar held back the storm of misery until his footsteps faded. Then it pummeled its way out of her, slamming her around the bed, shaking her bones apart. She’d thought she’d wept, known desperation and loss before.

She’d known nothing.

Dante. Dante. Gone. Over. It was all over.





CHAPTER ELEVEN


“IT’S all over, Gulnar. All the pain and loss.”

“You’re back!”

“Yes, I am, Gulnar. I couldn’t stay away.”

“Oh, God, Dante. Say that again…”

“Did you hear what I said?”

Gulnar blinked. Her eyes were open and she did see the woman in front of her. The woman who’d just yelled at her.

Oh, hell! She was daydreaming again. Lost in her impossible fantasy. For thirty-four days now, ever since Dante had left, it had been the only thing that had kept her functioning, the escape she’d needed to salvage her sanity. Or so she’d told herself. If she was sinking into it now, involuntarily, unable to resurface from it, this could be serious. Would she soon fail to differentiate between fantasy and reality, take refuge in her delusions on a permanent basis?

She was still hearing his voice over the woman’s tirade, soothing her, promising her he’d stay, at least somewhere in her life, that he wouldn’t disappear completely.

Face facts! Dante had disappeared. He’d walked out of her arms that morning and had vanished off the face of the earth. No one knew where he’d gone. No one had even reported seeing him anywhere on his way out of the region. There were no records of his movements anywhere. And there should have been, with him such a well-known figure at the moment.

Had he really existed or had she been having an impossibly detailed and vivid psychotic episode all the time? Had her mind finally caved in, taken enough horrors and losses and desperation and decided to find itself a way out? Created her a man beyond her dreams, a passion beyond her imagination?

But why had it also given her grief beyond her endurance? If it had, then her mind must really be diseased. To introduce him to her in such a horrific scenario, to make him so perfect, yet so unattainable, so that losing him would be a far worse trauma than anything it had invented him to escape.

No. To her regret, her mind was still sound. And it would remain so, so she could suffer and know it. Dante and the two weeks of their relationship, the night in his arms were real. Only real life was that cruel. She knew…

“Don’t you ignore me!” The woman was screaming now, and that catapulted Gulnar back, plunged her into the dreary reality that was her world. All around her was the dismal Sredna refugee camp populated by over two hundred thousand Badovnans. A scene from a recurring nightmare.

She’d been here before, with Lorenzo and Sherazad. She’d watched their love blossom, had misunderstood it at first. But they were together now, strong and secure in each other, with a baby on the way. And she was alone—for ever…

Focus! Before that woman goes for your throat!

“Madam—I was just a little distracted. It was an eleven-hour drive getting here, and I’m exhausted. If you’ll please repeat what you said…”

“We all know you’re one of the doctors who saved the Azernian hostages.” Well, well. News traveled widely. “How dare you come here when you side with the people who put us here?”

Gulnar tried her best placating tone. “First, I’m not a doctor, just a nurse. And I’m with GAO, and you know we help people in need regardless of their nationalities or political beliefs. I was here a year ago. If you don’t remember me, maybe someone else who’s been here longer will.”