Lover Unleashed (Black Dagger Brotherhood #9)(66)

She had to laugh. “Yes. Believe in this, my healer—I was totally aware of what I was regarding so thoroughly.”

“You were sitting up, Payne. You were up on your knees at the end of the bed.”

Her heart stopped. Surely she could not have heard him right.

Surely.




As Payne frowned, Manny lurched forward—and then realized he was really f*cking naked. Which was a condition that occurred when a guy didn’t just have his ass in the breeze, but was totally and completely, ball-numbingly erect as he pulled a birthday suit. Reaching into the bathroom, he snagged a towel, wrapped it around his hips, and then went over to the bed.

“I . . . no, you must be wrong,” Payne said. “I couldn’t have—”

“You did—”

“I had merely stretched upon—”

“How did you get to the end of the bed, then. And how did you get back where you are?”

Her eyes went to the short footboard, confusion drawing her brows in tight. “I do not know. I was . . . watching you and you were all I knew.”

The man in him was astounded and . . . strangely transformed. To be wanted that much by someone like her?

But then the physician in him took over. “Here, let me see what’s doing, okay?”

He untucked the sheets and blanket from the end of the bed and rolled them up to the tops of her thighs. Using his finger, he ran it across the sole of her pretty foot.

He expected it to twitch. It didn’t.

“Anything?” he said.

When she shook her head, he repeated on the other side. Then he moved higher, wrapping his palms around her slender ankles. “Anything?”

Her eyes were tragic as they met his. “I feel nothing. And I do not understand what you think you saw.”

He moved higher, to her calves. “You were on your knees. I swear to it.”

Higher still, to her taut thighs.

Nothing.

Christ, he thought. She had to have had some control over her legs. There was no other explanation. Unless . . . he’d been seeing things.

“I do not understand,” she repeated.

Neither did he, but he was going to damn well figure it out. “I’m going to go review your scans. I’ll be right back.”

Out in the exam room, he got some help from the nurse and accessed Payne’s medical record via the computer. With practiced efficiency, he went through everything: vitals, exam notes, X-rays—he even found the stuff he’d done to her at St. Francis, which was a surprise. He hadn’t a clue how they’d gotten access to that original MRI—he’d erased the file nearly as soon as it had gone into the medical center’s system. But he was glad to see it again, that was for sure.

When he was finished, he sat back in the chair, and the band of coldness that shot across his shoulder blades reminded him he was in nothing but a towel.

Kind of explained that nurse’s walleyed look when he’d spoken with her.

“What the hell,” he muttered, staring at the latest X-ray.

Her spine was perfectly in order, the vertebrae lined up nice and square, their ghostly glow against the black background giving him a perfect snapshot of what was going on down her back.

Everything, from the medical record to the exam he’d just given her on the bed, suggested that his original conclusion upon seeing her again was the correct one: He’d done the best technical work of his life, but the spinal cord had been irreparably damaged and that was that.

And abruptly, he remembered the expression on Goldberg’s face as it had become obvious that the difference between night and day had escaped his notice.

Rubbing his eyes, he wondered if he was, yet again, going crazy. He knew what he’d seen, however. . . . Didn’t he?

And then it dawned on him.

Twisting around, he looked to the ceiling. Sure enough, all the way up in the corner there was a pod attached to a panel. Which meant the security camera inside could see every square inch of the place.

Had to be one in the recovery room. Had to be.

Getting to his feet, he went over to the door and peered out into the corridor, hoping that nice blond nurse was somewhere to be found. “Hello?”

His voice echoed down the hall, but there was no reply, so he had no choice except to barefoot it around. Without an instinct as to which way to head, he choose “right” and walked fast. At all of the doors, he knocked and then tried to open them. Most were locked, but those that weren’t revealed . . . classrooms. And more classrooms. And a huge, professional-size gym.

When he got to one marked WEIGHT ROOM, he heard the pounding of someone trying to break a treadmill with some Nikes and decided to keep going. He was a half-naked human in a world of vampires, and somehow he doubted that nurse would be marathoning it if she were on duty.

Besides, going by how hard and heavy that footfall was? He was liable to open up a can of whoop-ass, instead of just a door—and whereas he was suicidal enough to fight anything that rode up on him, this was about helping Payne, not his ego or his boxing skills.

Doubling back, he headed in the opposite direction. Knocking. Opening when he could. The farther he went, the less classroom-y it was and the more police-station-interrogation-y shit became. Down at the far end, there was a massive door that was right out of the movies, with its reinforced, bolted panels.