Sinful

“No,” he said, muffled beneath the cloth, his voice weakening, as was his strength. “Don’t do this. No binds…”

Jesus Christ, not again. He was being held down, his body unclothed, hands, cool and damp, stroked his flesh. He retched, trying to fight through the fog that clouded his brain. Fumbling at his waist told him his trousers were being removed, and he gathered the last of his evaporating strength to fight off his assailant.

The old fear seized him and he began to shake and breathe too fast.

“Shh,” came a female voice. “You’re safe.”

He stilled, going limp, then realized it was a trick. This was no angel in disguise.

Violently he tossed his head, trying to fling off the cloth that was smothering him.

“It’s all right,” came the softly spoken voice, directly in his ear. “Take a slow deep breath, and hold it. That’s right. Now let it go.”

His body seemed to go languid. He felt hands in his hair. They were gentle and soothing. Not like the other hands that had always plagued his dreams. Hands that clawed and pinched. Hands that had awakened him many times in his sleep. Hands that had ruined him.

“You’re bleeding, and we want only to help you,” the voice whispered again. “You’re safe here. I promise.”

The world was blackening. He felt disembodied, weightless. Yet his hearing remained nearly perfect.

“There,” she soothed, her breath caressing his cheek. “There is nothing to fear.” The cloth fell away from his mouth as his body stilled. “Sleep now,” she encouraged.

“You truly are an angel, Jane,” came the voice of a male.

Before the blackness settled in, his fingers reached for her wrist, which he sensed was near his hip. He grabbed her, holding on to her like an anchor clutches the sand at the bottom of the sea.

“Be here,” he scratched out through his cracked lips and dry throat.

She squeaked at the shock of knowing he was not asleep, but then she recovered swiftly. The tension in her hand lessened, and Matthew entwined his fingers with hers, holding on to the only thing that felt safe.

“I’m here,” she said, her voice like that of an angel.

“No,” he growled. “Later. Be here…later.”

“He’s out at last. Jane, hand me the scalpel.”

Jane did as she was told. Thankfully, it was nearly automatic now, for she could not take her gaze off the stranger. He was beautiful, she realized, allowing her gaze to wander along the length of his unclothed body. He was very tall and broad. His were muscles honed and sculpted, reminding Jane of a diagram she had once studied while she learned anatomy. She tried to still her pulse as she ran through the anatomical terms. Pectoralis. His were large and firm, his nipples small and brown. On the left one, above his heart was a tattoo. A crest of some sort.

Rectus abdominis. Stomach muscles. All six of his were prominently displayed. So too was a tantalizing trail of soft black hair that disappeared beneath the white sheet.

“Jane.”

The sharp voice drew her attention and she blushed. Sliding her spectacles back on her nose where they belonged, Jane met Richard’s annoyed gaze. “Needle and thread,” he repeated.

“Yes, Doctor.”

She’d been caught staring. She was no better than the two new employees she had scolded a short time ago. But really, how could a woman possessed of a pulse not notice the man lying before her. He was stunningly masculine, and his face, while exceedingly handsome, held a beauty that was dark and sensual.

She noticed his lips were cracked and smeared with blood. She went to wipe them. “Not now, Jane,” Richard commanded. “I need your hand.”

In the light, he held a shining object between a pair of tweezers. “From a gin bottle most likely,” Richard murmured as he held the tweezers up to the light. “It was lodged in the corner of his eye. You’ll need to sew the outer lid back together. That is what is bleeding. You’ve a steady, delicate hand, Jane. You’ll leave less scarring if you do it.”

“Yes, Dr. Inglebright.”

Richard nodded and reached for the towel. His hands were drenched in blood to his wrists. “He’s an aristocrat,” he muttered as he tossed the towel into the wicker basket they used for laundering. “I don’t want him coming back displeased with me because I’ve bungled his looks.”

Jane hid her smile. She knew Richard’s opinion of the titled populace. It was not gracious.

Bending over her patient, she tried to forget that Richard was watching her, and that her patient’s face lay pressed against her ample bosom as she bent low over his eyes.

Concentrating on steadying her hand, Jane tried to ignore the way the man’s warm breath caressed her exposed skin above the edge of her bodice. Never before had she been so discomposed to be sitting this close to a man. He was asleep from the ether, yet her body was as aware of him as if he were awake, caressing her with his gaze, his hands, his beautiful mouth.

“He’ll need his head bandaged. We don’t want that gash to get putrid, or his eyes. You can see to that, can you, Jane?”

“Yes.”

“Givens and Smith will find a bed for him. I think it best if he stay the night here in my room. He doesn’t need to be out with the others. Whoever he is, he has money. I think he would be rather dismayed to find himself amongst the consumptives and typhoids.”

Squeezing her shoulder, Richard passed behind her, studying her skill with the needle. “It’s unfortunate the college doesn’t allow women in, Jane. You’d be a superb surgeon. Lucky bastard, I doubt he’ll even have a scar.”

That was praise, indeed. No other compliment could have meant more to Jane. It carried far more substance than one based on the superficialities of beauty and feminine wiles. She was not a beauty. She knew and accepted it. But she was smart, and eager to learn all she could. She was a woman of worth, and would continue to be so, despite her looks.

“How do you do it?” Richard asked, peering over her shoulder. “Your stitches are so slight.”

She laughed despite the closeness of Richard at her back, and the stranger’s face at her front. “Sometimes it pays to be a woman,” she whispered, smiling secretly to herself.

“We’ll, you’ve a fine hand, and a quick mind, Jane. I’m glad I found you first.”

Chapter Three

Warm water sluiced from the cloth over the large expanse of the man’s shoulders and chest. The water turned to rust, taking the remnants of dried blood away from his skin.

His skin tone was darker than most, tanned almost, she mused as she dipped the cloth once more into the basin and squeezed it over his pectorals. The water shimmered over the blue ink of the tattoo, and she bent closer trying to see what the image was of.

She still couldn’t make it out. Tracing it with her finger, she saw him flinch and she pulled away, afraid to waken him—afraid to touch him.

Like a child caught stealing a sweet, Jane felt utterly guilty to be taking delight in washing this stranger.

Even with his head and eyes bandaged, he was beautiful. His nose, straight and refined, told of his aristocratic breeding. His lips, however, full and soft yet masculine, were made for pleasure.

Jane didn’t dare touch them. She had wanted to, but had not allowed herself the wicked pleasure of such a thing. He was her patient. It was wrong. Had she not long ago given her two new charges the devil for their misconduct? Moral responsibility, Jane reminded herself. Respectability.

Yet Jane could not stop thinking of how hard he felt beneath her fingertips and how her body seemed to soften as her hands gently touched him. She had never once been physically affected by a patient. She had never felt the slow deep burn inside her, the vague tightening of her loins and her womb. Not even Richard had this effect on her. She knew the words that made her feel this way, but was at loss to explain why they suddenly consumed her.

Desire. Attraction—compulsion. Desire and attraction were what she felt at this precise moment. Compulsion was what she was trying so diligently to fight.

Her gaze fixed on his chest, watching how slowly his chest rose and fell. She allowed her hands to traverse the width of his torso under the pretence of counting his respirations. She heard the breath enter his lungs, felt his heart beating slow and steady against her palm. Saw his lips part as the air escaped through them.

Even when she was certain he was breathing easy, she could not push away. Her hands simply would not let go of him.