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My mouth parts with the urge to say his name, but I pause, not knowing how awake he really is. Do I call him Lex? Or should I call him Lagan? If he’s awake, then maybe he won’t like that.

Instead, I utter a reluctant, “Hey.”

His back tenses so minutely that if I weren’t staring, I might have missed it. His shoulder blade shifts as he reaches up to rake a wide hand through his hair, fingers gathering it from temple to crown as he turns to look at me. His eyes drop from my face to where the sheet is pulled to my chest. “Did I do it?”

I try to read his voice, quiet and frustratingly even, but find myself at a loss. I’m on one side of the bed, but he’s on the other. A canyon between us. “Yeah,” I answer, awkwardly gathering the sheets tighter. “We…. uh. You know.”

His head dips in a nod, and he shifts away from me with a sigh. I get a clear view of his backside below the scars, the hard muscle of his ass, when he rises to his feet. I watch as he reaches for the night stand beside him. That’s when I see the supplies by the bed. A pair of shorts he tugs on one leg at a time. A kit with a red cross on the side. When he turns next, he’s wearing his glasses again.

“Where did all that come from?” I ask, looking away from the scattering of hair on his lower belly, and over at the supplies.

“I told the guys to leave it for me.” His gaze darts to my throat. “I knew I’d have to check you over. Make sure I didn’t leave any wounds.”

If reading his voice is hard, then reading his expression is impossible. He’s back to the efficient, clinical man I meet downstairs in the medical wing, even wearing nothing but a pair of boxers.

It makes it easier to let the sheet go, exposing my breasts. His eyes pin me, jaw tightening. I look down.

“Damn,” I mutter when I see it. The perfect imprint of his teeth is filled with dried blood. A deep purple bruise blooms around it, but the middle is perfectly unflawed.

“I did that?” he asks, hand reaching out to inspect the wound. My skin prickles in anticipation, but he stops short. “Of course I did. I need to clean that. A bite like that could get infected.”

Perching on my side of the bed, he tears open a sterile package of square gauze, pressing it to the mouth of a bottle of alcohol, and then flipping it over, saturating the cloth. “This will hurt,” he says, matter-of-factly. There’s no trace of apology in his voice, but when he pushes it to the wound, his touch is careful and light, amber eyes flicking up to mine.

The sting is awful, but I try not to let it show. For some reason, I feel the need to explain. “You stopped when I asked you to.”

He lifts the gauze pad only to dab it back. “Not fast enough.” His thumb grazes the smooth skin below the wound. There’s an unhappy tightness to his mouth. “Pace and Wick said they’d keep me from hurting you.”

“It didn’t go too far.” I think about him on top of me, feral and wild, hips thrusting, mouth hungry. “I had it under control.”

“West End,” he mutters, “always a glutton for punishment.”

I ignore the jab, because that’s what it is, a way to turn this back around on me. Instead, I ask, “What happened to your back?” This conversation, these questions are a way to distract myself from the fire stabbing its way through my breast.

Lex’s eyes shutter. “Hockey accident.”

It’s a lie.

Worse than that, it’s a really bad lie, almost no effort made to sell it.

The next time he lifts the pad, it’s pink with diluted blood. He leans over, a piece of hair slumping into his face, and blows a gentle stream of air against the tender flesh.

Instantly, my nipples pebble.

Between one breath and the next, Lex’s deep voice asks, “Did you climax?”

It’s strange how I can have a half naked man blowing air over my boobs and not blush at all, but this question makes heat rush to my cheeks. “No,” I admit. It may have actually been the first time sex with one of these men wasn’t soured by the lack of it. At least for once I felt alive, like I was part of it and not just a passive participant in a medical procedure. An orgasm couldn’t have made it better or worse. Unsure how to make such a confession, I add, “It was still… good, though.”

He pauses halfway through smearing ointment on my breast, his eyes jumping to mine. “Getting fucked by a barely conscious man who strangled you wasgood?”

I rush to say, “Those parts weren’t good. I just mean… ”

God.What do I mean?

“You think I’m worried about how good of a lay I was?” he asks, brows slamming together. “I needed to make a deposit and encourage the motility of my sperm.”

I sputter, totally at a loss for words. He attacked me last night.Ravagedme. It’s so hard when he’s looking like this, with his hair down and those glasses perched on his nose. Even in his rigidly clinical behavior, he looks so much softer here than the wild man who thrust into me with wild abandon. It’s hard to believe this technical, competent, measured man is the same one who held me down and used his body to hurt me.

Under the baffled weight of his gaze, I blurt, “I put the pillow under my hips,” needing him to know I did it right. That I didn’t waste it. That I understood the gravity of it. “I didn’t waste it.”