Page 30 of Vital Signs

I opened the door and headed toward the building, his eyes burning into my back with every step.

The truck stop parkinglot was mostly empty. A few semis, some fluorescent lights casting harsh shadows, and me sitting in my van questioning every decision that had led me here. What had I done? Tracked down a homeless addict in the middle of nowhere. Planned a break-in at a medical facility. All because of attraction to a dangerous man and rage over a stranger's death.

My phone buzzed with another text.

Xavier

Family's worried. Where are you?

I turned it face down without responding. Let them worry. They'd made their position clear at dinner. I was damaged goods to be managed, not a partner to be trusted. Tyler's death was a case to be filed through proper channels, not a person whose murder demanded immediate justice.

But Tyler wasn't their obsession. Hunter wasn't making their pulse race with possibilities that had nothing to do with justice.

Through the truck stop's plate-glass windows, I could see Hunter's silhouette at the service counter. Even from here, the tremor in his movements was visible. Withdrawal was eating him alive, and I'd dragged him away from whatever fix he'd been planning.

What did that make me?

I knew exactly what that made me. I was someone who got off on being irresistible. Someone who used his face and his body to make dangerous men lose their minds.

Hunter emerged from the building, and hunger twisted in my stomach. He was destroying himself in slow motion, but even damaged, he was magnetic. Dangerous. Exactly the kind of man I couldn't resist.

"Better?" I asked as he slid into the passenger seat.

"Clean. Still fucked."

The smell of cheap soap couldn't hide the sour scent of withdrawal.

"How long since your last dose?"

"Six hours. Maybe seven." He flexed his fingers, watching them shake. "Gets worse before it gets better."

I understood withdrawal. Not from opioids, but from the cocktail of benzodiazepines and stimulants Roche had forced into my system. The way your body turned traitor, every nerve ending screaming for chemical peace. The desperate mathematics of how much suffering you could endure before sanity snapped.

"Can you function?"

Hunter laughed. "Function. Right. Can I walk? Probably. Think straight? Fuck no. Anything requiring steady hands?" He held up trembling fingers. "Right now, I'm not even sure I can hit a vein without getting blood everywhere."

"You need help," I said.

"I need fentanyl." He pulled out a small black case, leather worn smooth from desperate handling. "But I can't hit a vein like this."

He was asking me to inject him. To hold his life in my hands, to be the difference between relief and agony.

To have absolute control over someone who'd once saved lives.

The jealousy was instant and sharp. I was jealous of the drug. Of the way it would make him feel things I never could. The way it would touch him deeper than I ever would, reach places in his brain designed for pleasure and pain that no person could access. He'd give himself to chemicals in ways he'd never give himself to me.

But right now, the drug needed me. And that meant Hunter needed me.

My dick throbbed at the thought.

"If you don't want to do it, then drive me back to camp," he said.

I stared at the kit he'd laid out on the dashboard. "I've never injected anyone before," I lied. "I could kill you."

"At least I'd die clean, warm, and with a beautiful view." His eyes never left my face, and despite everything, heat flickered in his gaze.

"Fine," I said quietly. "Walk me through it."