Page 168 of Wicked Proposal

“Notify the others,” I tell him. “And search the hospital’s parking lot. I’ll handle things here.”

“Sure.” He throws one last glance at Nikita. “When she wakes up, tell her I said hi. And that I called dibs on gutting the sons of bitches who did this to her.”

“You’ll have to fight her for the privilege,” I mutter. “And me.”

“Guys?” Mia pleads. “Seriously, plausible deniability? Ever heard of that?”

I wave Maksim out and sit down next to Mia. “So, she’s fine now?”

“I wouldn’t go that far, but at least she’s not burning up anymore.” I watch her bite her lower lip, worry all over her face, her gaze wandering over Nikita’s shivering frame. “What was her physical shape before this?”

“Not that skinny,” I tell her. “She’s been fit forever.”

“She’ll need help walking at first,” Mia says, hands deftly moving from Nikita’s biceps to her calves, assessing the damage. “There’s still something, but chances are, she’s eaten away at it. There are all textbook signs of starvation and immobility. We see this in coma patients, but?—”

“Coma patients?”

“Not exclusively,” she amends. “But yes. Patients who spend a lot of time bedridden, being fed through an IV. Look.” She shows me the inside of Nikita’s left arm. “See the holes? Either she’s been using like crazy?—”

“She would never do drugs,” I say. “Not Nikita.”

“—or she’s been kept somewhere for weeks.”

Kept.The thought fills me with rage. I take a deep breath to dominate myself, fists clenched into the sheets.

It doesn’t take long for Mia to notice. Her brow creases, pain and guilt waging a war in her eyes.

“Yulian… Are you and Nikita…?”

It takes me a few heartbeats to realize what she’s really asking. In the end, her cheeks give it away, flushing hot pink with embarrassment and a touch of anger.

I fight down a smile. “Is that jealousy I hear,Nurse Winters?”

She tears her gaze away, chin held up with pride. “I’m not?—”

“Because,” I cut her off, cupping that prideful face and turning it back towards mine, “I wouldn’t mind it if you were. It’s a good look on you.”

More color rushes to her face at my words. She looks so delicious like this—positively edible. “Don’t play games with me,” she rasps. “Not about this.”

I don’t tell her that I want to play all sorts of games with her. That, right now, Nikita’s unconscious body in my bed is theonly thing keeping me from pushing her down and showing her exactly how little reason she has to be jealous.

“You tell me,” I croon into her ear. Faint notes of her perfume hang in the air, sweet as cotton candy. It drives me fucking crazy. “Am I toying with you right now?”

She’s breathless. Red. “Sure feels like it sometimes,” she whispers, but her heart’s not in it. She isn’t doing a thing to resist me, not even as I dive into her neck and fill my lungs with the sweetness of her scent.

Blyat’.I was supposed to cut off all contact with her. To stop seeing her, stop thinking about her, stop wanting her perfect fucking body under mine.

I’ve never turned to drugs in my life, but I imagine this is what it must feel like: to be hopelessly in the clutches of something else, something you can’t live without. Something that consumes you.

I angle her head towards mine, fit my mouth over those perfect lips?—

—and my fucking phone rings.

“Is that…?” Mia gasps, breaking away from me.

I roll my eyes and pick up. “Talk, Maks.”

“Nikita’s trail is nonexistent,” he says without any preambles. “Someone beat us to it.”