Page 207 of Toxic Temptation
“The problem is,” I interrupt, “I’m not hungry for food right now.”
Kovan’s gaze darkens. “Vesper…”
I reach for his hand. “Come with me.”
We walk down the corridor together, getting faster and faster with every step. I can feel every pair of eyes tracking our movement. By tomorrow, the entire hospital will be buzzing with speculation about Dr. Fairfax and her mysterious visitor.
To steal a phrase from Kovan:Let them talk.
I pull him into the first on-call room I find and lock the door behind us. The space is cramped—just a narrow bed, a small desk, and a closet barely big enough for scrubs.
But it’s private. Private enough for what I have in mind, at least.
“Vesper…” he warns again. “Are you sure this is a good idea?”
I press him back against the door, my hands already working at the buttons of his shirt. “Don’t tell me you’re shy all of the sudden.”
“I’m telling you that you have a surgery in twenty-seven minutes, and you should probably focus on that instead of?—”
I silence him with my mouth, kissing him hard enough to bruise. He tastes like coffee and whiskey. When I pull back, we’re both breathing hard.
“I focus better after,” I whisper against his lips. “You relax me.”
“Is that what I do?” His hands go to my hips. “Relax you?”
“After you get me riled up first, of course.”
He spins us around, pressing me against the door in his place. The metal is cool against my back, a sharp contrast to the heat radiating from his body.
“What other things?” His mouth finds the ticklish spot just below my ear. I have to bite my lip to keep from giggling, moaning, or both.
“You make me feel powerful,” I whisper. “Like I can do anything.”
“Youcando anything.” His hands sneak under my scrub top. I shiver and hiss at the contact. “You’re going to save that little girl in there. You’re going to give her a future.”
Despite being very thoroughly occupied with what my hands and mouth are doing, I can’t stop myself from running through her file in my head. Mia Callum. Eight years old. Brain tumor the size of a golf ball pressing against her temporal lobe. Her parents have been camped out in the waiting room for three days now, taking turns sleeping in plastic chairs and surviving on vending machine chips.
“What if I can’t, though?” The fear steals its way out of me before I can swallow it. “What if I mess up?”
Kovan pulls back to look at me, his green eyes serious. “You won’t.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know you.” His thumb grazes my cheekbone. “I know that you’d rather die than let a child suffer. I know that you’ve spent every spare minute for the past week studying that MRI, planning every possible angle of approach.”
He’s right. I have the scan memorized, every millimeter of tumor mapped in my mind.
“I also know,” he continues, “that you’re the best pediatric surgeon in this building. Maybe in the city. Maybe in the world.”
“Kovan—”
“And I know that when you walk into that operating room, you’re going to be brilliant. Because that’s who you are, Vesper. That’s what you do.”
The confidence in his voice settles the nerves inside me. The knot of anxiety in my chest loosens, replaced by something steadier.
Determination.
Trust.
