Page 3 of Rehabbing the Beast
Chapter Two
“Getting too hot inthe kitchen for you, sweetheart?” Seth started in on her before she had even wrapped her hands around the handles of his chair to push him into the hydrotherapy room. “Had to call in the big boys to take over for you yesterday?”
“Yep,” she with an exaggerated sigh, engaging the brakes and pulling the hand straps within his reach. “You’re just too much man for me to handle.”
The move put her chest right in line with his face. Christ, she was killing him. If he leaned forward a scant couple of inches his face would be buried in her cleavage. The beast wanted to do just that. To nuzzle his head between her breasts while she stroked and scratched behind its ears. To lick her between her creamy thighs with its raspy tongue until she came for him.
He amended his thought from the day before: the woman had no sense of self-preservation at all.
Despite telling himself he would not give in, he closed his eyes for a brief moment and inhaled her scent to calm the beast. It needed that, at least. Something that it could roll around in, something that was uniquely Quinn. She always smelled so good – warm and soft and feminine. It pissed him off to no end.
With the beast temporarily distracted, Seth smirked at her comment. She was feisty, he had to give her that. She was the only one who openly defied him. Everyone else either blatantly ignored his rudeness or requested reassignment, but not Quinn.
Was she just that stubborn, or did she view him as some kind of freak science project?
He grabbed on to the leather straps and lifted himself out of the chair, the muscles of his arms and shoulders bunching and flexing as he eased himself into the heated water with her tiny hands at his waist. At least he’d regained full use of his arms. The downside? She didn’t spend as much time massaging him as she used to.
She waited until he was submerged up to his waist to strap the belt around his chest and beneath his arms. The movement brought her close to his face again. Her cheek brushed his briefly even as the soft swells of her abundant breasts pressed into his shoulder. Fuck, but she was soft. And he was impossibly hard.
The beast howled in torment. “Jesus Christ, woman,” he ranted. “Quit rubbing yourself against me like a bitch in heat. I’m going to smell like fucking flowers.”
He didn’t know why he said the things he did, especially when Quinn’s soft skin and silky hair were the things he dreamed of night after night. Perhaps it was because he’d become so pathetic that he found himself shifting and adjusting just to steal the slightest of touches. Or maybe it was because he loved to see the fire blaze in those beautiful eyes, loved the way he could rile her.
He waited for a smart response, but when he didn’t get one, he pushed, sensing yet another slight crack in her defenses. He thought he might have hit upon something yesterday but it was so subtle he couldn’t be sure.
“No smart ass response? Did I hit a nerve, Cupcake?”
She looked around, everywhere but at him. A niggling warning of unease squirmed in the pit of his belly, but he ignored it. Even the beast stilled. Waiting. Watching.
“I think someone needs to get laid,” he said, laughing cruelly, hating himself more than she ever could. The thought of Quinn in another man’s arms hurt more than a round of buckshot in his gut. He should stop talking. He should shut his fucking mouth and seethe inside his own caustic ragealone, not lash out at her because she was ... Quinn. But he couldn’t help it. He couldn’t think straight around her.
“What’s the matter, Cupcake? Can’t find a man willing to sink himself into that skinny little ass? I’d offer to call a couple of my buddies, but they only want real women, not little girls.”
Quinn turned on the jets, her expression impassive. “You’ve got fifteen minutes,” she said, though her voice sounded thicker than normal.
“You’re not staying?” Acute as ever, Seth narrowed his eyes. “Something wrong, Cupcake?” he crooned silkily. It sounded eerily like a purr.
“Today is Captain Roger’s last day,” she told him. “I promised him I’d say good-bye.”
A sharp pain clawed at the inner walls of Seth’s chest that had nothing to do with his injuries. Mike Rogers had been in the same chopper he had, though he had come out a little better, thanks to Seth. He and Mike had been tight at one point, but the thought of Quinn having her hands on Mike like she did with him made him all kinds of crazy.
“Whatever. Hey, rub up against him like you did me and maybe he’ll do you. He always had a thing for charity cases.”
She turned away, but not before he saw the telltale sheen of moisture in her eyes. It shocked the hell out of him. Quinn didn’t cry. Not ever.
Before he could process it, however, she said, “Thanks for the tip. Maybe I will. Dave, keep an eye on him, will you?”
Seth felt the burn go nuclear.
When she returned at the end of fifteen minutes to turn off the jets and help him out of the therapy pool, Quinn gave no indication that anything had happened. Despite his repeated attempts to reproduce the baffling phenomena, Quinn remained as unaffected as always, except, perhaps, for being quieter than usual.
“Lay off her, will you?” Dave said later when Quinn went to grab some extra towels. He, like several others, couldn’t help but hear Seth’s increasingly loud taunts as Quinn stoically refused to rise to the bait.
When Quinn came back a few minutes later, Seth grinned with all the warmth of a rabid wolverine. “Good news, Cupcake. I think Dave here’s willing to give you a pity fuck, but you’ll probably have to blow him first.”
Things happened in a blur after that. Dave completely lost his cool and landed a solid punch to Seth’s jaw. Quinn cried out and threw herself at Dave, knocking him backward while others rushed over. Someone grabbed Seth’s chair and pulled him backwards, away from where Quinn was desperately trying to keep Dave from getting up and pounding Seth again. Seth wished he would. He wanted the pain, needed it to wipe away the mental images of Quinn with another man.
Dave managed to get to his feet, Quinn clawing at his back. Without thinking, Dave shrugged and flung her much smaller figure off of him.
Time slowed down then. Seth watched in growing horror as Quinn flailed, falling backwards into the shelf of free weights. Unable to stop her momentum, she attempted to twist her body and curl in on herself protectively. Before she could totally bring her knees in to her body and cover her face, she hit the shelf of equipment. Her tiny body bounced once before falling still.
There was a moment of stunned silence before someone screamed. Dave turned around, realizing what he had done and cursed, shouting for help.
Seth’s arms automatically pushed at the wheels of his chair to get to her, but suddenly his chair was turning and he was being hurriedly pushed in the opposite direction. “Quinn!” he shouted, but no one else heard him over the ensuing chaos. A big, bulky therapist named Deiter ignored every vile curse and threat Seth threw at him as they raced down the hallway toward his room. Without pause, he hefted Seth easily into his bed. The next thing Seth knew, he felt the syringe plunged and emptied into his ass. Within seconds, the strong sedative took effect and his world went dark.
