Sinful (3 page)

“Damn me, the man’s been through a rounder!”

Whirling around, Jane caught sight of a very muscular chest and arms. On the man’s ribs were black smudges, which she knew were bruises.

“Spleen and liver feel intact, and there isn’t any swelling or firmness,” Richard muttered as he palpated the man’s belly, which was etched in muscle. “His limbs seem to be intact, as well. I don’t know how he managed it, but he seems to have avoided breaking any bones. Bring a cloth and water, Jane. Let’s find out where all this blood is coming from.”

Jane set the silver tray down on a wooden table, and began dabbing at the wound. The scalp wound, while large, was not overly deep. More of a superficial gash, really. The blood was already starting to dry, and the wound no longer wept.

Cleaning the cloth in the water, Jane wrung it out, watching the clear water turn red. She turned to his face, bending over him to work. He snarled, his white teeth bared like a rabid animal’s as he grabbed her wrist.

“Givens and Smith, if you please,” Richard said, motioning to where the man held her.

“None of that now, guv,” Givens said. “The chit is only tryin’ to help.”

The man came off the table, swinging and hitting, as the night men struggled to hold him down.

“Get off,” he cried. Like a madman, he swung at anything that moved. “Get the fuck off me, you whoreson!”

“’E don’t talk like a gent,” Mr. Smith grunted as he twisted the man’s arm, forcing his torso back onto the table. “Talks like ’e was born in the rookery.”

The man burst into a litany of profanity about being tied down. He struggled, his strength incredible considering his wounds.

“Give him two drops of ether, Jane.”

With a dropper, she administered two drops of the liquid onto a folded cloth and pressed it tightly against the man’s face.

He struggled, roaring, but it was not a cry of rage, Jane thought as she watched him, it was one of terror. He tossed his head from side to side trying to dislodge the towel, but Jane held firm.

“No,” he said, muffled beneath the cloth, his voice weakening, as was his strength. “Don’t do this. No binds…”

Jesus Christ, not again. He was being held down, his body unclothed, hands, cool and damp, stroked his flesh. He retched, trying to fight through the fog that clouded his brain. Fumbling at his waist told him his trousers were being removed, and he gathered the last of his evaporating strength to fight off his assailant.

The old fear seized him and he began to shake and breathe too fast.

“Shh,” came a female voice. “You’re safe.”

He stilled, going limp, then realized it was a trick. This was no angel in disguise.

Violently he tossed his head, trying to fling off the cloth that was smothering him.

“It’s all right,” came the softly spoken voice, directly in his ear. “Take a slow deep breath, and hold it. That’s right. Now let it go.”

His body seemed to go languid. He felt hands in his hair. They were gentle and soothing. Not like the other hands that had always plagued his dreams. Hands that clawed and pinched. Hands that had awakened him many times in his sleep. Hands that had ruined him.

“You’re bleeding, and we want only to help you,” the voice whispered again. “You’re safe here. I promise.”

The world was blackening. He felt disembodied, weightless. Yet his hearing remained nearly perfect.

“There,” she soothed, her breath caressing his cheek. “There is nothing to fear.” The cloth fell away from his mouth as his body stilled. “Sleep now,” she encouraged.

“You truly are an angel, Jane,” came the voice of a male.

Before the blackness settled in, his fingers reached for her wrist, which he sensed was near his hip. He grabbed her, holding on to her like an anchor clutches the sand at the bottom of the sea.

“Be here,” he scratched out through his cracked lips and dry throat.

She squeaked at the shock of knowing he was not asleep, but then she recovered swiftly. The tension in her hand lessened, and Matthew entwined his fingers with hers, holding on to the only thing that felt safe.

“I’m here,” she said, her voice like that of an angel.

“No,” he growled. “Later. Be here…
later.
”

“He’s out at last. Jane, hand me the scalpel.”

Jane did as she was told. Thankfully, it was nearly automatic now, for she could not take her gaze off the stranger. He was beautiful, she realized, allowing her gaze to wander along the length of his unclothed body. He was very tall and broad. His were muscles honed and sculpted, reminding Jane of a diagram she had once studied while she learned anatomy. She tried to still her pulse as she ran through the anatomical terms.
Pectoralis.
His were large and firm, his nipples small and brown. On the left one, above his heart was a tattoo. A crest of some sort.

Rectus abdominis.
Stomach muscles. All six of his were prominently displayed. So too was a tantalizing trail of soft black hair that disappeared beneath the white sheet.

“Jane.”

The sharp voice drew her attention and she blushed. Sliding her spectacles back on her nose where they belonged, Jane met Richard’s annoyed gaze. “Needle and thread,” he repeated.

“Yes, Doctor.”

She’d been caught staring. She was no better than the two new employees she had scolded a short time ago. But really, how could a woman possessed of a pulse not notice the man lying before her. He was stunningly masculine, and his face, while exceedingly handsome, held a beauty that was dark and sensual.

She noticed his lips were cracked and smeared with blood. She went to wipe them. “Not now, Jane,” Richard commanded. “I need your hand.”

In the light, he held a shining object between a pair of tweezers. “From a gin bottle most likely,” Richard murmured as he held the tweezers up to the light. “It was lodged in the corner of his eye. You’ll need to sew the outer lid back together. That is what is bleeding. You’ve a steady, delicate hand, Jane. You’ll leave less scarring if you do it.”

“Yes, Dr. Inglebright.”

Richard nodded and reached for the towel. His hands were drenched in blood to his wrists. “He’s an aristocrat,” he muttered as he tossed the towel into the wicker basket they used for laundering. “I don’t want him coming back displeased with me because I’ve bungled his looks.”

Jane hid her smile. She knew Richard’s opinion of the titled populace. It was not gracious.

Bending over her patient, she tried to forget that Richard was watching her, and that her patient’s face lay pressed against her ample bosom as she bent low over his eyes.

Concentrating on steadying her hand, Jane tried to ignore the way the man’s warm breath caressed her exposed skin above the edge of her bodice. Never before had she been so discomposed to be sitting this close to a man. He was asleep from the ether, yet her body was as aware of him as if he were awake, caressing her with his gaze, his hands, his beautiful mouth.

“He’ll need his head bandaged. We don’t want that gash to get putrid, or his eyes. You can see to that, can you, Jane?”

“Yes.”

“Givens and Smith will find a bed for him. I think it best if he stay the night here in my room. He doesn’t need to be out with the others. Whoever he is, he has money. I think he would be rather dismayed to find himself amongst the consumptives and typhoids.”

Squeezing her shoulder, Richard passed behind her, studying her skill with the needle. “It’s unfortunate the college doesn’t allow women in, Jane. You’d be a superb surgeon. Lucky bastard, I doubt he’ll even have a scar.”

That was praise, indeed. No other compliment could have meant more to Jane. It carried far more substance than one based on the superficialities of beauty and feminine wiles. She was not a beauty. She knew and accepted it. But she was
smart, and eager to learn all she could. She was a woman of worth, and would continue to be so, despite her looks.

“How do you do it?” Richard asked, peering over her shoulder. “Your stitches are so slight.”

She laughed despite the closeness of Richard at her back, and the stranger’s face at her front. “Sometimes it pays to be a woman,” she whispered, smiling secretly to herself.

“We’ll, you’ve a fine hand, and a quick mind, Jane. I’m glad I found you first.”

Warm water sluiced from the cloth over the large expanse of the man’s shoulders and chest. The water turned to rust, taking the remnants of dried blood away from his skin.

His skin tone was darker than most, tanned almost, she mused as she dipped the cloth once more into the basin and squeezed it over his pectorals. The water shimmered over the blue ink of the tattoo, and she bent closer trying to see what the image was of.

She still couldn’t make it out. Tracing it with her finger, she saw him flinch and she pulled away, afraid to waken him—afraid to touch him.

Like a child caught stealing a sweet, Jane felt utterly guilty to be taking delight in washing this stranger.

Even with his head and eyes bandaged, he was beautiful. His nose, straight and refined, told of his aristocratic breeding. His lips, however, full and soft yet masculine, were made for pleasure.

Jane didn’t dare touch them. She had wanted to, but had not allowed herself the wicked pleasure of such a thing. He
was her patient. It was wrong. Had she not long ago given her two new charges the devil for their misconduct? Moral responsibility, Jane reminded herself.
Respectability.

Yet Jane could not stop thinking of how hard he felt beneath her fingertips and how her body seemed to soften as her hands gently touched him. She had never once been physically affected by a patient. She had never felt the slow deep burn inside her, the vague tightening of her loins and her womb. Not even Richard had this effect on her. She knew the words that made her feel this way, but was at loss to explain why they suddenly consumed her.

Desire. Attraction—
compulsion.
Desire and attraction were what she felt at this precise moment. Compulsion was what she was trying so diligently to fight.

Her gaze fixed on his chest, watching how slowly his chest rose and fell. She allowed her hands to traverse the width of his torso under the pretence of counting his respirations. She heard the breath enter his lungs, felt his heart beating slow and steady against her palm. Saw his lips part as the air escaped through them.

Even when she was certain he was breathing easy, she could not push away. Her hands simply would not let go of him.

It was wrong to be this close to him, to sit on the edge of his small cot, to be leaning over him as she watched him sleep. He was clean now, yet still she bathed him, refusing to take her hands off his body.

He stirred against her, the bandages hiding his brow and facial expressions. Every once in a while, he would tremble, and his mouth would move as if he was trying to speak. His head would then begin thrashing, his body tensing despite the deep sleep produced by the ether.

What demon gripped him? She knew it was something evil that held him now. He should be peaceful from the ether, not grimacing and tensing, as if he was trying to fight.

Perhaps he was dreaming of his attack.

He cried out, his head arching back as his torso and buttocks lifted from the cot. The white sheet slid down, exposing the line of fine black hair that continually captured her attention.

“Shh,” she soothed, pushing him gently back with her hands on his shoulders. “You’re safe here.”

He settled easily, falling back into the slow, even breathing of before. His body was still. His muscles quiet.

As Jane sat back and watched him, she allowed herself to take her fill of his naked chest. She had never seen a man like this before. One who was so large and muscled. One whose shaving soap and cologne still clung to his skin.

His chest was smooth and hairless, all except for the line of onyx down that swirled around his navel and worked its way lower. Without thinking, Jane ran her forefinger along the pathway of hair, marveling at the softness and the steely muscles beneath his skin. It was a contradiction, how something could feel so soft and innocent, yet just beneath so hard and unyielding.

She was utterly captivated by him, by the secrecy of his identity, not to mention the mysteries to be found on his body. Like a child with a new doll, she could not stop looking at him, or prevent herself from running her hand along his chest.

What would it feel like to have his length atop her? To be encased by his strong arms? To lay her head on his chest and listen to the steady cadence of his heart beating as she traced the outline of his tattoo?

What would it be like, she wondered, to have a man this handsome and virile buried deep within her?

As if he could discern her wayward thoughts, the sheet moved as his penis began to swell, the outline of which was pressed urgently against the thin, graying cotton.

Jane was not an innocent. She did not smother a cry of hor
ror and launch herself from the bed. Instead, she allowed herself to pull the sheet down, slowly exposing the man to her curious eyes.

He was as large and beautiful there as he was everywhere else.

His erection continued to fill, and Jane watched, mesmerized as the pink rod filled with blood. He was long and thick. The foreskin pulling back, revealing a heavily veined staff and engorged head.

She was consumed by the thought of feeling him, touching the hardness that still grew. The devil whispered in her ear, and she obeyed, reaching out to skim her fingertip along the veined shaft.

He moaned, and hastily Jane pulled the sheet up, ashamed by her actions. She had no idea what had gotten into her. She had seen many male patients naked before, and never once had she been tempted to touch them, to learn whether or not the skin was as smooth and velvety as it looked.

Perhaps she had her mother’s harlot blood after all, for that could be the only reason for these new thoughts that suddenly began to cloud her thinking and judgment.

“Are ye done yet?” Givens, the night man asked as he entered the room. “We’ve brought a bed and we’ll get him onto it for you.”

“Yes,” Jane said in a voice that belied her thoughts. “I’m finished. But do be careful, he took a nasty blow to his head. I’m afraid I’m going to have to check on him frequently tonight to ensure he wakes up.”

She had seen many patients die in their sleep from blows less severe. Tonight she would have to return to him hourly and wake him, ensuring that he did not slip into unconsciousness and ultimately death.

One of the men reached for his ankles, and the other, his
wrists. The third shoved the bed closer so that the mattress of one was pressed against the wooden operating table. Beneath his weight, they grunted as they lifted him, affording Jane a glimpse of how tall he was. Well over six feet and solid as marble.

“Ye better take good care of ’im, miss,” the one grunted with exertion. “’E’s part of the fancy and there’s no tellin’ what will ’appen if ’e cocks up ’is toes here.”

“I am aware of that.”

Jane watched as they plopped him down onto the small bed. The mattress was thin, but it was clean. So, too, was his pillow. It was the best of what London College Hospital had to offer, yet Jane knew it was not even close to what the man was used to.

“Will there be anythin’ else?”

“No, thank you. I’ll call if I need help.”

Jane pulled the screen around his bed, trying to afford the man some privacy. News traveled fast throughout the wards, and there was no doubt that the news of an aristocrat having arrived after being beaten unconscious would be fodder for those well enough to spread the word. Many of the patients, Jane knew, would risk their own health to leave their beds, if for nothing more than a glimpse of the man. Jane was determined to keep him safe and quiet, and not a spectacle on display for the others’ amusement.

“Who are you?” she asked as she drew up a blanket, covering him to his shoulders. “And where do you belong?”

“Who are you?”

The words burned his brain, which throbbed in an unrelenting tattoo against his skull. He swallowed, tasting bile, and knew with sickening certainty the voice would come again, no matter how hard he tried to shove it aside and suffocate it until he could hear it no more.

“Who are you?”

“Your slave.” The words erupted in his mind. Words said in his voice. Words that opened the floodgates of revulsion. Fear and panic swelled as he felt hands sweep over his chest.

He lay still and quiet, hoping that the words and memories would fade, along with the touch, but they rushed back, smothering him.

His heart was racing, his skin sweating, yet he felt chilled as the hated memories came back.

“You know, this is all you’re good for—fucking.”

No.
He tried to say it, to scream it in his mind, but no sound emitted from his lips.

“You like this. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t be hard. Wouldn’t be leaking your seed, anticipating what we’re going to do to one another.”

He shook his head denying it. Hating that the truth could not be hidden. But it couldn’t. His cock was hard and throbbing, screaming for the release he had begun to crave with frightening regularity.

“Open your eyes and watch me.”

No, he couldn’t. It was dirty. Sinful.
Unnatural.

But it felt so damn good, the devious little voice in his head whispered. And it did. No matter how shameful it was, he had never felt anything so good. And if he kept his eyes closed, he didn’t have to see what was happening. Didn’t have to watch the person between his thighs, sucking his cock deep into a hot mouth that knew how to get him off every time.

He was so close, he could feel it in the way his cods tightened up in the palm that handled them. He felt it in the way his seed raced up his shaft. And then it stopped. That hot sucking mouth and probing tongue abruptly abandoned him.

He cried out and reached for his prick, holding it out, offering himself, pleading and panting as he stroked his swollen cock with his hand. Even with his eyes closed he could feel
those lascivious eyes watching him masturbate.
Harder.
He could hear the word whispered in a harsh rasp of growing arousal. Yes. He liked it hard, and his lover liked watching him toss off with ferocious jerks, spewing his seed over his palm.

“Beg me to take you in my mouth.”

No. He wouldn’t. But the word
please
was pulled from his lips before he could stop it. He was humiliated that he had shown such weakness and need—such perversity to want this—with this person. Yet despite that, he wanted the mouth on him, finishing him off, drinking him down and dry.

He felt the swipe of a tongue as he continued to stroke himself, the tongue teasing him with its elusive touch.
“You aren’t going to tell. Are you?”

It was a demand, not a question. No. He wouldn’t tell.
Couldn’t.
He hated himself for what he was doing. Hated the person who was once again pulling his cock so deep, sucking him until he had nothing left to give.

“No one would believe you if you did, you know. They would believe me, not you.”

Yes. He knew that. No one would believe it, no one would understand.

“Open your eyes,”
the voice demanded.

He was loath to do it, to confront the wickedness and shame that played out between his spread thighs. But he was at the mercy of that mouth, and the hands that strayed to his buttocks, pulling them apart in time to the ravaging mouth on his cock. A finger slipped inside at the same time his cock was pulled deep, and the first spurt of come shot from his cock.

His eyelids flew up, and their gazes met. He was shocked by what he saw looking up at him. Despite all the times they had been together, the image still stunned him. Indignity flooded him, mixing with the pleasure he felt at seeing his
cock being so greedily sucked as he continued to fist his hand up and down his swollen shaft, milking himself.

Dirty and unnatural. A slave to desire. A prisoner in a prison of his own making.

“You want to come, don’t you?”

He wanted to, yet he despised admitting it.

“You hate me for what I do to you, but you can’t resist, can you? You can’t bring yourself to put a stop to our illicit meetings because you like what I do to you. You like these lessons I’m teaching you.”

He was panting, anger and desire curling within him.
I hate you, I hate you, I hate you,
he chanted in his mind while a hot tongue glided over the swollen head of his member.

He hated this, lying here at his prick’s mercy, but he could not move away, knowing how degraded he would feel after. He could not think about that now. All he could think of was coming and spewing it all over, making his sinful, secret lover feel a measure of degradation at his hand.

He came, pulsing in long powerful spurts. The low moan at once inflamed, yet angered him. His lover should have been dishonored by what he had done, but instead the act had aroused.

“My turn.”

He found his body handled, moved to how his lover desired him. His lips were against a straining sex that pressed against his open mouth. He licked and sucked as he had been taught, listening to the growing sounds of pleasure. His cock was hard again, and his lover worked it, tugging and pulling hard.

He felt eyes on him, watching him. Felt that greedy gaze devouring his body. A hand smacked his buttock, stinging him before a finger traced his opening, and plunged in.

“You are such a dirty, sinful boy,”
his lover moaned.

He bit down, angry and mortified. He felt his lover fall apart and he came once more, empting into a hand that refused to release his cock.

Dirty.
Sinful.
He could never erase the taint. The smothering feel of his body being consumed with his unnatural lust, with his sick perversions.

He had a secret. A secret he must hide. A secret he wished he could hide from himself.

“Water,” the angel’s voice whispered, chasing away the old memories. He felt his head being lifted and cradled in a supple arm as something pressed softly against his lips, which felt swollen and cracked, and he winced. Immediately his head began to throb in a relentless pulsation.