“When are you going to let me show you what real power feels like between your thighs?”
“Never, Dev.” I roll my eyes. “I’ve told you a thousand times. I don’t date bikers.”
“Who said anything about dating?”
He actually thinks he’s being cute with his boyish smile, innocent eyes, and flirty reply.
Yeah, right. Dr. Devlin Dane is anything but boyish or cute or innocent. He’s the big bad wolf disguised as grandma, and he has every nurse in the hospital skipping through the forest with a basket full of goodies. Goodies they are all too willing to give up.
Well, everyone except me. I see his big eyes, big ears, and big sharp teeth, ready and willing to tear through the first pair of panties he sees.
He not only tears through them, he disintegrates them. Or so I’m told.
I’ve seen his type a million times. Hell, I went to a high school full of Devlin Dane’s. Bikers with egos bigger than their modified exhaust. All competing to ride the fastest, hardest, and collect the most street bunnies.
Bike culture dominates this no-man’s-land situated at the tip of the Chesapeake. The area is comprised of nothing but farmlands, sporadic new housing developments, low income trailer parks, and a brand name supercenter where you can get your tires changed, a blowjob, and buy a bag of coke all in the same hour.
The only leg up Dev has from your average street racer are his Hollywood good looks and a medical degree. Underneath the white lab coat is a man as rough as the rest of them. The colorful tattoos peeking out from under his sleeve and collar drive most women’s imaginations—and desires—wild.
“Well, when you finally come to your senses, Kayla,” he traps me against the counter in the nurses’ lounge, “you know where to find me.”
“You mean when I finally lose my mind?” I peer up at him. “You’ll be the first one I call. Until then, I’ll pass,” I hiss seductively, teasing the shit out of him. Dev’s electric-blue eyes brighten. We’ve been doing his little dance for months. Since the first day we met, actually, nearly a year ago. As much as he tries to get in my pants, we’re friends as much as we are colleagues. And he’s harmless, really, unless you get into bed with him. I mean, so I’ve heard.
“Now, if you’ll excuse me.” I push him lightly. “I have a date with the gym.”
“There’s that word again.” He steps back and crosses his arms.
“What word?”
“Date. You need commitment to be intimate, huh?”
“Call me old-fashioned, but I do require some level of commitment before I lie on my back and spread my legs.”
“Oh.” Dev grabs his junk. “Be careful with the visuals, Nurse Kincade. Or I’ll have to reconsider my stance on commitment while I jerk off in the men’s room.”
“You’re an idiot.” I hit him on the arm. “If your patients only knew what a pervert you really are.”
“I have everyone fooled.” He smiles wickedly, showing his pearly-white teeth. “Perception is everything.”
“That statement is false. You don’t have me fooled. I see the wolf you really are.”
“Wolf? Now I’m picturing you lying down, spread-eagle, wearing a red cape. You really are a dirty tease, Kayla. How am I supposed to concentrate now with that image burned into my brain?”
“I don’t know. I guess you’re just going to have to be creative,” I reply without any remorse. Dev really makes it too easy.
“I love creative,” he insinuates, his eyes flashing wantonly.
I laugh at him. “Your kinkiness knows no bounds.”
“If I were fucking you, then that would definitely be true.” He wraps his fingers around my forearm.
I peer up at Dev heedfully. “Then I guess it’s a good thing our relationship is strictly platonic. I wouldn’t want to distract you from work any more than I already do.”
“I would welcome that distraction any day.” He leans into me, and I get a strong whiff of his fresh scent- clean, like warm laundry.
“I have to go, and you have rounds.” I fidget uncomfortably. He’s way too close, and if I’m being honest, a little too tempting. I have a strict rule. No bikers. Even if they are gorgeous, smart, funny, and you picture them every time you masturbate.
I may stick to my guns, but I’m still human.
“Being an adult is such a downer sometimes.” He steps back and retrieves his tablet off the counter.
“Aww. Don’t get too discouraged. I’m sure you’ll find someone to keep your motorcycle warm.”
“Kayla.” Dev snatches my arm as I start to walk away. “Is it really because I ride a bike?” He gazes down at me in all his strange, professional, edgy glory.
“It’s a big part,” I admit wistfully.
“One day, you are going to have to explain why.”
I look away, the painful memory exhuming itself like a dead hand from the grave.
“Maybe one day.” I pacify him, slipping my arm from his grasp.
“You working on the floor tomorrow?” Dev asks as he walks backward toward the door.
“I’m here all week,” I inform like the circus act I am, grabbing my coffee from the microwave. I was reheating it before he took the liberty of interrupting me.
“Tomorrow then.” He winks as he spins on his heel and disappears out the doorway.
Once he’s gone, I inhale a collective breath. As much as I hate to admit it, the man is wearing on me, and his persistence has an appeal.
I grab my backpack hastily off the chair and sling it over my shoulder as I walk out of the room. What I really need is a nice long run to clear my head, and there’s a treadmill at the gym with my name on it.
It’s a little after five p.m. when I leave the hospital. It’s early June and the weather is perfection. Upper seventies with a slight summer breeze. As I climb into my white H3, I toss my bag onto the passenger’s seat and contemplate skipping the gym completely. Maybe I’ll go running outside instead.
I pull out of the parking garage and drive through the small town Mercy Medical is situated in. It’s a modest size hospital but has all the essentials. I’ve worked as a per diem nurse for the last two years; I love the freedom and the diversity. It’s allowed me to work in every area of the hospital from emergency to pediatrics to cardiology. It keeps things fresh. Cardiology is where I spend most of my time. It’s also where I met Dev. He’s the newest cardiologist on staff, but you’d never know it by the way he runs the place. We hit it off from our first shift together, and he wasn’t shy about hitting on me. That’s sort of a no-no, doctors and nurses fooling around, but it happens all the time. You have to be careful which stockroom you walk into on any given day. I’ve caught Dev with his pants around his ankles more times than I care to admit. Once, he even invited me to join.
Um, thanks, but no thanks, playboy.
I like sidestepping the nickname skank. But most women around these parts are hard up for riders. They’d do almost anything to get with one and would most definitely kill to keep one with the prefix Doctor.
Dev doesn’t seem to be a one-woman kind of guy, though. He’s completely content with his steady stream of revolving women. Or so he tells me. Correction, brags to me. Not sure what he’s trying to accomplish there. Trying to make me jealous? Maybe? It’s not working. It just makes me urge him to get tested for STDs.
I resign to keep him in my fantasies where he’s solely mine and disease-free.
I stop at a red light at an intersection by the main highway. I use the word highway loosely. It’s really just a main route with four lanes.
The quiet serenity of the desolate street is suddenly interrupted when a loud, street bike pulls up behind me. I’m surprised it took this long for one to show. The nice weather usually has riders rolling out in droves. I stare through the rearview mirror as the guy adjusts his gloves then has the audacity to pull up right next to my driver’s side door. The street is barely wide enough for my truck, let alone this pompous ass who thinks he owns the road. I glare at him as he sits casually on his white bike. You don’t usually see many of those. He has a white helmet to match, with a blacked-out face shield. If you look closely enough, which I’m definitely not, you can make out translucent flames on the body of the bike and the headgear. I tap my finger impatiently against the steering wheel waiting for the light to change. This guy is just too close for comfort. I want to scream ‘Share the road!’ Friggin’ bikers think they own the place. I try to ignore him, but he revs the engine obnoxiously, forcing me to look in his direction. He’s staring right at me through his visor. I don’t shy away. Like hell am I going to let him intimidate me. I’ve scraped more roadkill off the cement than he’d care to know. I rev my engine back just for the hell of it before the car behind me lays on his horn. I look forward to see the light has turned green and a blur of white zoom out in front of me, making a left on to the highway. I roll my eyes and follow at a normal person’s speed.
I drive down the hilly road with the white motorcycle ten car lengths ahead. He weaves between lanes and even does a wheelie as he hits a straightaway. What a fuckin’ show-off.
At the next red light, we meet again. And again, he’s way too close for my liking. I can practically reach out and touch the leather of the backpack strapped to his shoulders. I try to keep my focus on the road, but he continually opens the engine as if trying to get my attention. I finally relent and look over at him. This time, his shield is up, and a pair of arresting blue eyes are staring back at me. My heart actually flutters. I swear those eyes have looked at me before. I don’t get much of a chance to inspect them further as the biker is suddenly slammed into from behind. He’s catapulted through the red light into cross traffic. It all happens wickedly fast, while at the same time in slow motion. The bike barrels into the driver’s side of a moving car, and the rider is flung from his seat, flying right over the hood of the sedan. I don’t see him hit the ground, but I do hear the screeching of tires and the blowing of horns. I instantly react, attempting to open my door, but it jams. The car that creamed him is flush against my driver’s side. I see the driver’s head bobbling all over. Drunken cocksucker sideswiped me. His jalopy doesn’t even look like it’s legal.
I rush out the passenger side and book it straight to the mangled man on the pavement.
“I’m a nurse! Call an ambulance!” I shout as I brush past two bystanders. “Out of my way!” I drop to my knees and check his vitals.
He has a faint pulse. “Sir, can you hear me?” I don’t shake him or move him in any way in case of a spinal injury. “Sir!” I yell again with no response. Then I feel warm liquid beneath my palm. Blood. Lots of it. I look him over, finding a small rip on the inside thigh of his dark jeans.
“Shit!” I tear them open to expose the wound. Fuck, he’s bleeding so much it looks like he nicked an artery.
“Does anyone have a belt, rope, cable tie, anything?” I shout at the onlookers as I apply pressure to the wound. If I don’t compress it rapidly, I fear he’s going to bleed out.
“Here!” A woman unbuckles her belt. With clumsy fingers, she gets it off and hands it to me. I use the thin leather strap as a tourniquet while keeping pressure on the wound, an active attempt to slow the bleeding. “Hang on, moto.” I clench my jaw as I kneel above him for what feels like forever until the ambulance arrives. I shake off the flashback. The blood, the wreckage, the limp, lifeless body. I break out in a cold sweat but hold my position.
Luckily, we aren’t far from Mercy, so the response time is quick. Before I know it, lights and sirens surround us, cops are directing traffic, and the injured biker is getting lifted into the back of the bus.
“Scottie!” I yell to one of the officers on the scene. “Can you move my car? I’m going with! Keys are in the ignition!”
He gives me a salute and continues to take statements. Between my aunt being a well-respected detective in town and me working night shifts in the ER, I know almost every police officer in the area.
The doors close and the ambulance pulls off as the other two medics and I work on John Doe. We start a line and stabilize him. I worry about his blood pressure, which is dangerously low.
The ride back to Mercy takes mere minutes, and when the ambulance doors swing open in front of the ER, Dr. Hale, the attending physician, and two male nurses are awaiting our arrival. One of the medics recites John Doe’s stats, then hands him off.
“Back so soon, Kayla?” Dr. Hale asks as we wheel the unconscious patient down the hallway. She’s a well-kept, middle-aged woman, who quickly became a role model for me when I started at Mercy.
“You know me.” I smile at her. “I just can’t stay away.”
On the way to the exam room, I grab a fresh gown and a pair of gloves. No way am I not seeing this through.
Once in the room, we transfer the unconscious man from the gurney onto the bed and immediately X-ray him. He’s still fully dressed—helmet and all—minus the huge rip in his pants. We can’t remove the helmet until we know he has no spinal injuries.
Dr. Lipschitz enters the room as Dr. Hale examines the X-rays. Dr. Lipschitz is the trauma surgeon on duty and immediately begins to close the gaping wound in the man’s thigh. It takes several heart-pounding minutes to sew it shut, but he does so beautifully. He’s a brilliant doctor, but a grade-A, Ivy League asshole. We all keep our distance. Once he’s done, he drops the instruments and leaves the room without so much as a word.
Freddy and Lex—the two other nurses—and I all exchange the same communicative glance. Douchebag.
“Spine and CT is clear!” Dr. Hale suddenly announces. “But his leg is seriously messed up.” She places the films up on the screen.
Ouch. Both bones in his lower leg are broken and wrapped around each other.
“Get that helmet off, and let’s wrap this guy. Lex, twenty of morphine. Unconscious or not, this is going to hurt.”
Lex, Freddy, and I all take on our respective roles. Lex administers the ordered meds, Freddy cuts the man out of his clothes, and I remove his helmet. After which I nearly drop it.
“Dev?” I gasp.
“That’s not Dev.” Freddy looks at the man on the table, almost star-struck.
“Then who the hell is it?” Dr. Hale demands.
“It’s the phantom.”
“Who?” Dr. Hale and I both respond in unison.
“That’s Reese Dane. Dr. Dane’s twin brother. He’s a legend, on and off the track,” Freddy divulges.
“Track? What the hell are you talking about?” Dr. Hale asks, utterly confused.
“He’s a motorcycle racer. World famous, badass, Moto Grand Prix champion.”
“Why do you call him the phantom?” I ask.
Both Freddy and Lex look up at me and smirk. “Because you never see him coming, baby.” Lex flashes an overconfident smile. “He sneaks up on you just like a ghost.”
I roll my eyes so hard they nearly get lost in my head. Just what the world needs, a second Dane with an even bigger ego.
“Contact Dr. Dane,” Dr. Hale instructs Lex. “I’m sure he’ll want to know his brother has been in an accident. As for you two, let’s get Mr. Dane patched up and into recovery.”
We all nod at the doctor’s orders.
It takes close to an hour to reposition the bones in Reese’s leg and then cast him. On top of his injured lower extremities, he also had a dislocated shoulder that needed to be popped back into place. All in all, it wasn’t the worst motorcycle accident I’ve seen. He managed to hang onto his life.
“Mr. Dane won’t be doing much racing.” Dr. Hale pulls off her gloves and discards them.
“No, he won’t.” I look down at the unconscious man. The resemblance is uncanny. Every feature the exact same as Dev’s. Dark wavy hair, high cheekbones, strong jaw, long thick eyelashes, and tons of ink. The most intricate designs I’ve ever seen. The entire right side of his body is covered—arm, chest, torso, thigh, calf. It looks like he’s half machine. Just like the Terminator when his fake flesh was pulled off his body.
“See something you like, Nurse Kincade?” Dr. Hale teases me.
“Huh?” I look up realizing I’m inspecting Reese a little too closely. “Oh.” I step back and clear my throat. I feel like I was just caught with my hand in the cookie jar. “I’ve just never seen a tattoo like that before.”
“You’ve never seen Dev without his shirt off then,” Dr. Hale purrs.
My face drops. “Not you, too.” I thought she had more respect for herself.
“Oh, God no. I have my own bad boy at home. I saw Dev changing his shirt in the parking garage after work one night. Lord.” She fans herself. I can’t even. It’s like Dev emits pheromones. “It’s definitely at least worth a peek.”
“I’ll remember that.” I scrunch my nose. The last thing I need is to be looking at Devlin Dane without any clothes on.
We walk out of the room together as Reese is wheeled into recovery. I can’t believe Dev has a brother. An identical twin. He never even hinted he had a sibling. I can’t get over the craziness of it all.
Dr. Hale makes her way back into the ER as I escort Reese. I’m not technically on duty, so there’s no place pressing I have to be. Except the gym. It’s close to ten p.m. by the time everything settles down. It’s a slow night in recovery, so I figure the nurses are probably catching up on charts—or chitchatting. Take your pick. It’s just me, a comatose Reese, and the guy snoring across the room.
As hard as I try, I can’t bring myself to stop looking at Dev’s twin. It’s like I’m staring at a carnival attraction.
I lean in closer without even thinking and inspect the mechanical tattoo some more. It’s so detailed. Not one centimeter of skin is showing. I touch the lifelike metal gears and springs, marveling at the 3D effect, when Reese suddenly wakes with a start, latching onto my arm.
“Ouch!” He squeezes so hard I know I’m going to bruise.
“Where am I?” he demands in a panic.
I struggle to get free but his hand is like a steel vise. Maybe he really is part robot.
“Where. Am. I?”
“The hospital.” I jerk my arm. “You were in an accident. You sliced your thigh and broke your leg.”
“Who are you?” He looks directly into my eyes, his hand still clamped around my bicep. He’s holding me so tight, my limb is starting to go numb. If he didn’t just sustain life-threatening injuries, I would punch him just so he’d let go.
“I’m Nurse Kincade, and Mr. Dane, you’re fucking hurting me,” I grind out.
He releases me immediately. He may be Dev’s brother, but he definitely doesn’t share his bedside manner.
“Where’s my brother?” He looks around the room, skittishly. Geez, wake up on the wrong side of the bed, did we?
“He’s on his way,” I assure him in a calm tone.
“He’s right here.” Dev’s voice echoes behind me. “It would behoove you to be nice to Nurse Kincade. She saved your sorry ass.”
We both look up at Dev.
“You heard about that already?” I ask.
“I think the whole hospital heard, superstar.” He nudges me.
I bite my lip. I wasn’t trying to do anything heroic, just my job. “Say thank you, you schmuck.”
Reese sneers at Dev. “Thank you.”
That was heartfelt.
I look back and forth between the two of them in awe; it’s like gazing into a mirror.
“You’re welcome.” My response is actually genuine.
Reese glares at me circumspectly, as if he doesn’t know what to make of me. It’s a little unnerving. And frankly, rude.
“What happened exactly?” Dev asks.
“We were stopped at a red light. A drunk driver just barreled into him from behind. He went flying into some oncoming traffic and slammed into a car. He flew over the hood, but I didn’t see him land.” I reiterate exactly what I saw, leaving out the engine fornication moments before.
“Wow. You’re lucky, bro. I swear, it’s like a four-leaf clover is shoved up your ass with all the crashes you’ve lived through.” Dev crosses his arms and shakes his head incredulously.
“Yeah, real lucky.” Reese drops his head on the pillow and stares up at the ceiling.
“Can I have some alone time with my brother?” Dev asks.
“Absolutely.” I immediately start to walk backward. I can imagine the emotional trauma Reese is probably experiencing right now. It has to be disconcerting to wake up in a hospital bed with a cast halfway up your thigh and have absolutely no recollection how or why you got there.
“See you tomorrow,” I tell Dev. “Feel better,” I throw out at Reese. They both reply with the same answering head gesture, and my tailbone tingles unexpectedly.
Holy shit. Not one Devlin Dane, but two.
Have. Mercy.