Fighting Lust: A Deadly Sins Novel by Jennifer Miller Page B

refuse to sleep with a man more than one time. It can make for an awkward interaction if I’m approached more than once, but I don’t care. All it takes is a quick walk down memory lane to a time when I let myself fall for someone and that snaps me out of whatever nonsense I think I may be starting to feel. Scratching the itch I have always leaves casualties in my wake, but I don’t care, as long as I’m feeling better. I can’t believe this is happening here, in the emergency room, of all places. With an internal sigh, I square my shoulders and shake off this thought and attempt to set my professional demeanor firmly in place.
    “Oh, fuck,” I say in the process and then redden in the face realizing that my thoughts were said out loud. Great, that’s really professional. The man I now know as Ryder King, thanks to his chart, laughs out loud at my curse. His friend, however, looks really confused albeit amused as well.
    “Yeah, we did that,” Ryder laughs. Great, so he’s going to be like that – not shy about what we did at all. Fine, I can handle him.
    Gripping the dangling stethoscope tighter in my hand, I refuse to acknowledge his comment. “According to your chart, you’ve had a head injury and sliced the skin open above your eye,” I say indicating the bloody towel he’s holding there. “Perhaps you didn’t hear me a moment ago - can you please tell me what happened?” I’m able to get that out and even sound reasonably pleasant about it. Go me. This isn’t awkward at all. I can handle this.
    “You know, I can’t decide which is hotter. The red dress you were wearing in the bar, the black lace underneath, or the prim blue scrubs you have on now. Do you wear lace under those too?” Ryder places a hand behind him on the hospital bed and the paper that covers the top crinkles. He leans back on one hand and looks completely comfortable in his skin, even with a bloody towel covering half of his face. It kind of makes me want to punch him. He exudes sex appeal and it takes everything I have not to look him up and down, to see if my memory is as vivid as the real thing.
    “I’m not going to dignify that with a response. Now, tell me how you hurt yourself or perhaps your friend here can do so for you,” I grit out between clenched teeth.
    “Worried about me?” he asks with a wink.
    I’m not sure if I’d rather kiss him or smack him.
    “He was in a fight and took a blow to the face. It sliced his skin open,” his friend offers.
    “Thank you…”
    “Cole.”
    “Thank you, Cole.” He smiles, but it’s wary. He looks confused as he glances back and forth between Ryder and me. I don’t blame him. “I’m going to need to take a look.”
    Apprehensively, I approach a still grinning and nonplussed, Ryder. The towel he’s holding to his wound is soaked in blood. Head wounds are tricky that way – they’re happy bleeders. Turning back toward the sink, I momentarily wonder why Rachel did not attempt to at least replace the towel with an adaptic, but shrug off the thought, grab a pair of gloves and put them on my hands. Once they’re covered, I move once again toward Ryder and place my hand over his, and immediately feel a shiver of awareness run up my arm. It makes me quiver on the inside and feel surprise that even through the glove I would have this reaction to touching him. Ryder sucks in a breath and I have an immediate flashback to our hook up in the bathroom. His harsh breaths in my ear as he took me from behind, the feeling of our bodies moving together, the front of my pelvis smacking against the sink.
    Blinking rapidly, I briefly wonder if our touch stirred the same reaction in him, but quickly focus instead on the task at hand. Easing away the towel, I avoid a wince as a bit of his skin sticks to the fabric. I quickly turn, grab and open a bottle of sterile water from the cupboard behind me, and slowly drip a light stream of the water on the adherent area, pulling gently, as the skin