12. Twelve

"Take a deep breath for me?" Wattson pressed the cold stethoscope against my bare back.

I flinched and avoided looking at Dante, who stood in the doorway. His face was pinched with worry. He hadn't stopped fussing over me since last night. Every six hours, he was there with a pill for me to swallow and tea to drink it with. At midnight, when I wasn't better, he dragged in a chair and declared he was sleeping next to me. At least he'd listened to reason when I rejected the idea of him sleeping in the bed with me. Did he want to catch whatever I had? The man was daft, but he was a bloody decent nursemaid.

When I woke early that morning with red splotches around my lips and on my throat and a dry cough that wouldn't go away, he called Wattson a second time and shouted for him to come over. The night before, Wattson had told him to give me more pills, make sure I stayed in bed, and to call back if I wasn't better by noon.

The hives had spread since then, covering most of my face and throat, but they didn't itch. They were painful, almost like burns, and my chest felt like a baby elephant was sitting on it .

"Hmm." He moved the stethoscope from my back to my chest. "And you say it started yesterday?"

"Yesterday afternoon," Dante supplied. "Before three-thirty."

Wattson's sharp green eyes cut to Dante. "Let him answer, please."

I opened my mouth to answer but doubled over coughing as soon as I tried to suck in a breath. Wattson frowned and went to dig around in his bag of equipment at the end of the bed.

"He's been this way all morning," Dante said. "Last night, it was just the cough and a fever. He got better after I gave him Benadryl and aspirin, but then he started wheezing overnight. I gave him more, but it's only gotten worse."

Wattson came back with a gray-blue inhaler. "Know how to use this?"

I frowned, but nodded and took the inhaler. The pressure in my chest released almost immediately once I used it.

I gasped in a breath and fell back against the headboard. "Fuck. What was that?"

"Albuterol." Wattson held up the inhaler. "Should help with the breathing, but we need to find the source of the problem. What are you allergic to?"

I frowned and shook my head. "Nothing that I know of."

Wattson turned my face to one side, examining the red hives. "Did you eat any nuts?"

"I wish," Dante grumbled from across the room.

My face flamed bright red. "I don't have a tree nut allergy, Wattson."

"What did you eat directly prior to the onset of your symptoms?"

I swallowed and shook my head. "Just tea, toast, and my post-workout shake. Nothing unusual."

"I'm going to need to take the tea and your protein powder with me," Wattson said, making a note on his iPad .

"Take the powder, but you can have my tea over my dead body," I growled.

He sighed and turned to Dante. "Bring me the tea, would you?"

Dante nodded and hurried off to retrieve the tin.

"I'm not allergic to my bloody tea!" I grumbled.

"I didn't say you were," he said and poked a finger against my swollen lip. "I don't think these are hives at all. I think you've been poisoned."

"Poisoned?" The news came as a sobering slap. "By who? How?"

He shrugged. "It's common, especially with herbal teas that are imported from China."

"I import my tea from London, you wanker, not Shanghai."

Dante appeared with the tin of tea and held it out to Wattson, who snatched it up. "Either way, I'm taking this for testing. I'll have Bowie pick up some Earl Gray at Walmart and you can drink the bagged stuff until I get the results back from the lab. Is your urine brown?"

"Brown?" I wrinkled my nose. "No."

"Good. Means your kidneys still work. Take two of these every six hours and one of these. They'll bind to the arsenic you've ingested and clear it from your bloodstream."

He pulled several prescription bottles out of his black doctor bag. Bowie was convinced Wattson's t bag was actually a TARDIS, since he always seemed to have an impossible amount of medications with him. I figured he was just better at organization than most of us.

"You'll probably get a headache," he added. "Drink extra fluids, and I mean extra. You, make sure he's drinking water like there's no tomorrow." He pointed at Dante.

Dante nodded. "When will you know? About the tea."

Wattson closed up his bag. "Hard to say. I've got an ex who works in a lab and I can probably pull some strings to push it through, but no promises. Depends on how she's feeling about her alimony today. I'll call you when I know more."

Dante frowned, but stepped aside so Wattson could pass. As soon as the doctor was gone, Dante was right back at my side. "My poor kitten. I'm sorry about the tea."

I waved him off and shook my head. "I doubt there was anything wrong with it, but Wattson's right. Better safe than sorry."

"Why would anyone want to poison you?" he asked, taking my hand.

I shrugged. If I'd been poisoned at all, it was probably by accident. "You heard what Wattson said. Maybe there was a mix-up with the tea and I got a bad batch. It happens. I don't think it was malicious."

He frowned. "But what if it was? What if someone found out you were working for me and they—"

"Stop it, Dante." I squeezed his hand. "It isn't your fault. It's just a bad batch of tea. That's it. Accidents happen."

"I know, but poison? Fuck, Church."

"I'll be fine ." I insisted. "There's a reason Wattson works for the Junkyard Dogs, Dante. Boone only hires the best of the best. He's good at what he does. I trust him with my life."

He squeezed my hand and leaned in to press a kiss to my forehead. It was as chaste a kiss as he could manage, and it still sent my heart racing. "All right," he said. "I'll get you some more water. And you'd best take those pills religiously, Church or so help me…"

"You'll tie me up and make me?"

He smirked and purred, "Almost sounds like you like the idea."

"Maybe. When I'm feeling up to it."

"Maybe we could get that thing we're not supposed to talk about in on the action?" he said, wiggling his eyebrows suggestively. "The one in your underwear drawer? "

I groaned and my face flushed hot for an entirely different reason. I was hoping he'd forget about seeing that, but not Dante. He was never going to let that go. Not that I wanted him to.

I was surprisingly into the idea of mixing helplessness and pleasure, especially since my only real experience with helplessness had been terrifying. Maybe being held prisoner and tortured had broken something in my brain, crossed some wires, or fucked me up beyond all recognition. I didn't know. But I wanted that, had wanted it with someone ever since I'd come back.

And it scared me that I did. It scared me enough that I hadn't been with anyone since, afraid that my own fantasies might trigger a flashback. It was safer for me to be alone.

I didn't know what was different about Dante, but he felt…safer. I'd initially resisted the strange pull between us, but it was too late to deny it now. I wanted to see where it went, even if I was afraid.

As Dante busied himself in the kitchen, I couldn't help but picture the scene he'd vaguely described, my arms and legs bound while he did as he pleased with the vibrator, teasing me wherever and however he chose. He would know the precise amount of control to exert, the perfect blend of pain and pleasure that would leave me begging for more. The man certainly had a dirty mind and was probably no stranger to kinky sex.

I sighed and scowled down at the new tent in my trousers and the blanket. "You could at least bloody wait until we're not dying to get excited. Damn thing," I grumbled at my cock and turned over, intending to be asleep by the time Dante returned.