Read The Prince's Intimate Abduction (The Samara Royal Family Series Book 2) Online
Authors: Elizabeth Lennox
Turk woke up and looked around, not sure what was going on. He was in a small room and…
He tried to sit up but the pain shooting through his head and his side stopped him cold. Leaning back against the tiny mattress, he breathed through the pain, focusing his mind until the pain eased back to a dull throb.
“Just relax through the pain,” a soft voice said and he felt her warm, tender fingers on his forehead. Looking up, his dark gaze was transfixed by the most beautiful set of grey eyes he’d ever seen. If he’d seen her from a distance, he would have suspected that those lashes were fake, but this close, he could see that they were real. And her lips! Damn, those lips were full and pouty. He wanted to lift his body up and taste those lips.
“You’re going to be fine,” she told him.
His eyes moved lower, resting on the soft, full breasts that were pressing against the thin material of her tee-shirt and his mouth went dry as he contemplated tasting those breasts. They were perfect!
His body went into battle mode as he took in the details of this woman leaning over him. Unfortunately, his body wasn’t battle-ready and it irritated him that the headache was so persistent. He didn’t mind the ache in his side, he could deal with that pain. But the headache was almost making him sick.
“What happened to me?” he asked. He might not be able to get up, but he could damn well enjoy the view. The woman moved away from him and he got a good look at her bottom. He was actually angry with the baggy jeans that hindered his view. What he could determine, he thought should be better displayed in a bikini. One that tied at the sides so that he could run his hand along the round curves, release the knot and slide the material away.
Damn, his body was reacting to this delicate beauty and there was nothing he could do to hide that fact.
“You were shot,” she finally said.
Turk’s body would have jackknifed up at that announcement…if he hadn’t been shot! “The hell you say!”
The woman turned around, amusement as well as concern lurking in those silvery depths. “I’m sorry, but it’s true.” She sighed and turned around, facing him once again. “I’m sorry to be the one to inform you of this news, but you’re not bullet-proof.”
He laughed and shook his head, then stopped doing that since it hurt so much. “When? How long have I been out?”
She glanced at her watched. “You were brought in during the early hours of the morning and it is almost nighttime again. So about fourteen hours. And you have some fans who are eager to see you awake.”
“My brothers?” he asked, his mind spinning with the idea that he’d been out of contact for a full day.
The laughter at that question made his body harden even more. He liked her voice, felt it like it was a soft, sensuous caress against his aching body.
“No, I don’t believe that these men were related in any way to you. They mentioned something about ‘prisoner’, ‘don’t let him die’ and a few other threats. So I’m guessing these are men who you might have irritated at some point in the past.” She tilted her head and smiled. “Were you a bully in school?”
Turk wanted to laugh at her teasing but he was in too much pain. “Can I use your phone?”
Raven nodded and pulled out her cell phone, handing it to him even as she glanced through the doors. “Sure, call anyone you need, but be careful. Your fan club showed up around noon to find out if you’d survived my surgical expertise last night. I’m expecting them to make a repeat performance any moment now. If you could handle looking unconscious again, that might give you more time to recover.”
She watched the man, trying desperately hard to keep her eyes on his face but…that body! His chest and those arms! She’d never seen anything like him!
She left the room, giving the man some privacy as she went to the front of the clinic and locked the doors. She glanced through each of the windows as she turned off the lights, trying to see if anyone might be coming to check on her patient again. She didn’t like those men, but she suspected that the man in her “recovery room” was pretty important to them.
She didn’t care. The man was her patient first and foremost and she’d do whatever it took to make sure that he healed properly.
The banging on the front door five minutes later was her first indication that she had been right. With a sigh, she glanced at the room where her patient was hopefully lying back down, then back at the front doors. The disgusting man looking through the doors of her clinic was holding a gun, pointed right at her so she swallowed, pretending that she wasn’t terrified out of her mind, and went to the doors to unlock them once more.
“Wise choice, Lady Doctor,” the man said and chuckled maliciously. “We’re taking him tonight.”
The men moved to the back where her patient was laying and panic welled up inside of her. “He’s not awake yet,” she announced, lying through her teeth.
The man stopped and turned around. “Why not?”
Raven refused to cringe in fear. Not in front of these men!
She shrugged as casually as possible. “I don’t know exactly,” she sighed, pushing her hair out of her eyes. “He should have woken by now, but I’m going to have to investigate. The bullet wound isn’t infected but perhaps the bump on his head caused a concussion. He might need to be flown to the capital city for a brain scan.”
“No!” the man snapped, lifting his gun higher. “He will stay here and you will fix him! Do you understand?”
Raven pulled back, shocked by the force of the man’s words. “I’m a doctor,” she told him. “Not a miracle worker. And if you’re not going to allow me to figure out what’s wrong with him, then we’ll just have to wait and see if he comes through this alive by crossing our fingers. Not the most scientific method,” she told him with unveiled sarcasm.
She glared as much as she could, trying to hide the fear she was feeling. The man had a gun. He could easily shoot her and drag her patient off into the night. No one would even know.
The second man nudged the gunman. “We’ll watch. We’ll make sure he stays here.”
The first man glared, obviously trying to decide if he should allow her patient to stay or to be dragged out regardless of his health status. The moment seemed pregnant with anger and distrust but Raven kept her face still, not giving away anything.
She breathed a sigh of relief when he nodded his head. Looking at Raven, his eyes narrowed with malice. “If that man dies, it won’t just be me you will have to answer to,” he warned.
A moment later, all that was left of them was the lingering body odor and Raven breathed a sigh of relief.
When she walked back through the doors, she was startled to find her patient not only awake and listening, but standing on his own power. Close!
“You lied for me,” he said softly, that deep voice sending shivers throughout her whole body.
Raven pressed back against the doors, trying to hide her reaction to his enormous body so close to her own. And that chest! Goodness, she could just lean closer and…
Lying! Criminals! Focus! She couldn’t be having these feelings for her patient!
Blinking, she looked down at the toes of her beaten up sneakers. “Yes. Well, they didn’t seem to have your best interests in mind. So I lied.” She walked over to the counter and lifted his chart. She was going to write something but her fingers were shaking so badly she had to drop the pen again.
“Thank you,” he told her, his hand barely touching her arm.
Raven spun around, once again startled by how close he really was. “Dinner!” she said, trying to come up with something, anything, to distract her from how fascinating she found her patient. “Soup!” She nodded and closed her eyes. “You should have some soup.”
Something just occurred to her. “You took out your IV?” she asked, shocked that he’d done something so crazy. “You shouldn’t have done that!”
She lifted his arm and stared at the small line of blood where the IV had previously been inserted into his arm. That’s when she realized that he was holding one of her scalpels in his hand as well. She looked up at him, trying to figure out what was going on. “You were going to fight six men, all of them holding guns, with only a knife?” she asked in a horrified whisper.
Turk looked down at the woman and all thoughts of fighting flew from his mind, taken over by the idea of kissing this beauty. “If I needed to, yes.”
She took a breath, startled by his easy confidence. Another thought hit her and she pulled back warily. “You’re not a bad guy, are you?”
He shook his head, the silence growing thick with tension. Awareness. “Not a bad guy,” he promised her. “Although my mother might have disagreed.”
Somehow, the realization that this was some woman’s son made him less…scary. More human. “Your mother?”
He smiled slightly. “Growing up, she’d been pretty exasperated with me and my brothers.”
Raven couldn’t help but be soothed by the mention of parents and family. Not that bad guys were loners. But knowing that he had a mother and father, brothers, made him more human. “Where are your parents?”
“They died several years ago,” he explained, leaving out that he’d taken over representing Kilar as Minister of Defense so that Ramzi, Turk’s older brother, could take over as sheik. Nor did he bring up his other brother or two younger sisters.
He wasn’t trying to hide his position from her so much as hide his position from her knowledge to keep her safe. If she knew who he was, his title and his role, she might be in more danger.
“You said something about dinner?” he interjected, trying to distract her. “I’m starving.”
“And clothes,” she sighed. Raven hadn’t meant to say that out loud and her startled eyes snapped up to his darker ones. “I mean…you must be…cold,” she finished off lamely, trying very hard not to stare at his broad, muscular, very delicious and oh-so-tempting bare chest and shoulders. It was a stupid comment since the afternoon temperatures had hovered in the triple digits and the night might have cooled things off, but coming down from triple digits to something even approaching cool took a bit more time. Right now, the air conditioning in the clinic was working, but that meant that the temperatures were only in the mid-eighties.
“You need me to wear clothes?” he asked, moving closer with a slight smile on those handsome lips.
She looked up into his eyes, sensing something in his voice. “Clothes would be helpful,” she whispered back, pressing the small of her back against the countertop, trying to maintain a bit of space between herself and all of those delicious muscles.
“Helpful how?”
Raven wanted to give him a very sound medical reason to wear clothes, just so that he would cover up that magnificent chest. And those arms with the bulging biceps. And his shoulders. Her eyes wandered down to his abdominals before she realized what she was doing and forced her eyes back up to his.
Swallowing once again, she closed her eyes and turned back to the cabinets. “You need pain medicine,” she told him and reached for a bottle filled with pills.
“No pain meds,” he said and reached around her, gently closing the cabinet.
She would have turned, but his chest was almost pressing against her back so she couldn’t move. And with his arm around her like that, putting the bottle of pills down on the countertop, it was almost as if he was wrapped around her and she was hyper aware of him as a man. Her doctor persona went out the window with this man wrapped around her like this.
“What’s your name?” he asked softly, his mouth dangerously close to the overly sensitive shell of her ear.
“Um…” Raven was stumped. Not a difficult question, she told herself as she tried very hard to ignore the heat of this man. What was her name? Should be an easy question but with his chest warming her back, she wasn’t even sure what day it was. Name? Oh goodness, a name. Raven!
“My name is Raven!” she gasped. “Um…Raven Bishop.” She closed her eyes and struggled for professionalism. “Doctor Bishop.”
“Ah, so you’re the one who saved my life, eh?” he asked, his hand coming down and resting against the countertop. “I guess I owe you my thanks.”
She shook her head, but at that precise moment, she wasn’t sure if she was denying the awareness of him as a man, or telling him that he didn’t need to thank her. “You’re my patient,” she said and moved out of his arms, grateful when he didn’t trap her there against the countertop. “I’m your doctor.”
He leaned back and stared down at her. “I’m guessing that’s significant.”
She shook her head. “No significance,” she lied. “But I’m guessing that you need food. You’re probably starving.” Once again, her eyes traveled down his body, her eyes devouring his muscular form. “Soup!”
She walked out of the room, taking deep breaths and trying to get herself back under control. She was a doctor, she reminded herself. She was supposed to be professional and aloof! This man, he wasn’t here for her visual delectation, she reminded herself as she opened two cans of soup and poured both into a pot. Her fingers shook as she turned the heat on under the pot then looked around, trying to figure out what to do next.