Sexual Healing for Three (20 page)

She turned on her CD player, filling the apartment with the plaintive, mellow wails of David Sanborn’s saxophone, drowning out whatever irate message she was sure her sister was leaving as she continued on to the bedroom.

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Donna sat on the edge of her bed, poured herself a glass of wine, and took a long sip before setting the bottle on her bedside table. She went to her bathroom, peeled off her bra and panties with her free hand, and sat on the edge of the tub to run her bath. She ran it as hot as she could stand it, pouring in a liberal amount of her favorite vanilla-scented bath oil before taking another sip of her wine.

The slight buzz was pleasant, but did nothing to erase the feeling or memory of Chance in her head. Maybe if she got drunk?

She castigated herself for thinking about taking the wimpy way out. As persistent as he was, it wasn’t like Chance wouldn’t be up in her face tomorrow or the next day. It was bad enough she was ignoring Angela and putting off facing the music.

Once the tub was two-thirds full, Donna eased into the hot, fragrant water, reveling in the slippery feel of the bath oil against her skin. She drained the glass of wine and placed the it on the floor beside her before closing her eyes and leaning her head back against the tub.

As soon as she got comfortable, she realized she had forgotten to bring in a book from her shelf, but it was no big deal. She had another idea to make her bathing experience scorching, slowly sliding a hand down between her legs to tease her labia lips for several torturous moments before stroking her vulva. She fidgeted in the water, moaning as she spread her legs as much as she could, and her moisture sluiced onto her fingers and into the water.

Donna slid in her middle finger, wishing she were in a Jacuzzi with the jets running full blast, or that she had B-O-B with her or that…Chance and Russ were there.

“Oh God…” The image of them standing in the hallway towering over her, sandwiching her, was enough to make her vaginal muscles spasm and contract against her finger.

She delved deeper, not usually as adept with her fingers as she was with B-O-B, but she remembered the path Chance had taken earlier and instinctively followed it, curving her finger up toward her 154

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navel. Pumping her hips against her hand, she slowly turned and wiggled her finger until she found the spot she was searching for, unmindful of the water she sloshed onto the tile floor in her efforts.

With her free hand, she cupped one breast, caressing the soft skin leading to her swollen nipple. Experimentally, she pinched and rolled it between two fingers at the same time she stroked her finger against her G-spot. Pinwheels of light immediately flashed before her eyes, and she bit down on her bottom lip to keep from screaming out when a climax tore through her.

“Chance…” She sighed as his grinning face flashed before her, only to be replaced with Russ’s in the next instant. “Russ…” She reached out to touch his jaw, half surprised, especially after her supernatural experience with him and Chance, that she couldn’t feel his whiskered cheek against her palm. He looked so real, so solid—

both of them did.

She whimpered as their faces slowly disintegrated before her, cursing her sister for ever introducing her to Russ, cursing herself for asking Chance to escort her to the barbecue.

Donna didn’t need this emotional upheaval in her life. She had enough to handle dealing with her women and kids at Safe Haven.

She had enough to keep her on her toes, keeping the peace between men bent on violent rages and their helpless victims.

Right now she felt a little like a helpless victim herself. At the very least, she was a victim of her out-of-control libido and imagination.

The phone rang again.

Donna sighed, knowing she couldn’t hide forever.

She hopped out of the tub and grabbed a towel, quickly wrapping it around herself and tucking it in across her breasts on her way to her bedroom. She made it to the phone right before her voice mail would have picked up, snatching off the earring in her left ear before picking up the receiver.

“Hello, Angela.”

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“Why haven’t you returned my calls? And what happened to you earlier?”

“Who says anything happened to me?”

“I had a feeling.”

“You and your feelings.” Donna fidgeted with the label on the chardonnay bottle before she unscrewed the cap. She remembered she left her glass in the bathroom a moment before she tilted the bottle up to her lips and took a swig. So unladylike, but desperate times called for desperate measures.

She listened to Angela sigh on the other end and squared her shoulders in preparation of the tirade, but her sister completely took the wind out of her sails when she whispered, “Are you okay, Donna?”

“I’m…I’m fine. Why do you ask?”

“I had a premonition earlier. And when I didn’t hear back from you…I just got worried.”

“I, uh…I had a little incident at the courthouse earlier,” Donna said, mentally biting her tongue but wondering if what had happened had been what Angela had intuited.

“What kind of incident?”

“It’s nothing to worry about.”

“You wouldn’t have mentioned it if it wasn’t. Talk, Donna.”

She blew air past her lips in annoyance, sorry she had mentioned anything at all. “A client’s husband went on a little rampage, and he came at me in the hallway after a bail hearing.”

“Came at you? In what way?”

“He attacked me, okay? But it’s nothing.”

“Were you hurt? Did you go to the hospital?”

Resigned, she said, “Yes and yes. And you’ll be happy to know I saw one of my, according to you, soul mates during my visit.”

“What I’d be happy to know is that you’re okay.”

“I am. I told you that.”

“How is Chance?”

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“He and his brother are fine.”

“Russ was there?”

Donna took another swig of wine and felt totally out of control and hopeless when she realized she’d finished it. Damn, she’d never done that before. It was just a hop, skip, and a jump to Betty Ford from here. She knew some social workers who’d gone to rehab—if they hadn’t quit the profession altogether—for much less than what had happened to her today. She guessed she should count her blessings she was still holding on to some semblance of sanity after the day she’d had.

“He was there with a coworker who I’m assuming had been injured on a job.”

“Oh. Did everything turn out okay?”

“As far as I know.” She didn’t want to tell Angela she’d been too busy getting diddled in a private office of the hospital by Chance to know
what
had happened to Russ’s coworker.

“Who was this coworker with Russ anyway?”

“How would I know?”

“Just describe him.”

Donna did, as best she could from the brief glance she’d gotten of him on her way out of the treatment room, and heard her sister sigh, as if in relief, on the other end of the line. “Angela, what’s this all about?”

“Just being cautious, I guess. As you should be.”

“I am. Today caught us all off guard.”

“You need to watch yourself on that job, Donna, be more careful.”

At least she wasn’t giving Donna her usual lecture about being such a workaholic. But she wasn’t so sure that the warning about her safety was any less bothersome.

She had already been a wreck getting home, jumping at every shadow on her way to her car, worried if there were any more angry husbands or boyfriends lurking around, just waiting for their chance to hurt her. Even once she got to her neighborhood she didn’t feel
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safe, felt like she was being followed. Not until she had arrived outside her apartment building and soon after gotten behind the relative security of her double-locked door did she feel a modicum of security.

Wanting to change the subject and lighten the mood a little, Donna asked, “When were you going to tell me that Russ was coming to your Memorial Day barbecue?”

“Who did tell you?”

“Russ did, the night he drove me home.”

“Then there was no need for me to tell you.”

Donna gritted her teeth. “Angie…”

“So, did Chance treat you during your visit?”

Boy did he. Gave me some serious sexual healing. Marvin Gaye’s
got nothing on me!
“He consulted. I think it would have been a conflict of interest for him to do anything more.” She wouldn’t dare tell Angela about that little sleeping spell he’d put on her before he’d healed her. She didn’t feel the need to share what Chance could do despite her sister’s background. She didn’t think Chance would appreciate her spilling his secrets, not even to a kindred soul like Angela.

“So, did anything…happen while you were at the hospital?”

Angela asked.

Donna heard the hope in her sister’s voice and wondered exactly to what she was referring—Chance and Donna’s sexual antics or their psychic bonding. Either way, she was sure she didn’t want to talk about it, but knew Angela wasn’t going to let things go that easily.

Stalling, she asked, “Anything like what?”

“Don’t make me spell it out.”

She almost laughed at her sister’s huffy tone, but didn’t want to rile her any more than she already had. Besides, she could probably use the opportunity to pick Angela’s brain, she decided. It wasn’t like she could really hide anything from the woman. Why try? But she still hesitated, unsure how to broach what she had experienced at the 158

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hospital with Chance without giving anything away, unsure exactly what had happened.

Was she going mad, or did she have some sort of powers too now? What else could explain the melding of her and Chance’s souls that she had experienced? Had all that energy been from him? Or had being exposed to his psychic talents awakened psychic abilities that had been dormant in Donna all along, dormant and waiting for the right provocation, the right person?

“Donna, if there’s something bothering you, tell me. Maybe I can help.”

“There is something, but I’m not sure how to—” Donna didn’t get any further before she heard a loud crash in her living room.

“Donna, don’t step on the glass!”

She was inches away from doing just this when she came up short right in front of a mound of shattered pane. Already panting, she rushed around it to go to her living room window and pull back the curtains to glance through the remaining glass. She didn’t see anything untoward except a nondescript truck across the street, speeding away from in front of her building.

Remembering she still had her sister on the line, she asked, “Was this the premonition you were talking about earlier?”

“Never mind that, Don. Hang up now, and call the police.” Angela didn’t give her a chance to discuss it before she hung up herself.

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Chance jerked awake and almost rolled off the cot he had fallen asleep on in one of the spare offices in the ER.

He checked the illuminated dial of his watch, shocked he had slept past the end of his shift. He was shocked he had been allowed to. It was totally unheard of for a weekend in the concrete jungle. Maybe someone had decided to give him a break and let him get some shut-eye for the first time in twenty-seven hours. Or maybe it was just plain slow.

Either way, he needed to get up and get out of here now before someone decided they needed him to stay past his shift, and since he was still here…He needed to find Donna.

Chance closed his eyes as snatches of the dream came back to him—Donna struggling with an unseen stranger, brutally beaten, beaten bloody and rushed to the emergency room, his emergency room, where he hadn’t been able to help her. He’d been left to watch her die—like he had watched his mother slowly slip away, in his arms, on the skid-marked pavement.

He swallowed hard at the thought that he’d been able to, at a younger age, save his dog, but years later couldn’t save his mother under almost identical circumstances. He had never really gotten over that. He’d loved that dog, but if given the choice, he certainly would have taken his mother over the dog every time.

Seeing and treating Donna earlier in the day after she was attacked, the memory of the cruelty that had been visited upon her must have carried over into his sleep. But that was too simple an 160

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explanation, and something told him Donna was in for more danger and mayhem at that job of hers and needed to watch her back.

He had much respect for her passion and the job she did and wished his mother and Russ had had someone with half her passion to champion them when his dad, Hank, had been in the picture. But he couldn’t deny that he would rather see her in a job that didn’t put her at as much risk as her current position.

But was it the job that put her at risk, or like him, her passion and personality that put her in the line of vengeful husbands and boyfriends’ fire? Her passion was such to put her in the line of fire no matter what job she had.

Chance got up to leave the room. He avoided the assignment board as he searched through the treatment rooms to see if Donna had been brought in. Remnants of the nightmare clung to his consciousness, but the nightmare grew weaker the longer he looked and didn’t find her.

Maybe it had just been a dream and not a premonition of things to come. Maybe she was all right.

A cloud of darkness and foreboding remained with him, however, a cloud that he didn’t think would lift until he saw Donna in the flesh, touched her, smelled her. Talking to her on the phone would do nothing to alleviate the ache he felt at the idea of her being hurt and alone with no one to comfort or heal her.

Chance made it to the locker room unharassed, retrieved his backpack and helmet, then quickly shrugged out of his lab coat and replaced it with his leather jacket.

He checked in with his staff one last time before he left and headed for the parking garage where he kept his bike, a sense of urgency powering his steps.