“Really?” he eyes the bag in my hand. “By the hand luggage, it looks like you knew all about our little gathering and brought some toys to play with.”

I remember his black duffel, the one he’d had with him at the hotel, and I harden my jaw. “Like yours, you mean? I’m not the perverted one who carries around a stash of bondage gear.”

Zeth looks down, a calculated tilt of his head. His bag is sitting on the floor by the doorway to my left; I shiver when I see it. “My bag of tricks is slightly bigger than yours, Sloane. And there’s more than bondage gear in there, too. Maybe if you’re brave you’ll open it and find out?”

Infection is a major problem after surgery. We doctors spend a great deal of time battling to ensure that it doesn’t happen, that the wounds we create or try to fix remain clean, but sometimes it just happens no matter how careful we are. A body gets cut and ultimately infected; organs become enflamed, the body rejects new limbs. I’ve watched it happen time and time again, but I’ve never experienced it first hand. Yet it feels like I am right now—it feels like Zeth is performing a butcher’s surgery on my open chest cavity, and my heart is already enflamed. It pounds in my chest, fighting against the strange, alien feelings he’s purposefully infecting me with.

“I’m not touching that thing, okay? And I brought my medical bag with me so I could see to Carrie.” I emphasise the name so he gets that I know it’s fake. He doesn’t seem remotely fazed.

“Carrie is sleeping. But you’re more than welcome to play doctors with me? With the right inspiration, I can be a very good patient.” His hand rises slowly; he moves it the same way a person would when going to pat a horse. My mom showed me how to do that when I was a kid—let him see your hand, honey. Let him know you’re not going to hurt him. But I can see from the amused spark in Zeth’s eyes that he is going to hurt me. One way or another. He’s going to tear the bottom right out of my world. He makes contact with my cheekbone, his fingers so barely there that it takes concentration to feel them. It makes a huge difference from the last time he touched me back in the hospital, but that doesn’t make up for his rough treatment.

“I’m not playing anything with you, Zeth. You’ll let me see Carrie if you care about her at all. Her wrists are nowhere near healed. She needs medication and she needs her dressings changed.”

“She’s on amoxicillin and her dressings are changed three times a day. More if they need it. She has a drip to help replace the plasma she lost, and she’s been restricted to bed rest. And right now, she’s sleeping,” he growls. I’ve pissed him off; that much is clear. I swallow when he shifts forward, subtly leaning into me so that his body is less than a foot away from mine. Twelve inches has never felt like such a short distance. “Now, Sloane, if you don’t mind, I’m hosting a party here. If you’re a coward and you’re going to bolt, then I suggest you do it now before things really heat up.”

Before things really heat up? I dread to think what that means, especially if he thinks things haven’t already escalated to surface of the sun type degrees out in his formal lounge. Maybe he hasn’t been out there. Maybe he has no idea what’s going on. Maybe he thought his guests would actually use the finger food to…well, eat. My subconscious laughs at me, practically pointing a finger. He was sitting here in the dark…waiting for you. He knows exactly what’s going on. He knows perfectly well, you stupid girl.

“Fine. I’ll happily leave, but first you have to tell me one thing. Is…is she alive, Zeth?” My stubborn exterior slips. There are times when I let myself bawl over the loss of Lex, sob until I’m sick, but the single tear that escapes me now seems filled with an unfathomable sadness way more profound than any that. Zeth huffs and does something unexpected; he carefully takes off his mask. He tosses it onto the bed that I can barely make out behind him, and then his huge hands begin to work at the cufflinks at his wrists.

“What…what are you doing?”

“You need to see,” he says curtly. The door’s still open behind me, and I know I should use it, turn around and walk right back out of it, but something about the way he pins his dark gaze on me has me rooted to the spot. Our interaction since we met again forty-eight hours ago has been based on a system of theft, threats and dares, but now it feels like a barrier is coming down and something honest is about to happen. That thought in itself is so confronting that I want to run and hide. His suit jacket comes off, and he hangs it over the shadow of a high-backed chair beside him. He then unbuttons his shirt, which strains against his shoulders, the material drawn tight over his arms as he bends them to free each fastener from the neck down. Underneath the shirt he’s wearing a black singlet that hugs his torso, clinging to every ripped inch of him. He looks like a goddamn UFC fighter. His skin is pale, ivory marked with splashes of black—tattoos. He looks up at me from under his drawn eyebrows and I feel the need to wipe my slick palms against my dress. Hot damn. I kind of hate him, but his larger-than-life presence, his magnetism, the way he looks at me like he’s already inside me…he slays me.

In a swift and frankly mesmerising motion he rips the singlet from his body, tearing the thing over his head to reveal a wall of muscle that flexes, each individual part of him working together as he moves. There are four or five small tattoos across his chest, aside from the ones marking his arms, but they’re tough to make out. A huge fleur de lis rides just above his hip, though—that one is easy enough to make out, along with the eagle over his left pec, its wings outstretched. Script writing dips down around his neck, elaborate wording I can’t quite discern. He steps forward, and I step back, holding my breath. I’m hovering in the doorway now, and Zeth’s movement has brought him into the light, but only really halfway. The front of his body, his chest, his defined stomach, the deeply cut V that slices over his hipbones and disappears down below his belt, is bathed in light from the hallway. The rest of him is cast in shadows.