Free Hitman's Hookup: A Bad Boy Romance by Vesper Vaughn Page A

for pain. There was fresh blood seeping through. I studied Phillip’s quiet face. A vein was throbbing in his forehead from him clenching his jaw and breathing through his nostrils. “Scale of one to ten, how bad does it hurt?”
    He shook his head. “’Tis but a scratch,” he said quietly. He looked ill.
    I guffawed at the Monty Python reference. “Okay, tough guy,” I said. “I know pain when I see it. I’m clocking you at about an eight.” I pointed at the bed. “Sit.”
    Phillip didn’t object, which confirmed how bad it was. I stood next to him and pulled off the gauze. Phillip grimaced as I ripped off the tape. “It’s infected,” I said, seeing the pus oozing out of the wound. “And it’s spreading. That’s why it hurt for me to touch the edges.” I saw that that it had been sloppily stitched together with what looked like sewing thread. “Who stitched this up? A cat?”
    Phillip laughed. “I did,” he said. “No health insurance.”
    I stared at him in disbelief. "You ran a needle through your own skin? Through the back of your arm? How did you do that without passing out?"
    "Practice," he replied simply, his eyes glinting at me. They were watery. I put my hand on his forehead.
    "You have a fever," I sighed.
    "It's just my smoking hotness," he replied with a smile.
    "See, now I know you don’t feel well. You're actually making jokes."
    "You've only known me twenty-four hours. How do you know this isn't the real me?" he asked with a grin.
    He had a point.
    I walked into the living room and returned with my medical kit. I set the black case on the bed and pulled on a pair of blue nitrile gloves, fishing out several syringes, sutures, a needle, and a hemostat. “I need to take these stitches out.”
    I was in my element. 
    “Most women would be vomiting into a trash can right now,” Phillip said.
    I laughed. “Most women ? No, most men , actually. Ask any nurse at any hospital. Nine times out of ten if someone is passing out from blood, it's the most muscular, tall, tough-guy patient on the floor. Tattoos are usually a dead giveaway that they're a fainter, ironically enough." I paused, looking at the ink on Phillip’s perfect, sand-colored skin. "Obviously that's not the case here." I put my hand on his arm. "Turn your head. I'm going to numb the area as best I can, alright?"
    Phillip grinned at me in a dopey way and laughed. "You know this could be a kink thing, right? You're the hottest fucking doctor I've ever seen in my life. Black bra, black panties, fishnet thigh-highs and fuck-me heels-"
    I took the opportunity of him being distracted by my tits to inject him with the syringe. 
    He howled. "I didn't realize that you were a goddamned masochist," he moaned.
    "Distraction is the best method for making a patient feel comfortable. I took my opportunity." I pulled out another syringe and jabbed it into his arm, peering at the clean margins of the gash. "Seriously, you have muscle tearing with this wound. You should really go to a hospital for this."
    "No hospitals," Phillip snapped, sounding panicked. "Just fix me however you can."
    "We have to wait a few minutes for the local anesthetic to take effect." I reached back into my bag and pulled out a few narcotics, shaking them into my hand. "You should take these, too."
    Phillip recoiled. "I don't like drugs," he said. "I'm fine."
    I rolled my eyes. "Do you want me to tie you to the bed and force-feed these to you? This is cruel and unusual for you not to have narcotics. As your doctor, I insist." I reached back into the box and grabbed antibiotics to add to the cocktail.
    The fever seemed to be growing; his eyes were glassier than ever. " That would be kinky as fuck."
    I laughed. He was adorable when he was feverishly high. I handed him the pills and grabbed the glass of water left by my bedside the night before. He swallowed them, but he didn't look happy about it. I didn't care.
    Phillip grinned at me and with his good hand grabbed the