Chapter 3 - Ryker

Ten minutes ago

I slammed through the doors of the stairwell. Fucking doctors. If they would just make up their minds and stick to a single course of action, maybe Corrie wouldn't be stuck in this life-sucking hellhole.

I jerked to a halt just inside the stairwell, snarled at the person sitting on the steps. If she was here to get some kind of story, I was going to toss her down the stairs and spit on her mangled corpse as I walked out into the night.

Fucking doctors. Fucking reporters. Someone was going to die. It might as well be her.

She was in the ugliest clothes I've ever seen. She was shaking like a leaf, trembling on the stairs, her fist shoved into her mouth. Haunted eyes wide.

Not a reporter then. Or a very good actress.

"Willow? Is that you?" A hard male voice asked from a couple floors above. He sounded like an asshole used to getting his way. I couldn't fault him for that. But I could fault him for being a fucking doctor in this fucking hospital right now.

The pallid woman looked up at me, her mossy green eyes clouded with pain and terror. She shook her head.

I imagined that's what Corrie looked like when the doctors came in and told her what would be happening to her body. Not giving her a say in any part of it.

Fucking doctors.

"No." My mouth answered without conscious direction from my brain. Fuck. Seeing Corrie always screwed me up. I needed to get the fuck out of here if I was trying to help terrified women in stairwells.

"Is there a woman in a hospital gown down there?" the same man asked. The tone of his voice set my teeth on edge. If I found out this asshole was on my sister's care team, I'd do whatever was necessary to get him replaced.

"No." I spit it out. I needed to get the fuck out of here. Now. This woman was clearly someone else's problem. I'd gotten the doctor off her tail, she was on her own from here on out.

"If you see a distraught woman in a hospital gown running around the hospital, please do not approach her. She's dangerous. To herself. To others."

I eyed the woman. I didn't really care if she was off her meds or her rocker. I just wanted out of this situation as quickly as possible. She hadn't attacked me, so we were square.

She looked up at me, fire hardened the moss green of her eyes into peridots. She laid a hand over her breast, shook her head.

My mouth twisted. Shit, she's trying to be all brave. For just a second, I saw Corrie reflected in this stranger. "I'll be sure to tell someone." There. I'd covered for her all the way through.

She fell back against the steps. "Thank you." She wiped her eyes before she looked back up at me. "Thank you."

I nodded, wondered if I could leave her there. I looked her up and down. She had street clothes on, so technically she should be able to leave the hospital. "Technically, I didn't lie. You're not in a hospital gown."

She smiled and looked at herself. "Indeed." She grabbed the rail and pulled herself up.

Then proceeded to fall headfirst down at me.

Fuck. I reached out, grabbed her hips. My fingers sank into the generous flesh. I tightened my fingers before my brain gave the command. Damn, she felt good. Get your head out of her pants, fucker. You've got other things to deal with.

"Sure you shouldn't be in a gown and in a bed somewhere?" I asked, my voice a little more gravelly than normal. I bit my cheek hard enough to taste blood.

She pulled back. "I should be, but I'd brave an emotional first-year philosophy student with a scalpel before I'd let him touch me." She pushed back some of the hair that had escaped the knot at her nape. She looked into my eyes.

"Any particular reason for that?" I asked, one brow arching high. No. Damn it. Shut your fucking mouth. You've got to go.

She nodded, fussed with her clothing.

I waited. Some part of me needed the answer. When she didn't say anything else, I felt my lips quirk. "Good girl. Keep those secrets." As the pet name I used for my subs fell from my mouth, I flexed my fingers into her hips again.

Her lips parted the slightest degree as her pupils blew out...right before they went unfocused. The predator in me was instantly curious. Very few women were into my kind of lifestyle. At least at the level I truly enjoyed it.

But if she was quaking in fear and could still feel arousal?

Very curious, indeed.

I licked my lips as I looked at her mouth.

"Is savior of the misfortuned your regular job or do you moonlight as a superhero?" she asked, her voice low and sexy.

I laughed. Oh, pet, if you only knew how wrong that was. "You've definitely got the wrong guy for that one, sweetheart. I'm a chew ‘em up and spit ‘em out kind of guy." Listen to me well, little girl. I don't play nice.

Her lips curled up at the corner. "Real bad guy, huh?"

You've got no fucking idea. "Tried and true. Terrified mothers on reference if you need them." I tried to warn her away as I dug my fingers into her hips once more. You couldn't handle me. And I'm fucking tired of breaking soft women like you.

She hissed as I pulled my hands away. "You need some help down?"

What? No! Drop her ass, get back to the penthouse, and handle this shit with Phillip. I was on the verge of tossing my own ass down the stairs when I offered her my hand.

"Do bad guys help strange women down stairs?" She took my hand and eased her obviously pained body down the six-inch rise of the step.

Shut the fuck up. No more talking. "Well, I can't be bad all the time. That would just be exhausting. You caught me on my annual day of redemption." Like someone else had taken control of my brain, I felt my hand slide over her hip. My arm angled behind her back.

"Pretty sure bad guys don't care about redemption. But thank you...again." She got a death grip on my hand and hobbled her way down the stairs.

She was slower than my arthritic grandmother during the winter. "You're welcome. Can I ask what happened."

"You can." She was busy watching her feet, her body swayed slightly from side to side.

I'd learned my lesson the last time. Not a Chatty Cathie, this one. Even more curious. "What happened?"

"A jackhole and a table."

The idea that some asshole had left her in this condition had my shoulders tensing. "A man hurt you?" The part of me that was still human laughed uproariously. You hurt women all the time, dipshit. What's with the righteous anger? I told that part of myself to take a fucking hike. It wasn't the same. My girls didn't end up in the hospital, scared out of their minds.

She shrugged. "Not precisely." She gave me some ridiculous story about her best friend. Somehow it ended with her patting my arm. "I'll be okay. You don't want to waste your redemption day on me. You won't get enough points."

"There's no hope for me anyway," I mumbled it against her hair as we turned to the second last landing.

She asked for my phone. "Need to call someone?" About fucking time, pet.

She nodded, her hair sliding over my chin. "I need to call a friend to come pick me up."

"A boyfriend?" I eased her against the wall, glad her eyes were mostly closed. I didn't want to know anything else about her. Just how to get her off my hands. I could find another woman, one who already knew my tastes to ease the ache that had sprung up.

One was just as good as another in my mind. Interchangeable as long as they had working mouths and cunts.

"He's a guy, but I can't lose him, so we're just family."

She's already taken and she flirts like this? And who the fuck lets his woman, even if she was a sister type, run around while she clearly needed medical help? My brow furrowed as my gaze heated. "He shouldn't have left your side. If you were mine, you wouldn't be out of my sight."

She looked up at me. Like a little mouse cornered by a cat, she stilled as she watched me. "Boys are a lot of work."

I felt the corner of my mouth tick up as a laugh escaped. "Pretty sure you mean women are work." This one had some of the weirdest thoughts that just fell from her lips.

She chuckled. Gave me some kind of crap about the differences between men and women. "Ready for that number yet, Thor?"

That pansy in the cape with the long hair? I'd had better for breakfast. "Definitely not a god, sweets. Real or imagined." I grabbed my phone. "Yeah, give me the number."

I stabbed it into my phone. Just as I hit the connect button, she listed off to the side. Straight for the fucking steps once again. The woman had a death wish. "Shit." I caught her before she face planted the rest of the stairs. "You really should be in a bed." I wedged her body between me and the wall.

"Only if it's yours or mine," she whispered.

I startled at the idea of her in my bed.

"Don't let him find me."

She went limp.

Fuck.