If he hadn’t almost died, he would simply go back to sleep and be just fine with someone sleeping on his dick. But this was weird because he had almost died. He could see all the hospital equipment, smell all the shifter breeds that were roaming around, and feel the wound that was still healing on his neck. This was not a time when he would go out and get himself a girlfriend. Maybe the fever had gotten the better of him, but he didn’t think so. Shifter nurses didn’t let their feverish patients run around hospitals trying to fuck each other. So then what the hell?
Carefully, aware he didn’t want to undo the work that had been done on his throat, Shay lifted his head just enough so he could view the end of the bed . . . but all he saw was an amazing bare ass. Just resting there. Within touching distance of his hand, but he knew better. Shifter females were like any full-blood predator. They didn’t like to be touched without their explicit permission, and a guy was taking his life in his claws if he tried anything else.
The problem at the moment was that the owner of that perfect ass was waking up and rubbing her face against the very thin sheet covering his dick.
Closing his eyes, he tried to get control of the one uncontrollable thing about him, but nope. It got hard. Because she wouldn’t stop rubbing her face against it or growling.
The growling! It was definitely the growling.
Unable to stand another second without embarrassing himself, Shay barked, “Hey!”
He immediately realized that perfect ass was attached to Tock Lepstein, whose gorgeous curly hair briefly covered her face as she turned to look at him. With a quick twitch of her head, the hair moved and she blinked dark brown eyes at him.
“Shay?” she asked, frowning in confusion.
“Hi, Tock.”
She placed her palms on his thighs and used her arms to raise her torso so she could look around.
“Where are we? What happened?”
“You don’t remember anything?”
“No.” She made a smacking sound with her mouth and glanced back at him. “Why do I taste cobra?”
“The snake? That kind of cobra? I do not know why you would taste that. I also don’t know why you would know what king cobra tastes like.”
She shrugged. “It’s a little gamey. But with a nice sauce and fileted—”
“I can’t listen to this now,” he cut in before she could keep going. He didn’t want to start retching while his neck was healing. “I am asking you nicely to please get off me.”
“What?” She looked down and, after a brief pause, began crab-crawling away from the raging hard-on making a tent of the sheet. But that meant her ass was backing up right toward his face.
“Tock . . . Tock!” he barked, a little panicked.
She stopped, looked at him over her shoulder. All he had to do was widen his eyes and she quickly realized that he was inches away from having his nose buried in that ass. Something neither of them were comfortable with at the moment.
Gasping, she scrambled off him, which he appreciated. But then she grabbed the sheet and yanked it off. Leaving his hard dick exposed.
With a growl, he grabbed the pillow out from under his head and slammed it over his crotch.
“You’re killing me, Tock,” he told her, using the device draped over the headboard to lift the top half of the bed so he could sit up without moving his head or neck.
“Why am I naked?” she demanded.
“I don’t know.”
She looked him over, which made him feel even more naked. Like he didn’t have a very convenient pillow covering his junk.
“Why are you in a hospital bed?” she wanted to know.
“There was an . . . incident.”
“What incident?”
He took in a breath before admitting, “It’s complicated.”
“Oh, no. Did you get involved?”
“Uh . . .”
“I told you not to get involved. I told you to wait five minutes and—”
“Tock, I did all that. Then there were armed men and you were . . .”
“I was what?”
“Poisoned.”
She laughed. “So?” She sucked her tongue against the roof of her mouth a few times and asked, “Is that why I taste cobra?”
“I don’t mean that kind of poisoning.”
“What kind, then? Cyanide? Rat poison? Ricin? Strychnine? Tetrodotoxin? VX?” When he frowned, she added, “Used during the Cold War.”
“No. I don’t think. I . . . uh . . . actually don’t really know . . . what was used on you.”
Still holding the sheet against her chest, she took a step back. “What? What do you mean you don’t know what was used?”
“I don’t know. Nobody knows.”
“Shay . . . what the fuck is going on?”
“I don’t know. Not yet. But your family—”
“My family? Which family?”
“Uh . . . I don’t know how to answer that.”
“Are they Black, Shay? Because that would give me a definite point to start.”
“Not from what I’ve seen.”
“Fuck,” she said. “Savta. Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.”
She began to frantically scuttle around the room, briefly stopping to look through the glass windows before studying the floor and checking under his hospital bed.
“What are you doing? What are you looking for?” he asked.
“Where are my clothes?”
“I have no idea.”
“Why are people just taking my clothes?”
Confused by Tock’s behavior, Shay watched her attempt to twist the sheet into a makeshift dress while keeping it on her body. He’d be entertained if it wasn’t so weird. He’d never seen Tock this hysterical. Not hysterical for anyone else, but definitely for her.
Tock didn’t get mad. She didn’t get sad. She didn’t get happy. She just always seemed annoyed. But now, it was as if she wanted to jump out of her skin or out of his hospital room window. She actually opened it and stuck her head out, and he grabbed the alert button to let the nurses know that one of their patients was making a crazed run for it. But then she stepped back in.
“I gotta get out of here,” he heard her saying. “I gotta get out of here.”
“I think you need to calm down.”
Waving him off, she jogged toward the glass front door. She had her hand on the handle when Shay, in desperation, called out, “Tock!”
She stopped long enough to look at him and demand, “What?”
He didn’t know what to say. He wanted her to calm down. He wanted her to stop running. He wanted to stop her panic. But he didn’t know how to make any of that happen. He knew she would bail on him at any second, so he did the first thing he could think of.
He asked, “What time is it?”
She froze, the door pushed halfway open. “What?”
“Do you know the time?”
She looked down at her left wrist, then around the room. “Where’s my watch? Who the fuck took my watch?”
Tock released the door and faced him, and Shay quickly lifted his hands to his chest, palms out. “I didn’t take it.”
“I have to have my watch. I need my watch.”
He gestured at the open window. “It looks like morning—”
“It looks like morning?” she repeated with obvious disgust. “What the fuck does that even mean?”
“I mean that it looks like morning, but it may not be. Morning. It could possibly be afternoon.”
“How could you possibly think from the way the sun is positioned in the sky that it was afternoon?”
“Well—”
“How can you possibly go through life not knowing the time?”
He shrugged. “People tell me where to go and I go. No one ever says I’m late. If I were late, I’d hear about it from Keane.”