Doctor Hero by Madison Faye

Chapter One

Aria

This is bad.It’s not lose-my-license-bad, but it’s definitely “what-the-fuck-is-wrong-with-you” bad. It’s “go-home-pour-two-glasses-of-wine-and-get yourself-off-because-girl-you-are-thirsty” territory.

But just the same, my cheeks burn, and a heat teases through me as I stare down at the man lying on the bed in front of me. He’s out cold—I mean, he did just get out of surgery an hour ago, but just the same, and in spite of every single professional bone in my body, I can’t stop drooling over him. Because the man is gorgeous and built like a freaking Greek god of sex.

There is a lot wrong with this scenario.

For one, he’s a patient—worse, he’s my patient. I’m the one that just spent five hours in an operating room over him, pulling out bullet fragments from the two wounds to his shoulder and his torso and patching him back up. I’m the one that stitched up the gashes that look like he got them in a fight with a chef wielding a butcher’s knife.

Yep, that makes me standing here with my eyes dragging over his bare, muscled, inked torso and down to the way the folded-down sheet hugs the grooves of his hip muscles bad enough. But then we could talk about the fact that he’s handcuffed to the hospital bed, and it gets ten times worse. Yeah, he’s not just a patient. He’s not just my patient, though that is pretty bad.

He’s also a person of interest, and a suspect in a criminal investigation. Also, he arrived here by crashing a stolen car into a light post in the parking lot outside the ER and promptly passing out on the ground.

Like I said, there’s a lot wrong with this situation.

I swallow, and my pulse quickens as my eyes tease over him. I want to tell myself I’m just checking in on my patient and examining the dressings on his wounds to make sure my work was my best. But, it’s more than that, and I know damn well any attempt to tell myself otherwise is a lie. My gaze moves lower, and my cheeks burn hotter.

…Because I’ve already seen him naked.

I’m a doctor, for Christ’s sake. I’ve spent years studying the human body, inside and out, and I see nudity on an hourly basis, every single day. And yet somehow, every single ounce of professionalism went out the fucking window when they laid him on that operating table and cut his clothes away. The guy was out cold, half dead, and in immediate need of a hefty blood transfusion if he was going to have a shot in hell of getting through this.

But God help me, they cut those pants off of him, and then his boxers, and my jaw just fucking dropped. Because half-dead or not, patient or not, and professionalism or lack thereof, I took one look at the package between his muscled thighs and my mind went to mush.

There’s no way I could even guess at how many dicks I’ve seen in my life. I mean, hello, I’m a doctor. In my personal life? Well, that’s another story—a laughable, sad, and tragic story. Those I could certainly count, and believe me, it’s a very small, very disappointing number. I mean, I had friends and I have colleagues who date all the time, and who got wild all through college and med school. But I have no freaking idea how they managed to pull that off.

I mean who had the time to get laid while studying for MCATS? Who the fuck had time to fuck when cramming for Bio-Chem? And once I was actually in medical school? Yeah, forget it. If I had time to shower and feed myself, it was a good week. Forget going out and trying to pick up guys.

Let’s just say I’ve put a serious dent in the battery industry over the last few years and leave it at that.

My teeth rake over my bottom lip as my eyes land on the bulge under his sheet. I blink. Hang on, bulge? I frown in confusion. He’s obviously not aroused, I mean the man just went through a couple hours of life-or-death surgery, he’s been shot twice, he’s crashed a car, I think maybe gotten into a knife fight, and lost a few pints of blood. No, it’s gotta be that some idiot orderly left something under his sheet or something, because there is no freaking way he’s—

I pull back the sheet, and my breath catches.

Oh shit.

Wrong. I was dead wrong. Because there, throbbing, thick, and maybe half hard against his muscled thigh, is his huge cock.

Fuck me sideways, he’s not even fully erect and the freaking thing is halfway down to his knee and almost as thick as my wrist. My eyes widen, and my breath catches as I just stand there staring at his cock like a complete fucking psycho. A horny, thirsty psycho.

My eyes drink him in, but then I sigh, my shoulders slumping. He’s ridiculously hot, with this strong, chiseled jaw, perfect nose, dark hair, and thick dark lashes, and these utterly mesmerizing blue eyes. He’s built like a professional athlete, his tattoos are gorgeous, not cheesy or tacky, and to top it all off, he’s hung like a fucking horse.

That’s the “pros” side of the chart. But then there’s the “cons.” Number one might be that he literally is a con, as in convict, probably. The admitting nurse has already told me that the police want to talk to him and run some prints when he comes to. On that note, here he is handcuffed to the freaking bed. Then there’s the two gunshot wounds, the five knife slashes, and the fact that he got here in a stolen car.

I sigh.

Just once, once, could it be that I find a normal hot guy? I know it’s the job—it’s that I’m at the hospital ninety-freaking-hours a week. It’s that this job is my relationship. A colleague a few months ago forced me to download Tinder and set up a profile. I was on it for a week, and the three guys I agreed to meet based pretty much exclusively on their good looks turned out to be the worst. One flat out told me he was “collecting” professions. He’d already screwed a dentist, an x-ray technician, a nurse, and—wait for it—a vet, and now he wanted ER surgeon on the list. Yeah, fuck off.

Another was broke, living in his parents’ basement and, oh right, registered on a sex offenders list for “a misunderstanding.” I won’t even get into the third guy who literally pulled his oddly small dick out in the middle of a restaurant.

And here we go again. I find a gorgeous, hot as hell guy. If this were a romcom movie, he’d wake up, instantly fall for me, and we’d run off together. Except, this isn’t that movie—those movies do not involve handcuffs, gun shots, and the cops.

I take a deep breath and blink, and I bite my lip as my eyes slide down over his cock. I blush, and my breath catches when I realize he’s getting harder. My jaw drops, and my eyes widen as I stare at his huge, thick cock getting even huger, and even thicker—swelling up in front of my eyes as I stand there over him.

“I wasn’t shot there too, was I?”

I almost scream, dropping the sheet and jumping a foot back from his bed. My head whips around, and I realize he’s awake, and looking right at me.

“Um, no… no, you—”

I clear my throat, collecting myself and trying to get my pulse to slow the fuck down. If I could also get the visual of his gorgeous cock out of my head while I’m trying to speak to my patient, in his hospital room, after performing life-saving surgery on him, that would be fantastic.

“Mr…” I frown.

“Jack.”

“Mr. Jack—”

“No, my name is Jack, doc.”

I smile. “Right, well, Jack, do you know where you are?”

“Heaven?” he whispers incredulously.

I frown in concern before he grins. “I’m just fucking with you. A hospital. I’m in a hospital.”

I bite my lip. “Yes, you are. And do you know what you’re doing here?”

“Not dying, with some luck,” he grunts. He frowns and glances down at his bandaged torso. “They stitch me back up okay?”

“I did, yes.”

He looks up at me, and I swallow as those gorgeous blue eyes with the thick dark lashes burn right into me.

“You did?”

I nod, and his jaw clenches as he nods slowly.

“Thanks, doc. Really.”

“Of course.”

“And I’m okay?”

“You will be, yes, with the right aftercare.”

“Bullet’s out?”

“Both of them, yes.”

“Holes stitched up?”

I frown curiously with a small smile. “Yes, Mr—Jack.”

“And how’s my cock?”

My cheeks burn hot, my entire face going red, and he grins wickedly at me.

“You check out all your patients’ dicks, or is it just my lucky day?”

I swallow, my pulse hammering as my face burns horrible.

“Jack, I can assure you,” I manage to blurt out. “Examining your physical well-being is standard after the kind of surgery you’ve just gone through. You know, it was a little touch and go there for a bit. You lost a lot of blood.”

He sighs. “Well, damn.”

“Pardon?”

“I was hoping it was just that my fucking knockout of a doctor was checking out my dick.”

My eyes snap to his, and I blush at the grin on his face.

“Jack—”

“What’s your name?”

My teeth rake across my lip, my eyes just hooked into his.

“Aria—”

I frown. What the fuck is wrong with me?

“Doctor Linetti,” I correct myself with a rigidness to my voice.

“Aria,” he purrs, his eyes locked on mine.

“It’s Doctor Linetti,” I correct him.

He grins this roguish, lopsided grin that does all sorts of things to the wet heat between my thighs, and I swallow thickly as I try and will the blush from my face.

“Thanks for saving my ass, Doctor Linetti,” he growls.

“You’re welcome.”

He suddenly frowns. “Hey is my phone—”

He twists to look at the table next to his hospital, and instantly hisses in pain. His hand yanks instinctually up to his shoulder, but it catches with a clang as the handcuff chain goes taut. He grunts, his teeth flashing in pain as he glances down.

“Fuck,” he grunts.

“Hang on, hang on!” I blurt, rushing over. “Don’t twist like that, you’re going to tear your stitches.”

“Why am I—”

He frowns, looking at the handcuffs, but his mouth goes tight, like this isn’t actually a surprise. I ignore that part of the scenario for a second though, my instincts going into doctor mode as I lean over him to look at his shoulder. I frown, biting my lip as my fingers peel back the edge of the bandage to look under. The stitches are intact though, and I sigh as I carefully tape him back up.

And then, I freeze. I freeze because I realize I’m leaning right over this man to his far shoulder, my body hovering barely a foot above his. My breath catches, and as I pull back an inch or two, I look down and right into his piercing blue eyes.

“Everything okay?”

I swallow, nodding. “Uh, yeah.”

A low growl rumbles in his throat, and his eyes spark as they hold mine fiercely. I gasp quietly, feeling the power of his gaze, and the heat of his bare body so close to mine. My pulse throbs in my neck, and it feels like I’m literally falling as I lose myself in his eyes.

“No, Doc,” he growls. “No, I don’t think it is.”

I frown. “What? Are you hurting—”

“No,” he purrs. “Not my shoulder. Not my side.” He shakes his head, his eyes burning into mine.”

“It’s you,” he growls.

My frown deeps, and I shiver as I swallow the thick lump in my throat. “Excuse me?”

“It’s not alright, and it’s you,” he grunts, slowly shaking his head with his eyes never leaving mine.

“I beg your—”

“You’re gonna ruin everything, aren’t you?” he growls, and before I even know it, his uncuffed hand slides up to cup my jaw possessively. My mind goes white and numb, and the entire world goes still as he leans up, hesitates and hovers with his lips an inch from mine, and then suddenly crushes them to mine.

Houston, we have a problem.

The world goes still, explosions thunder through me, and my heart turns upside down as I get lost in the single hottest, most earth-shaking kiss in the history of hot, earth-shaking kisses.

Oh, this is really, really bad.

It could be a second, or maybe an hour, but at some point, everything explodes. I pull away from him with a gasp, my eyes blazing along with his, and my hand flying to my lips. I run my fingers across them, my pulse racing and my skin on fire before I suddenly turn without a word and run from the room.

What the fuck is wrong with me?