Without Regret (Pyte/Sentinel #2)(44)
Author: R.L. Mathewson

She wanted him.

“Are you a virgin?” he suddenly asked, breaking the kiss and pulling back just enough so that he could look at her.

Why was he talking at a moment like this when they should be looking for the nearest bedroom? she had to wonder as she struggled to figure out what he’d asked.

Frowning, she shook her head as best as she could, considering it was still locked firmly between his hands.

“No, why?”

Just like that all the hunger in his expression disappeared and the controlled warrior was back in place. He released her and grabbed her wrists gently, forcing her to release him as he stepped back.

The tick beneath his eye was back along with a new one in his jaw as he stepped away and turned, storming off, leaving her to wonder what the hell just happened and when they were going to let her down.

“Um, hello?” she called out a minute later. “I’d really like to get down now!”

Chapter 17

“You’re tearing your stitches to shreds,” Jill pointed out as she pushed aside a crossbow on one of the many weapons tables lining the right side of the long, deep basement and sat down on the edge of the table, careful of the silver dipped daggers to her left.

“I need to train,” Chris said, ignoring the sharp pain as his stitches stretched when his fist connected with the sparing dummy, causing it to rock hard on its steel base. He ignored the sound of rubber splitting and continued pounding his fists against it. Between him and his father they went through a half dozen of these things a month.

“Joshua will have to sew you back up,” Jill said, picking up one of the small daggers they’d had blessed last month.

“It gives him more hours,” Chris said, wiping the sweat off his forehead with the back of his uninjured hand before taking another swing at the dummy, which looked a few hits away from losing its head.

“True,” Jill agreed with an absent nod. “But it will just piss him off that you wrecked his work again. You know he hates to leave a scar.”

“He’ll just have to get over it,” Chris said, already picturing the glare Joshua would give him in a few days if he ended up with a scar. The man would just have to get over it, but he knew Joshua wouldn’t. The man was a goddamn perfectionist when it came to his work.

If he’d known ten years ago when Joshua asked if he could have a look at his IV lock that the kid would turn into a control freak over ever little band-aid and bruise he would have……

He wouldn’t have done a damn thing differently, he thought with an inward groan.

When he woke up strapped to a bed with tubes and wires attached to every available patch of skin on his body he’d been admittedly worried, even more so when he realized that he couldn’t feel or move his legs, but nothing had frightened him more than his first look at Joshua. The little boy who was always so full of energy and had become his little shadow before the home invasion was gone, leaving a nervous, easily frightened little boy who was too thin and pale in his place.

He remembered forcing a smile for the little boy as his eyes adjusted to the too bright hospital room. When Joshua just stood there at the end of the bed looking terrified it had freaked Chris out. He tried to talk to him only to have the words come out mangled and barely louder than a whisper. Frustrated, he’d gestured weakly for Joshua to come to him, but the boy only stood there shaking his head slightly as he continued to stare at Chris.

When a nurse came in and saw that he was awake and rushed Joshua out of the room he could have strangled the woman. He’d had no idea what the hell was going on at the time and what was wrong with Joshua.

Everyone’s forced smiles and promises that Joshua would be all right didn’t do a damn thing to calm him down. The kid didn’t look good and after two weeks when nothing had changed, Chris had been scared shitless.

Joshua wouldn’t speak or hardly eat. The third week after he woke up he heard his grandmother asking the nurses and doctors in the ICU where he’d been stuck until it was safe to move him to a medical suite at one of the Sentinel compounds for advice about Joshua. When he heard one of the nurses suggest that they commit his brother he flipped out and in the process tore out his IV’s, but he forced himself to calm down and stop telling the nurse to shut her f**king mouth when Joshua quietly walked into the room and went to his little corner where he silently watched Chris.

By the time a nurse came in to fix his IV’s he hadn’t had a clue what to do. He’d tried engaging his brother in conversation, putting the television on and even threatening to kick his ass if he didn’t talk or eat soon.

Nothing worked and he was close to admitting that the nurse, who’d he’d sent running off crying might have been right. So when Joshua’s soft voice suddenly asked if he could watch the nurse change the IV Chris ignored the nurse’s polite refusal and told Joshua to climb up on the bed so that he could get a better look.

After a short hesitation Joshua did and Chris nearly wept with relief. Joshua kneeled near his leg as he quietly watched the woman change his IV. Within days Joshua was asking questions about every wire, tube, and piece of equipment in the room. When a few of the nurses refused to answer Joshua’s questions Ephraim told them to get the hell out of his son’s room and within the hour hired two private nurses who were more than happy to answer Joshua’s questions and even let him try things.

Joshua slowly went back to being the carefree kid he used to be, but after Chris left the hospital he knew his brother had found his one true love. The kid couldn’t get enough of the Learning Channel or the internet. If it was about something medical Joshua wanted to read it or see it. Hell, Chris had barely been able to hold the kid back from “assisting” their father when Madison’s water broke. The kid was just so damn smart, gifted and genuinely wanted to help people.

No one was at all surprised when Joshua graduated high school a year early or when he announced that he wanted to be a doctor. For years he’d been the one to patch Chris up and any visiting Sentinels when the shit hit the fan and they came home a little bloody and broken. It had surprised them all when they discovered the Council had plans for Joshua’s talents.

At just seventeen years old Joshua signed a contract with Sentinel council to work for them. During the school year he’d busted his ass getting good grades and working as an intern with one of the Sentinel surgeons in Boston where he attended college. During the summers he went to Europe and trained with some of the world’s oldest doctors, Sentinels who hadn’t quite reached two hundred years yet and they taught him every damn thing they knew.