Knights and Kink Romance Boxed Set (84 page)

“These folks are friends of mine, officer,” Dr.
Kavanaugh says, his voice cool and clipped. “Why don’t you two
gentleman have a seat in the hallway until I’m done examining the
lady?”

Officers Dodgeball and Hockey Stick sit down on a
Naugahyde couch just outside the exam cubicle, their arms folded in
matching postures of contempt. Officer Dodgeball keeps his flinty
eyes on me, while Hockey Stick starts squawking something
unintelligible into the Motorola radio clamped to his right
shoulder.

Dr. Kavanaugh jots something down on a clipboard and
presses the “Call” button just to the left of the examining table.
He leans in to whisper something to Syr Phillip that I can’t make
out, and Syr Phillip shrugs and shakes his head.

“Just think about it, Phil,” Dr. Kavanaugh grunts.
Then he nods at me. “It was nice to meet you, Lisa. One of my
residents will be in to irrigate your wound, and you’ll have to
sign some paperwork. We’ll get you a room here for the night. Oh,
and if that dog doesn’t show up soon, we’ll have to start the
rabies shot regimen as a precaution. Hope you’ve got a strong
stomach, dear. That’s where you’ll have to take ‘em, and the
needles on those dadburn shots are huge.”

Dr. Kavanaugh waves his hand toward Officers
Dodgeball and Hockey Stick and disappears. The two cops stagger
back into the cubicle.

“You wanna tell us what happened over at your Goth
orgy party, ma’am?” says Officer Hockey Stick.

“Any drugs over at that party, ma’am?” Officer
Dodgeball asks, tapping his golf pencil.

“Well, ummm—“ I stammer.

Syr Phillip steps in. “We were only at the party for
a few minutes. There was a little bit of pot smoking and. . .other
activities going on there, but Lisa here is a very upstanding,
sensitive lady, and she wasn’t comfortable staying in that
environment. Isn’t that right, Lisa?”

“That’s right,” I sputter, grateful for Syr
Phillip’s gallant rescue. “We were just trying to, umm, leave when
the dog attacked me.”

“Is that right?” Hockey Stick drawls, leaning
against the cinderblock wall. “Did anything else happen while you
were there?”

“No,” I say, suspicious. “Just that.”

“You sure ‘bout that?” Dodgeball growls, leaning
closer. “’Cause that’s not what we understand from the folks we met
at the scene.”

I turn to Syr Phillip for help and he gives me a
blank look. Before I can respond to Dodgeball’s scowling
accusation, Barlonda, Grizzly, Pegeen, and Arundel the Black all
burst in, tripping over each other.

“We can explain! We can explain!” Barlonda shouts,
waving her arms. I can smell the liquor on her breath from five
feet away.

“Barlonda, let me tell it,” Grizzly growls, still
wearing nothing but his cutoff sweatpants. “You’re hammered.”

“You’re hammered too, dude,” Arundel the Black
retorts, although his eyes’ sunken glossiness and graveled voice
belie at least a couple joints’ worth of pot inhalation. “Let me
tell it.”

Pegeen rushes to my side and takes my hand. “No, let
me
tell it,” Pegeen insists. “Lisa’s
my
best friend,
after all. Are you okay, hon? If I knew that this was going to
happen I never would have dragged you along with me this
morning.”

Officers Hockey Stick and Dodgeball are growing
impatient. “
Somebody
spit it out,” Dodgeball yells. “We
ain’t got all goddamn night here.”

“Right,” Pegeen says, squeezing my hand again. “You
see, Arundel and I, we got there right after Lisa and Phillip left.
That’s when everything happened.”

“Like what?” I ask.

“Well, you getting bitten by Piddles was only the
beginning,” Pegeen explains. “You guys missed the
real
excitement. Some Tuchux crashed Lady Ramona’s party.”

This interests the cops. “Tuchux?” asks Hockey
Stick. “Is that what all those people in the leather bikinis
were?”

“Yeah,” Pegeen replies. “Whenever the Tuchux show up
someplace, trouble is sure to follow.”

“I didn’t realize there were any Tuchux in Ohio,”
Syr Phillip says. “I thought they were all on the East Coast.”

“So anyway,” Pegeen continues. “Syr Phillip carried
Lisa out of Ramona’s house after that stupid dog bit her, right? Or
at least that’s what I heard. The Tuchux showed up right after
that. And then all hell broke loose.”

“What do you mean?” asks Syr Phillip.

Pegeen bites off a hangnail on her pudgy left thumb.
“Well, I don’t know the whole story, but supposedly Lady Ramona
didn’t deliver on some pot deal that she’d made with the Tuchux at
Pennsic last year, and, well—they showed up to collect. You know
what the Tuchux are, don’t you Lisa?”

“Ummm, no, Pegeen,” I say.

“Tuchux—that’s the names of a drug gang, right?”
Officer Hockey Stick says, wagging his pencil in Pegeen’s
direction. “’Cause the drug gangs are what we’re after.”

“Dude, the Tuchux are just some random SCA weirdos,
man,” Arundel says, his tone condescending. “They’re not part of
any drug gang, man. But a lot of ‘em
use
a lot of drugs.
Grass, anyway.”

Pegeen shushes Arundel with a light slap to his
behind. “To make a long story short, officer, the Tuchux showed up
demanding their share of some pot that they paid Lady Ramona for at
Pennsic last year, or something.”

Officer Hockey Stick looks close to splitting a
vein. “Can you just get to the point, ma’am? Tell us what happened
with the drug deal already.”

Pegeen stands up a little straighter. “Well, like I
said, I don’t know the whole story. But it’s pretty much common
knowledge in the SCA that Lady Ramona grows some fair-quality
marijuana in the cornfield behind her house, and she sells it to
folks at SCA events and Ren-fairs and such. But she’s not part of
any gang or anything. She just grows and sells the stuff to pay her
bills, that’s all. Supposedly she has a medical marijuana
prescription for some medical condition she has—epilepsy, or
something. So anyway, after the Tuchux showed up, there was a huge
fight, and then, well—“ Pegeen started to tear up.

“There was like, a pretty huge fire, dude,” Arundel
finished. “Nobody knows how it started, but Lady Ramona’s house was
about half burned down when we left. I don’t think anybody’s hurt
though. Pretty much everybody got out of the house okay—”

“Except the dog,” Officer Hockey Stick finished.
“That attack dog’s a crispy critter.” The skinny cop gives me a
sympathetic look. “Without the dog, ma’am, you’ll probably have to
have all those rabies shots whether you like it or not. Good luck
to you, Miss—“

“Smith,” I stammer. “Lisa Smith.” All at once I feel
sicker than I have in years.

“I’ll let you get some rest, Miss Smith,” Officer
Hockey Stick says, his voice softening around the edges. “I can
finish talking to your friends out in the hall.”

Syr Phillip reappears with a nurse and young doctor
in tow. The doctor starts spraying something cold and stinging on
my ankle. The freckle-faced nurse—prettier and nicer than the nasty
pink-haired one we met earlier—smiles down at me and puts a damp
cloth on my forehead.

“I’m just gonna give you a couple IVs, Lisa,” says
the nurse. “One’s an antibiotic and one will help you sleep.
There’ll be a little stick—”

I feel a pinch on the inside of my left elbow, and
an acid warmth creeps up my arm. All at once, visions of house
fires, knights in shiny pickle-barrel armor, and blue velvet
princess gowns all float before my eyes, and just as quickly melt
together into a single, blue-violet swirl, slowly blending darker
and darker together until everything goes black.

Chapter
13

I wake up in a dark, semi-private hospital room. I
don’t know what time or even day it is, but I do know that I am
feeling a lot better than I did when I lost consciousness. At
least,
most
of me does. There is a slightly tender spot on
my belly that is marked in the center with a small red dot
resembling a strawberry mole, except it has a tiny scab on it. I
suppose it’s from the rabies shots.

I sit up and glance around the room. My shredded
blue gown and velvet slippers are nowhere to be seen; neither are
my purse and backpack. The room is empty save for the slumped-over
figure of Syr Phillip in a plastic chair. He has changed into
cutoff jeans and a polo shirt and is sleeping with his head hanging
forward, mouth wide open. Tiny ribbons of drool run down both sides
of his mouth, meeting in two perfect circular paths to a little
rivulet just underneath his chin. I notice that he has tied my
hot-pink polyester favor, now frayed and showing rust-stains from
the Ohio Caverns, around the leather Gap belt holding up his
cutoffs.

My knight has spent the night.
My very own,
favor-carrying, devoted, rippled-chest knight has spent the better
part of a day and a half (at least) watching over me and giving me
protection. My very own, favor-carrying knight is the first sight I
see when I wake up in a strange place with bandages on my ankle and
strange tiny scars on my belly.

My very own, favor-carrying, rippled-chest knight
isn’t afraid to fall asleep and drool right in front of me.

How romantic.

In one Lysol-scented hospital instant, all the
reservations and doubts I’ve built up around Syr Phillip throughout
the previous evening melt away. I sit up in bed a little too
quickly and start feeling dizzy. I tiptoe past my sleeping knight
towards the bathroom to pee, and trip over a tall metal contraption
that is joined to my arm by tubes and wires—the IV tower. Try as I
might to stop it from happening, metal pole, plastic tubing, and
electronic dosage monitor all fall right onto Syr Phillip’s head in
rapid succession, very nearly ripping the IV needle out of my arm
in the process.

I scream.

Syr Phillip jerks awake. “Wh-wha?”

“Sorry,” I stammer, not sure if I should detangle
Syr Phillip from the medical equipment or make a beeline for the
toilet before my bladder bursts. Before I can decide, Syr Phillip
not only rights the toppled IV tower, he resets the dosage machine
and inspects my elbow to see if the needle is still attached.

“You should be more careful about your IV drip,” he
whispers, gently stroking my forearm. “You don’t want to rip the
needle out. It’ll leave a nasty bruise that way, and you don’t need
anything marring up that gorgeous skin of yours.” Syr Phillip
raises the pit of my elbow to his lips and kisses the tender skin
just above my IV site. The electricity generated by his firm lips
on that delicate, tender spot is very nearly enough to make me wet
my pants.

“I ummm, really need to pee,” I mutter.

“I’ll bet you do. They’ve been pumping a lot of
fluids into you for the past thirteen hours.”

“Thirteen hours? Have I really been here that long?
What time is it? What
day
is it?”

“It’s late Sunday evening. You’ve been unconscious
since last night. Here, let me help you to the bathroom. You’ll
need to take your dance partner along with you,” Syr Phillip
chuckles, nodding toward my IV.

I manage to relieve myself without Syr Phillip’s
help. As soon as my bladder is emptied, I notice a different kind
of urgency is very much present between my legs. A ‘you’re-a
girl-and-he’s-a-boy-so-let’s-just-get-going’ kind of urgency. I
glance down at my body and notice for the first time that I’m
wearing nothing but a decidedly un-sexy paper hospital gown—which
is open at the back, and therefore I must have just given Syr
Phillip an unobstructed view of my ass when I bolted for the john.
I hope against hope that he liked what he saw.

When I emerge from the bathroom, Syr Phillip is
waiting for me in the doorway.

“How are you feeling, Lisa?”

“Okay I guess.” I notice my voice sounds husky, and
the urgency between my legs is fast evolving into a soft, wet musk.
“Actually, I think I’m feeling better right now than I have in a
long time.”

The deep blue pools of Syr Phillip’s eyes lock with
my own and hold me close to him, even if he hasn’t laid a hand on
my body yet. “I’m very glad to hear that, Lisa,” he says, his voice
taking on the same husky, musky quality as my own.

“I—I’m glad that you’re glad to hear it,” I
sputter.

I think that has to be the lamest thing ever to come
out of my mouth.

I struggle to think of something more substantial,
more
romantic
to say, but Syr Phillip doesn’t give me much
chance to think. His aquamarine eyes pierce mine with an intensity
I’ve never felt before. He leans forward, slips his broad hands
underneath my paper gown and slides them around my waist until they
rest squarely on the small of my back. Instinctively, I lean into
him, and our lips meet in a slow, long, feathery kiss. His tongue
juts lightly on the outside edge of my lower lip, then dances
across my teeth and into my mouth, where my own tongue meets his in
a sloping embrace. We stay entwined this way—our tongues exploring
and Syr Phillip’s hands caressing— for a full minute.

A tiny cry escapes my throat and my knees nearly
buckle. Syr Phillip holds me up, never taking his hands off the
small of my back. Our tongues keep dancing with each other, faster
and faster, our bodies closer and closer, until the sound of an
elderly man clearing his throat just behind us jerks us apart.

It’s Dr. Kavanaugh.

“Looks like you’re feeling a lot better, Lisa.” Dr.
Kavanaugh’s voice is smug, but pleasant. “But from now on, you guys
probably shouldn’t make out right in the doorway.” He gives Syr
Phillip a friendly punch in the arm. “Nice to see you back in the
saddle, Phil.”

Syr Phillip clears his throat loudly and shifts on
his feet. “Uh, yeah, Doc. Lisa here has certainly brought back me
to, ahhhh, life.” Syr Phillip’s words sound forced. Is he just
recovering from our moment of kissing and heat, or is he hiding
something?