The Playboy Doctor Swore Off Love, Then His Best Friend Claimed Him novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Monday, Nine O'Clock

In the executive office, Elias lays out the deal: thirty nights, his terms, or he resigns at nine; Damon agrees because he has never lost a bet, and Elias tells him to skip dinner.

The resignation letter lay on the exact centre of Elias's desk, one page, signed, with the pen laid across it.

Damon read it standing, in his coat, at five to nine on Monday morning.

He had not slept.

He had spent two nights lying on his back looking at the ceiling, and every time he closed his eyes he heard himself say yours.

"You came early," Elias said from the window.

He was dressed for work in a charcoal three-piece suit, and his lip was split in the middle with a dark scab.

Damon had put that there.

"Take that off the desk," Damon said.

"It's yours at nine, if you want it."

"I want it in the shredder," Damon said.

"Then say yes."

The twelfth floor of Kosmas Health was glass and pale oak and very quiet.

Through the glass wall behind Elias's head, the receptionist was watching them over her monitor.

Damon shut the office door.

"I'm not agreeing to a damn thing until I've said my terms," he said.

"Go ahead."

"One. No kissing."

Elias's brows went up. "On the mouth?"

"Anywhere I don't say."

"Fine," Elias said. "Next."

"Two. Nothing visible. No marks where a patient can see."

"I can work with that," Elias said.

"Three. I see whoever I like. Women. Whenever I want. You don't get a say."

For the first time Elias's face changed, very slightly.

The corner of his jaw tightened and was still again.

"Four," Damon went on, quickly. "Nobody at work knows. Not the board, not the OR, nobody."

"And if they do?"

"If I hear one whisper, the deal's off and you're out."

"Agreed on one, two and four," Elias said. "On three I'll tell you something."

"I don't want to hear it."

"You'll want to hear it," Elias said. "After the first night, you won't want anyone else."

"That is the most arrogant thing anyone has ever said to me."

"It's not arrogance." Elias walked around the desk and stopped an arm's length away. "It's the reason I'm not afraid of the bet."

Damon should have left.

Instead he heard himself say: "And when you lose?"

"I won't."

"But when," Damon said.

"Then you walk out of here free, I walk out of here jobless, and you never have to speak to me again."

Elias's voice stayed perfectly level.

"I've considered every outcome," he said. "I'm still asking."

Damon looked at the desk, at the clean white page with the signature on it.

Ten years.

Ten years of Sunday basketball and shared takeout, and a man sitting beside his hospital bed after his appendix.

Damon had never known any of it was this.

He felt sick and furious and, underneath, something else that was none of the above.

And he had never lost a bet in his life.

He knew exactly how this went.

A man like Elias had wanted him from a distance for years, and wanting from a distance was a fantasy.

Fantasies didn't last through the second week.

By the third night Elias would be a friend who happened to have sex with him.

By the fifth night the whole thing would be dull.

"Thirty nights," Damon said. "I pick the room. Once I'm bored, I'll say it, and you're gone."

"That isn't the deal."

"It's my deal."

"Fine." Elias didn't blink. "You'll find I don't bore easily."

Damon snatched up the resignation letter and tore it in half, and then in half again.

He dropped the pieces in the bin.

"Done," he said. "Now get out of my way. I have a nine o'clock."

He stepped to go around.

Elias moved, one pace, and it was enough to put him directly in the way.

Then he took Damon's left wrist in his hand.

He turned it over, gently, and laid two fingers on the pulse.

Through the glass wall the receptionist was looking directly at them.

Nothing was happening.

A man was checking another man's pulse in an office, and anyone could have said he was only worried about his friend.

Damon stood and felt his own heart under those two fingertips going faster and faster.

"A hundred and ten," Elias said softly. "At rest."

"I'm angry."

"You're something," Elias said.

"Let go of my arm, Thorsen."

"You've been looking at my mouth since you walked in," Elias said. "You keep looking at the scab."

He was right.

Damon looked up.

Elias's pale eyes were steady and heavy.

For one second the mask slipped, and he looked as he had in the study, hungry and barely leashed.

His own pulse, Damon noticed, was jumping hard in his throat above the collar.

Damon said nothing.

He did not say that he had thought about that mouth for two days.

He did not say that he wanted to lick the blood back off it.

He took his wrist out of Elias's hand and walked to the door.

"Dinner's off," Damon said, without turning. "I'm not eating with you tonight."

"I didn't ask you to eat."

Damon's hand stopped on the handle.

"Tonight," Elias said behind him. "Your bedroom. Ten o'clock."

"Is that an order?"

"Don't eat first."

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