"Everyone get out."

Marco's voice cuts like a knife slash through tension. The others go on a run, from the scene, from the three of us..

me, him, and Jake sprawled out unconscious on the ice.

I prod the wound of Jake, pushing deep with fingers stiff though upheaval roils in my chest. "He needs emergency medicine."

"Then he'll have it." Marco falls to the earth at my feet, near I feel the warmth of his skin. "After we have talked."

"There is nothing to discuss. This man…”

"He will be fine." He puts his arm around mine atop a bandage, and I get a jolt through my arm. "I've seen worse."

I need to withdraw. The whole rational half of my mind spins around me to establish some space between us. But the skin of this stranger has warmth, an unexpected softness and some element of it does make my heart pound in a manner dissociated from fright.

"You don't know that," I breathe, despising the sound of my own panting.

He focuses on me, and we're alone to ourselves momentarily. Dark brown eyes that ought to make me scared but make something in my stomach flip instead. Closer, I see sparks of gold in shadow, hidden flame.

"You're kidding."

Two words that absolutely cannot come out of his mouth. Two words that somehow cause my chest to constrict with something other than rage.

He brushes his hand across my knuckles, a light touch, but the warmth whirls around me. I pull back my hand as if burned.

"Don't touch me."

Something flashes across his face, surprise, or curiosity…his lip bends upward into the semblance of a grin, and I have an ungodly need to slap it off of his face even as I wish to gaze at it.

"Afraid of me, Doctor?"

"I'm not afraid of you"

These tongue blisters burn like fire. I don't feel ill. I feel something way more perilous…curious. And frightening myself more totally than any threat of his ever could have.

He edges in close enough so that I can smell him…something black and male that makes my head spin. "Liar."

"I don't.."

"Your heart is racing." He speaks quietly, and again the tone is abrupt and commanding. "Your eyes are open. You're breathing shallow."

My face is aflame. Of course he would see and of course he would use the body's treachery against me.

"That's the fear."

"Is it?" He gestures to the side of his head, studying me like he's trying to figure me out. "Because you're not moving back."

Yes. I should be screaming, running, crying for help. But I am frozen, torn between hitting him and whatever I don't want to face.

"I am not scared of you."

"You might wish to."

These are menacing words, but then he has a close-to-tender undertone in his voice. As though he were protecting me from something. From himself.

Jake curses and dispels the spell from us. I immediately return to focus on my patient, taking his vitals with trembling hands.

"Pulse is regular," I report in a matter-of-fact voice. "He needs a CT scan to rule out head injury."

"No hospitals." Marco faces me once more. "Do it here."

"I cannot provide a CT on a person in a bedroom!" I protest indignantly. "What is wrong with you people?"

"You don't understand how things are done here…"

"I do." I bound up, fueled by indignation. "You think that you could buy your way out of anything. Believe that cash is bulletproof."

His expression turns dark, and an evil look crosses his face. "Be careful, Doctor."

"Or what? You will also harm me?"

I move closer toward him, close enough to feel the tension seething around his body. I pound pompously against my ribcage but I don't move back.

"That's what you do to people who won't take orders? You shut them up?"

His jaw clenches, a spasm flickering in the muscle of his cheek. "You don't know what you're talking about."

"I know precisely what I am talking about. I know the type of family you come from."

He seems surprised, then something sharper. Sharper and more intense.

"What did you just say?”

The question escapes me softly, lethally. I have said more than I intended, uttered something which found a note in his ear which was not mine to provide.

"Nothing. I said nothing."

"No." He moves closer, pushing me into the boards. "You said something very specific. About my family."

Suddenly I had my back to the wall, and he has me cornered, hand down against the top of my head. He isn't even in contact with me, but I feel him throughout, his body heat, the strength of his gaze, the repressed power in the way he moves.

"I don't see what you're getting at…"

"Look at me." The directive in his tone dictates I comply before I even have time to rationalize. We are face-to-face and our eyes are connected, and something sparks between us like an electrical wire. His gaze darts to my mouth and back again instantly.

"There's something about you," he says to himself. "Something that doesn't quite add up."

My breathing is light and rapid. Too close to him has physical reactions in me that I don't get. Reactions I realize I don't want to pull away from him but rather lean in closer.

"Let me go."

"In a minute." The other hand rises, brushing against no more of my face but close enough I feel the heat of his hand. "Tell me why you're actually here."

"I came because of my uncle…"

"No." His thumb is pressed against my cheek, not quite touching, but the chill still runs through me. "That's not what I asked, and you know that."

I momentarily forget how to breathe. The way he looks at me, like he searches into my very soul, pushes everything else back. The ice arena, the accident of Jake, even my loathing of his family…all goes until this tug between us is gone.

I have never experienced such a thing. Such hunger which makes me shiver as much as excites me. Such an urgency to feel him even when all rational sense yells that he is the enemy.

"Marco." His name escapes without thinking, a soft breath.

He blinks at the noise, eyes going wide until they're close to black. "Repeat that."

"I…"

"Repeat my name again."

There is something unadorned in his voice, something bared that does not belong to the menacing man looming over me. He does not sound like the Romano I knew. He does not sound like the son of a murderer.

He is a kind of guy who has never had anyone utter his name but in fear.

"I cannot," I gasp.

"Why?"

Because you are all I should loathe. Because your people slaughtered mine. Because it is wrong on so many levels the way you treat me.

"Because you're dangerous."

His smile is wolfish, black. "What am I? Doctor, am good at doing things I set my mind to."

"And what do you need?"

The question hangs between us, charged with implications I don't desire to face. His gaze drops back to my mouth and lingers this time.

"Then? So that I can understand why approximating you was the only time I ever felt peace in years."

He robs the breath from me. I realize the reality of it in his gaze…shock, confusion, and he regards me as if I were some kind of wonder he cannot understand.

"That's impossible."

"Tell me about it." He presses in close, the heat of his breath on my ear. "Because I've never really known a human who could make me lose myself just by being in the same space as me."

My knees are going to collapse. The closeness of his voice, the warmth of his body near mine…it's too much for me in the best and worst way.

"That is nuts."

"Yes."

Neither of us gets up. Neither of us moves back. We simply stand, the two of us sharing the same breath, frozen in whatever this is happening between us.

"Romano!" a voice yells on the ice. "Where the bloody hell are you?"

Marco stiffens.. He doesn't pull back away from me, but some stiffness moves across his face like some mask sliding into place.

"Vincent," he breathes, and I detect in his voice something I do not have a word for. Resignation? Fear?

I got cold blood. The man who murdered my father comes into this room, and I'm glued to the wall with his son's lifeless body pushed against me as if we are lovers in an illicit affair.

"We're not done with our conversation," Marco breathes, retreating finally.

His warmth lost touches me like a whiff of cold wind, yet before I can feel it, footsteps echo round the ice.

I get to confront the man who murdered my dad, and I still get goosebumps in my lips from the kiss of Marco.