Hot Blooded

that she had taken off her blouse. The way he looked at her, you'd
have thought she was wearing a black lace negligee instead of a serviceable
white bra and a pair of blue jeans.
    "What, you've never seen a half-dressed female before, Doc?"
    He didn't even pretend not to look his fill. "It's just that patients usually
wait until I tell them to undress before doing it. Not that I'm complaining."
    She should have been offended. She really should. "I'm in a little bit of a
hurry."
    "Shame," he muttered. Then, frowning, he moved closer, and she thought he was
finally seeing the angry red scratches across her chest. "That looks nasty. What
happened?" He moved still closer, leaning in. She felt his breath across her
breasts and told herself it was not turning her on.
    She knew what the scratches looked like. There were three of them, deep
enough in places to qualify as cuts, raked across her skin, from just above the
left clavicle to the upper part of the right breast.
    "Something with big claws took a swipe at me."
    "That much I could have guessed." He turned away from her to open a cabinet,
and began setting items on the stainless steel tray beside her. Gauze pads,
sterile water and alcohol, antibiotic ointment. "What was it, a dog?"
    "Not exactly."
    He pulled on latex gloves and began carefully cleaning the cuts. She winced
as he worked, but was secretly glad of the sting. Without it, she'd have been
enjoying his touch way more than she should. "So what, exactly, was it?"
    "I don't know yet. But if pressed, Doc, I'd say it was a lycanthrope."
    He grinned suddenly, tried not to let the chuckle escape. "You're another
werewolf hunter, hmm? Come down here looking for the loup-garou?"
    "I'm a professor at Dunkirk University. I'm here doing research."
    "A professor of what?"
    She cleared her throat. "Cryptozoology."
    This time he couldn't contain the laugh. It escaped, and she flinched and
shot him an angry look. He stopped in mid-chuckle. "I'm sorry. It's just—you
didn't really come down her to research werewolves, did you?"
    "I came down to determine whether there might be a previously unknown species
of mammal hiding out in the Louisiana bayou."
    "Sounds so much more rational your way," he told her.
    She shrugged. "Well, rational or not, something attacked me on the road last
night. And I can tell you, Doc, whatever it was, it was no
known
species."
    "And the moon,
was
full."
    "Are you making fun?"
    "Just stating a fact." He frowned, more serious now. "Whatever it was, it did
a number on you. This is no laughing matter. It could have been rabid."
    "It wasn't."
    "You can't know that for sure."
    "Doesn't matter. I've been immunized."
    "Against rabies?"
    "Of course. I have a masters in zoology and a Ph.D. in veterinary medicine. I
have been immunized against just about anything you can think of that can be
transmitted from animal to human."
    He took a step back, seemingly satisfied that the wound was thoroughly clean.
"You're a vet, huh?"
    "Mmm-hmm."
    Pursing his lips, nodding slowly, he reached for the ointment. "So it's safe
to say you could have patched this up yourself."
    "Could have. Didn't want to."
    "Why don't you stop playing games and tell me why you're really here?"
    She was surprised. She felt her eyes widen as they shot to his. He'd startled
her by being so direct. "I wasn't playing games, doctor. I had planned to come
and see you anyway, and I simply thought as long as I was here, I'd get myself
patched up. Okay?"
    "Okay." He began smearing ointment over the cuts. She began wishing the latex
gloves were not between his fingertips and her flesh. "Why were you coming to
see me anyway?"
    "To ask you how often you see patients with marks like the ones on my chest."
    He shrugged. "I haven't seen a chest quite like yours in a long time," he
said, without cracking a smile. Totally inappropriate—the way he was looking at
her breasts where they swelled over the top of the bra. And yet it made her warm
all over.
    "You know that's not what I was asking."
    He didn't look away from his work. She thought his hands were moving way more
slowly than necessary, smoothing that ointment on her cuts, rubbing it in, his
touch soft and erotic. "How often, Doctor?" she managed to ask. Did her voice
sound slightly hoarse to him?
    "Not more often than would be considered normal."
    "These kinds of attacks are what you call normal?"
    "Scratches are normal. People get them in numerous ways.