Wild Read Free Page B

at my front door.
    The reason I had chosen to live in the Financial District was the fact that it wasn’t a residential area. Very few people actually lived there, and those who resided in one of the high rises didn’t spend much time outside. It made it easier for me to remain unnoticed when I entered and exited my place at night. Not having nosy neighbors was essential to living anonymously.
    During the day the streets teamed with office workers who didn’t take much notice of anybody. They just wanted to get to work. It was the ideal place to live beneath society’s radar.
    I had no direct neighbors. The building was in an alley off Sansome Street. Its entrance was easily overlooked. There was no mailbox, no address, no door bell. For all anybody knew it was a fire exit for one of the office buildings on Sansome Street. Even though the office building behind my little warehouse was much taller, it had no windows on this side, which afforded me the privacy I craved.
    The warehouse I had turned into my home was of red brick construction, originally unreinforced. However, in the first year after I had bought it, I had retrofitted the place so it would withstand the frequent earthquakes the Bay Area had to deal with. Steel bracing and reinforcement as well as sheer walling would make it possible for the building to at least withstand a 7.5 magnitude earthquake. The ’89 earthquake which had rocked San Francisco and lead to a collapse of a portion of the double-decker Bay Bridge, had not caused any damage to my home.
    Instead of taking her upstairs, I walked through the door underneath the stairs. The motion sensors detected me and all lights turned on instantly. I stood in an enormous room equipped as a laboratory. Stainless steel benches, industrial size refrigerators and freezers, microscopes, centrifuges, I had it all. I was better equipped than many commercial labs.
    Gently I placed her onto the surgery bench and noticed with relief that my claws had turned back into hands. I took off my bloody shirt and grabbed one of the lab coats hanging over a chair and put it on.
    I wanted to look as normal as possible when she woke up so I wouldn’t frighten her.
    So I wouldn’t frighten her?
    What the hell was I thinking? I had taken her and brought her into my lab. I was alone with her and she had no means of escaping. I was a stranger to her, and I was a man, a natural predator. What made me think she wouldn’t be frightened?
    I’m a doctor.
    What? My lab coat would make her fear me any less? I shook my head.
    Vince, what are you doing?
    I looked at her again and reminded myself that I had to take care of her wound first and deal with the consequences later.
    I took off her trainers first then freed her from the tangled strap of her handbag. Her jeans were tight and the only way to get them off without moving her excessively was to cut them off. As I sliced through the fabric inch by inch I revealed more and more of her beautifully formed legs. Her skin was smooth, and every time I touched it while cutting her jeans, it felt like a lightening bolt went through my body. Nobody else had ever had an effect like this on me. I had carried other women to safety and never felt anything other than making sure they were safe. I had never been tempted to take any one of them with me. But when I looked at this girl, all I could think of was to touch her, to kiss her, to make love to her, to make her mine.
    I had to start thinking of something else. I threw the bloody shreds of denim onto the bench behind me and disinfected my hands to examine her stab wound. It was deep, but had not hit any main arteries. My time during my residency at San Francisco General Hospital had given me lots of opportunities to deal with knife wounds. It wouldn’t be hard to patch her up and stop the loss of blood. She would be okay.
    I had everything I needed and started by cleaning her wound. I put pressure on it to stop the bleeding. I needed to give her