The Patient Is a Shark [Shape-Shifter Clinic 3] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) Read online

But he still stood and watched the wolf run back toward the clinic. His lope was no longer smooth and even. The wolf slowed to a walk. “You overestimated your strength, my friend, but keep trying. You’ll heal soon. The nursing staff here is the best anywhere,” he told the empty air around him, before walking into the maintenance shed.

  As well as being an animal lover, Quinn was a Dom in the BDSM scene. From time to time he worked a few shifts at the BDSM club in town, but he was very picky about the clients he took. No one who wanted him to be their permanent Dom. No one looking for a relationship. No one who wanted sex.

  Quinn was happy to punish a lonely sub in the manner they needed, but he wasn’t looking for any strings or attachments. He had his animals, and now he had a good job as well. That would have to be enough for him until he found the right sub.

  He watched as Rainer King came out the back door of the clinic, pushing a wheelchair. The personal care attendant was a human, like Quinn, with black hair and dark-brown eyes. Rainer was a deeply caring and perceptive man, and Quinn guessed he’d been hidden from view waiting to see how the patient was coping with the run. Now it was obvious the wolf wasn’t yet ready for so much exercise, Rainer had come out to help him back to his room.

  Quinn nodded. Rainer had gotten it exactly right. Well, in his opinion, as a person with no medical skills at all, that was. But Rainer’d allowed the wolf to have a fair attempt at the challenge, and he’d never hinted the wolf wouldn’t be able to achieve it, but Rainer wasn’t going to let the patient hurt himself any more either.

  Rainer waited with the wheelchair beside the gazebo, and when the man limped back out, dressed again, and sank into the chair gratefully, Quinn nodded to himself again. “You timed that perfectly, Rainer. Good work.”

  Quinn sighed. None of this was getting his own tasks done.

  He wasn’t sure why he hadn’t been able to concentrate today. He loved his job and enjoyed being with the people here. He was just a bit—oh, not discontented really, perhaps unsettled? He’d better make a trip into town to the BDSM club soon and sort himself out again. He had everything he needed with his farm and his employment. What more could he want in life?

  * * * *

  “Quinn, are you available to come in on Saturday night and work? Dom Augustus is still getting over the flu and we’ve accepted two bookings for him thinking he’d be better by then.”

  Quinn knew Augustus, a burly blond man in his early forties who played by the same rules as he did. This could work out well. He’d just been thinking it was time he visited the BDSM club again. Besides, a little extra money was always welcome. Feeding so many animals was quite a drain on his salary.

  “Sure I can. What time?”

  “The first booking is at seven thirty.”

  “All right. I’ll arrive about seven.”

  Quinn liked to sit and watch the people he was to work with before the session began. He needed to see their body language. Were there hidden reasons why they’d come to the club? Did they only need the release of the punishment or were there other problems in their life, other demons they were trying not to face?

  Quinn had a pair of tight black jeans which he wore with an equally tight black T-shirt and a black button-down shirt over it. With a pair of polished black boots, the outfit was usually adequate to gain him entry to clubs that followed the “smart black” policy, and it was clothing he felt comfortable wearing. A couple of times when he’d had to wear costumes, he’d hired Navy officer’s dress whites. The high mandarin collar and shiny gold buttons on the jacket very much looked the part of a Dom, but he was definitely a jeans man at heart.

  On Saturday evening he put his toy box in his blue pickup truck and headed into town. He’d built the box himself to his own design, with neat racks for his canes, floggers, and whips, and clips that locked trays holding small things into place. That meant that nothing could fall to the bottom of the toy box and spoil a scene for him while he was trying to find it. He didn’t have a lot of toys, but everything he owned was both carefully chosen and well looked after. He considered his BDSM equipment just as important to care for properly as his woodworking tools.

  Quinn’s first sub that evening seemed to have no inner torment. He was simply a man who found pleasure and release in punishment. He’d asked to be handcuffed, blindfolded, and paddled. Quinn did his utmost to bring the man to the place of mental fulfillment he needed, and it seemed to him he succeeded.

  He waited in the dungeon for ten minutes after the sub left, to give him some privacy, then went back upstairs to find out about his second client for the evening.

  “Black hair, blue jeans, blue button-down shirt, sitting at the bar, second stool from the left.”

  “That’s Rainer. He works at the clinic with me.” Quinn was surprised. He’d guessed the man was into the lifestyle from a few conversations they’d had, but it’d never crossed his mind they might meet here at the club.

  “Is that going to be a problem for you? I can tell him he’ll have to wait until Dom Augustus is well again,” said the manager.

  “It’s not a problem for me. I can be perfectly professional about this. But it may not suit him. I’ll wait in the dungeon while you tell him. If he doesn’t arrive I’ll understand,” said Quinn.

  Nevertheless Quinn found himself pacing up and down in the dungeon and had to force himself to stand still. He respected Rainer. The man was a good personal care attendant who genuinely put his patients first and looked out for their interests. Quinn didn’t know much about him outside their work, and right now that was likely a good thing. It gave them that bit of mental distance they might need to keep this encounter purely professional. Quinn was sure he could concentrate on fulfilling the man’s needs, but he knew they might look at each other differently on Monday at work. He wouldn’t be upset if Rainer chose to cancel the session.

  Rainer arrived so silently that if Quinn hadn’t been concentrating he wouldn’t have heard him. Rainer locked the door behind him, went over to a chair by the wall, and got undressed, placing his clothes neatly over the chair. Then, naked, he walked into the center of the room, kneeled down, and placed his forehead on the floor.

  “Welcome, sub. Stand up and tell me what you require from this session.”

  Rainer kept his gaze on the floor but did as he was asked. “I want to be punished so severely I enter subspace. I have tomorrow to recover but need to able to work on Monday.”

  Quinn was surprised. Usually casual encounters like this didn’t involve such extreme punishments.

  “Why?”

  “It frees my mind and my spirit completely. It’s the only way I can obtain such perfect freedom and happiness.”

  “Very well.”

  First, a little added stimulation might be good. Quinn went to his toy box and found his set of three cock crushers. He placed one either side of Rainer’s penis and the third one behind the scrotum, holding them in place with a couple of neoprene tabs. That should give the sub something to think about until the caning began.

  In order to cane the sub’s back as well as his shoulders and ass, which would be more likely to send him to subspace, the sub’s back needed to be straight. Quinn took Rainer to the side wall of the dungeon and chained him to hooks from the ceiling, making sure his body was at full stretch when his feet were flat on the floor. Then Quinn sorted through his canes, finding his longest and heaviest cane, a thirty-inch Thunderbolt.

  It’d been a long time since Quinn had been asked to send a sub into subspace. Usually about half of what he did as a Dom in the dungeon was building up the anticipation so the sub would be thinking, planning, and imagining what would happen next. Then when release came, it was much stronger than just from a whipping alone. But for subspace, the pain had to be constant, and building steadily, so long pauses for mental tension didn’t always bring the desired result.

  He stomped around the dungeon out of the sub’s sight, letting his boots make a lot of noise on the concrete floor
. Then he cracked his cane loudly through the air a few times. Quinn hoped the sub’s cock would be growing and pulling on the crushers as he waited for the first stroke of the cane. That was about the best he could do right now to build tension. Once he started the whipping he needed to continue it for the most productive effect, otherwise there was no guarantee he could send Rainer into subspace.

  This was going to be a huge challenge. Because Rainer wasn’t his sub he didn’t know the man’s most sensitive areas, or what his personal limits were.

  “You may call orange or red at any time, sub,” he said.

  “Yes, Master.”

  The sub’s voice was soft but firm. Well, that would have to do. It was time to begin.

  Quinn stood to the left of the sub and whipped three hard lines across his ass, two over his shoulders, and one across his calves. Then he moved to the other side and repeated exactly the same firm strokes.

  Now it was time to change up the action. Using lighter strokes he punished the sub across his back, avoiding the kidneys, then put maximum force into one stroke over the man’s ass.

  Constantly changing from side to side, alternating stroke strength, moving up and down the sub’s body, Quinn did his very best to warm the man’s skin, then make it burn, and finally raise the pain level higher.

  He saw the exact moment when the sub began to fly and mentally heaved a sigh of relief as he caned him twice more, just to ensure he stayed deep in subspace, before putting his Thunderbolt back in his toy box.

  Quickly Quinn unchained the sub and laid him on the floor on his back while he removed the cock crushers. He rolled Rainer over onto his front, knowing the cold concrete would have soothed his back a little and now would soothe his cock.

  Quinn replaced the cock crushers in his toy box in their little tray, and took out massage oil. Kneeling beside Rainer, he drizzled the oil over the man’s shoulders, down his back, across his ass, and over his thighs and calves. Then he began to massage it into his skin. Rainer’s back was a solid red, but no skin was broken. Likely a bruise would develop on his ass, but it shouldn’t be too bad, Quinn thought.

  By the time he’d massaged every inch of the sub’s back, shoulders, and legs, Quinn thought he’d be coming out of subspace soon, so left him lying on his front, resting his head on his crossed forearms, while Quinn put away the massage oil and locked his toy box.

  Sure enough, Rainer moved a little, then five minutes later silently got up, walked over to the chair, got dressed, and left the dungeon. Quinn watched him critically and he was moving a little stiffly but he should be fine.

  As usual, he waited another ten minutes before leaving the dungeon, giving the sub the privacy to leave the club unwatched and unfollowed. But all the way home he wondered why Rainer had asked to be sent to subspace. What was the sub looking for? What did he need? Or was he putting too much emphasis on the event simply because he worked with the man?

  Chapter Two

  Wynter had spent hours and hours surfing the Internet and making her plans. If she sold her car she’d be able to afford the surgery, and pay all her other bills, but she wasn’t going to be able to pay for the rehabilitation and months of physiotherapy she needed. Well, she’d just have to hope swimming would fix that. There was a big, wide ocean out there and swimming cost nothing. Although she’d make damn certain she stayed close in to the shore and away from any fucking sports fishermen this time.

  She kept coming back to a small advertisement she’d seen on the two shape-shifter websites she knew were genuine. One was a website run by a pack of werewolves she’d heard about. They were a very large and wealthy pack, well connected with other werewolf groups through North America. The other was a smaller group, but she recognized several names on it that she’d heard her parents talk about.

  The advertisement was tiny, only a few lines, and identical on both sites.

  Thorne House Clinic.

  Specializing in General Surgery, Rehabilitation, and Physiotherapy, for Shape-Shifters only.

  The only problem was, it was in Ohio and she was in California. They could hardly have been farther apart if they’d deliberately tried to be.

  She was running out of time. She had to pay another month’s rent in a week’s time, and she really didn’t want to spend her money on that if she was going to be in a clinic for several weeks, then off at rehabilitation for months after that. Her money would be much better spent on fixing her leg. But if she cancelled her apartment and sold her car she would have nowhere to store her clothes and possessions. She didn’t have all that much stuff. Living in an RV most of her life had taught her not to collect things. But she did have some things, and it seemed crazy to have to hire a storage locker to put them in. Doing that would likely cost the entire deposit she’d get back from her apartment, money she’d need for food and to live on.

  Finally she e-mailed the large werewolf pack and asked if they could recommend the clinic. She deliberately gave a few details about herself so they’d know she was a genuine inquirer, not a competing clinic or something.

  She was surprised to receive an e-mail just five minutes later with a Skype address on it saying, Tell me more about your injury. We might be able to help you. Dr. Oscar Thorne.

  Wynter logged into Skype and typed in the address Dr. Thorne had given her. Seconds later he was online. He was a good-looking man with curly, short black hair and black eyes. Wynter was very much aware she wasn’t looking her best. Just as the doctor in the emergency room had told her it would, her damn knee ached constantly and it was almost impossible to walk properly, but she knew he would have told the truth and if she favored the bad knee and limped she’d just end up with a hip injury as well. But the result was she wasn’t sleeping well so her pale skin was even paler than normal with big dark shadows under her eyes.

  “Call me Oscar. How did you damage your knee, Wynter?”

  Wynter repeated the story she’d told everyone who’d asked her since it happened. “I was swimming and got it caught on a piece of metal. I hurt myself getting free from the metal.”

  The doctor grinned at her. “The metal you caught it on, would that have been a fisherman’s hook, perhaps? Or a harpoon? What are you? Your coloring is too fair for you to be a seal, so I’m guessing you’d be a dolphin perhaps, or a shark?”

  “What are you?” she asked, terrified of telling a stranger something that could potentially ruin her life.

  “Oh, I’m a werewolf. Most of the people here at the shape-shifter clinic are wolves, with some humans, but we treat all shape-shifters. We’ve had a few interesting patients.”

  Wynter sank back against the couch, her laptop bouncing on her thighs as she did so. “I’m a great white shark and I need a knee reconstruction. The left knee. An anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction.”

  “We can do that here, and all the rehabilitation exercises. We’ll program them so you can heal at your own rate, instead of the standard way humans do things. It should be about twice as fast as your doctor suggested.”

  “There’s two problems though, Doctor—Oscar. First, I’m in California and I have no insurance. And second I have to swim absolutely every day.”

  “How are you coping with the swimming, so far?”

  “Not very well. I go to the beach just as it’s getting dark, hop down to the water and swim parallel with the shore, about six feet deep. It’s enough to stop my skin from itching me to distraction, but it hurts like hell to walk on the sand and getting dressed and undressed isn’t fun either.”

  She didn’t mention about the group of young men who’d almost caught her coming out of the water naked on the second day she’d gone there, either. But that had scared her witless, she’d sunk back under the surface and shaken like a leaf for ten minutes at the near miss. No way could she run away from them, or swim away from them either, right now.

  “How deep do you need to go?”

  “Oh, not very deep, just enough to cover my fins, so say three or four fe
et. The problem is I must swim in my shifted form so a swimming pool or hot tub or bathtub isn’t adequate for me.”

  “That’s not an issue. The lake here is about ten feet deep in the middle, but the average depth would be four feet so that would be fine. Being in California and not having insurance is not an insurmountable problem, either. You’d need to pay for your consumables—antibiotics, anesthetics, bandages, and so on, but the operation itself and your accommodation here can be provided free of charge.”

  Wynter was so surprised she could hardly speak. “You’d do that for me? Someone you don’t know? Have never met?”

  “This clinic was established intentionally for people like you. It’s here to aid shape-shifters who need help. Now, when do you think you’ll be arriving here so I can have someone meet you at the airport?”

  Wynter’s excitement collapsed like a burst bubble. She’d checked the costs of flights already. It was about seven hundred dollars. Add to that the price of the “consumables” at the clinic, and basic things like rent and food while she recovered and before she could find a job, and selling her car wasn’t going to provide enough money for all of that. But if she drove to Ohio she could take her possessions with her, sleep in her car as she traveled, carry her own food, and eat cheaply. Surely there was somewhere along Lake Erie where she could even live in her car in a campground while she recovered and until she found a job.

  “The cost of the flights from here to Ohio is out of my budget I’m afraid, and anyway I’ll need my car to keep all my possessions in and for finding a job when my knee heals. I’ll have to drive there. It’s a long way. It’ll take, oh, maybe a week,” she said.

  “You’re not seriously planning to drive two and a half thousand miles with that knee are you? Let me think.”

  Wynter watched as Dr. Thorne—Oscar—twirled a pencil between his fingers, then tapped it on his desk. Finally he nodded and said, “If your possessions will fit in your car, I reckon they’d fit in a small U-Haul trailer. I’ll send a couple of my staff over to help you pack up your apartment. They’ll hire a trailer for you, and you can lay down on the backseat of the car and rest while they drive you and haul your things here. I’ll get my office administrator to make all the arrangements, and she’ll e-mail you the details tomorrow.”