Coming ine box set, p.142
Coming in Hot: Rescue Me Box Set, page 142
“Fuck off. It’s the polar opposite of anything resembling your God damned business.”
“Nice mouth.”
“You’d know.”
He flipped me off. I returned it before I decided I didn’t want to be in the room with him anymore. He’d been nurturing a serious chip on his shoulder ever since I tossed him out of my bed, and sometimes, his little green monster got the best of him, despite his currently engaged-to-be-married status. Whatever it was, it was annoying me, so I spent the last hour and a half by myself, tucked into a small windowed alcove I’d found my first week here. A perfect spot for someone desirous of quality time not spent around any other people. So I could get my work done, I self-justified.
So you can be an anti-social bitch.
Well. Okay, that too. Sue me.
My issue now was that I’d spent so many hours in the pleasant company of one Dr. Summerfield, I felt like a lovesick teenager, checking my phone every five minutes for signs of life from his end. With a curse, I tossed the device aside so I could concentrate long enough to finish my charting. What I’d done before clapping eyes on the man I couldn’t even recall, but I was bound and determined to start recalling it, fast. I had no use for myself in this state.
And what state is that, pray tell, Dr. Zane?
I shook my head, hoping to free myself from the inner nag-slash-therapist. After an hour’s worth of paperwork, I grabbed my backpack and headed out. The cold night air made me flinch and tug my scarf tighter around my neck and face. Without meaning to, I calculated that it had been a solid four days, going on five, since he’d done what I’d asked him to do by leaving me alone that night in the locker room. What in the hell did I expect of him anyway? Flowers? Text messages begging to be allowed back into my august presence again?
With a sigh, I slid behind the wheel of my car and fired it up, waiting for the seat warmers to do their best. As I rubbed my gloved hands together and shivered, half out of actual cold, half out of anger at myself, I heard my phone buzz from the front pocket of my backpack. I cursed under my breath and dragged it out, willing it not be the nurse’s desk, telling me so-and-so couldn’t make it in and could I cover a few more hours. If I had to go back into that hell hole I called a workplace right now, I would scream, or puke. Or both.
When I saw who was calling, I froze with the device only part of the way pulled from the bag. I stared at the name for a few seconds, long enough to establish that I wasn’t dreaming. When I put the thing to my ear, my voice came out raspy as if I’d just woken up with a head cold.
“Hello?”
“Hi, Lil,” Ian said. “I’m lonely.”
Tears burned my eyes. I put a hand over them and replied, “Oh? And who’s fault is that?” I couldn’t help myself. Suppressing my inner snark-meister would require more energy than I possessed at the moment.
“Yours.” His low, rumbling voice settled deep in my chest and sent warm tendrils shooting out to all my extremities.
“Really. You’re the one turning ignoring me into a gold-medal event for yourself.”
“You always this bitchy when a guy who misses you calls and admits it?”
I sighed and looked up at the roof of my now-cozy car. “No. I’m sorry.”
“Ladies and gents, can I get that on repeat?” He chuckled, which made my chapped lips turn upward in a smile. The beat of silence only made me more eager to get to him, to see him, smell him, taste him. “I really have missed you. I mean, parts of me more than others perhaps, but you know what I mean.”
“I do. Parts of me miss you more than others too.” This was a bald-faced lie. I missed Ian Summerfield with every fiber, tendon, and molecule of my lame-ass being. “You at home now?”
“Yeah.” His voice had dropped half an octave and taken on the rough edge that made me shiver again.
“I’ll be there in forty. But I warn you, I’m going to need a shower first. Just came off a double.” By the time I had the car pointed down the ramp toward the exit, the Bluetooth kicked in, and Ian’s melodious, unforgettable voice rolled through my expensive speakers.
“I’ll draw a bath, pour some wine, and give you a massage afterward.”
I grinned at the guy at the ticket window. “Oh yeah? And what do you want in exchange? I mean, that’s serious sucking up activity right there.”
“The key word is ‘suck,’ hot stuff. See you in a few.”
I was about to answer in kind, but he’d hung up. I made the trip to downtown Detroit in thirty-six minutes exactly, risking all manner of speeding tickets on the way. As I was about to ring the doorbell, his door flew open. With a wicked grin, Ian grabbed me by the front of my scrub shirt and dragged me inside. The sensation of being back in his arms was almost more than I could stand. I yanked his shirt up and over his head, even as he was doing the same to me. He had my loosely tied work pants off me in an eye blink and stepped out of his jeans all without taking his lips off mine.
“God, Lil.” He sighed as he began kissing his way down my neck, pausing only to unhook my bra and let it drop to the floor. Every inch of my skin burned either at his touch or with a need to have his touch on it. This was hands down the most terrifying, wonderful, awful, fantastic moment of my life.
The scruff of his beard rasped my face as he kissed me again, holding me up against the wall next to his front door, both of us too eager for this connection to make it any further into the room. His hands were all over me—down my arms, between my legs, on my nipples, my shoulders, my face. I was no better. I couldn’t stop running my fingers down his muscular back, gripping his firm ass, then moving back up to tangle them in his hair.
“Jesus,” I gasped at one point when he was busy sucking a hickey on the super sensitive spot where my neck joined my shoulder. “Ian…wait…we should…oh…God.” He shifted his hips and grabbed one of my legs, hiking it up to his waist like some kind of horny animal. My kind of horny animal.
We both groaned as he shoved his cock into me, thrusting so hard the small of my back scraped against the wall. “I…need this…” he whispered into my ear before biting my earlobe. “Lil…talk to me.”
I grinned into his sweaty neck. “Fuck me, baby. Fuck me with that giant cock.” I dug my fingertips into his ass. “Faster, God damn it. I wanna feel how bad you need to come. I wanna taste it in the back of my throat when you blow inside me. Give it to me, Ian.” I leaned back, my body near the edge of its own orgasm and caught his eye. “Give it to me now.”
He had one hand propped on the wall near my face, the other one still clutching my leg. But his eyes locked onto on mine as the lower half of his body moved in a sinuous, definitive rhythm. I blinked fast, somewhat uncomfortable with the intensity of his gaze until I understood that I was doing the same thing. “Kiss me,” I whispered. “Kiss me when you come inside me.”
He lowered his lips to mine. I moved higher up his body so I could wrap both my legs around his waist. He groaned low in his throat even as he kissed me, pulling my tongue into his mouth and sucking on it, hard. I clung to him, breaking the kiss and crying out into the darkened room when the climax gripped my spine, making me shudder and spasm against his slick torso.
His hips kept moving, banging me up against the wall until he grunted and gave one last shove, spilling into me as he captured my lips once more, kissing me even as he filled my body, exactly the way I’d commanded him to do. I had my arms around his neck, my ankles hooked together around his hips. His fingers had a death grip on my ass. And still, our bodies moved together, working in a primal fashion toward a common goal as our breathing calmed and sweat began to dry on our skin.
“My hip hurts,” I whispered once I’d collected myself and realized that my left leg was screaming in agony.
“Oh. Sorry.” He moved back, making me wince when my damp skin stuck to the wall behind me. “Fuck…I’m….that was…” He eased me down to my feet, gripping my elbow when I nearly fell over, thanks to paresthesia. “God…”
I brushed sweaty strands of hair off my face and leaned into him. “That was exactly what this doctor ordered.”
“Yeah. Well…I had this whole seduction thing set up…” He pointed toward the bathroom where steam rolled out from a hot bath, and I could smell candles burning. “Guess I’m more worked-up teenager than smooth grown man right now.” He ran a hand through his hair and grinned at me. “You have turned me into that, ya wee lass.” He let his brogue deepen, something he knew I liked.
I molded my body against his, loving how perfect it felt, ignoring the warning alarm bells clanging in my head about this whole thing. The past four and a half days had been pure misery. That had to be a sign of something—something real, something I could and should allow myself to accept.
God knows I’d missed having sex, but the way he’d looked at me while we’d been making love—ok, fucking like overwrought hyenas—against the wall just now had touched a never-before-reached nerve somewhere inside me. And now, it was twanging away, demanding that I hold him close, never leave here, never let him out of my sight.
Weird.
I let go of him and headed for the kitchen for a drink of water, my thighs shaking and my head clear. As I was pouring a second helping, it struck me. I turned to face him as he stood, stock-still next to the tall granite island, his mouth hanging open. “Forgot the condom,” I said, trying to keep my voice light since it was obvious that he’d had the same lightning bolt realization. “But it’s ok, remember? I take the shot. I’m good.” I sipped.
“Yeah.” He swiped a shaking hand across his lips. “And we’re clean.”
“Yep,” I said, putting the glass down and sliding back into his arms. I touched my tongue to his neck, tasting the delicious saltiness of his skin.
“And you’re caught up. On the shot I mean? I had patients who’d forget to come in no matter how many times we’d send out reminders.” He kept his lips on my hair as he spoke.
“Yes, I would never forget to take…it.” He heard the hesitation before I even acknowledged it myself. Gripping my upper arms, he peeled away and glared at me. “What?” But I knew what. My brain was spinning as I tried to recall if, indeed, I had not missed my appointment for the stupid birth control shot.
“God damn it, Lil.”
We glared at each other even as the smell of the sex we’d just had permeated the air around us—accusatory now, as opposed to erotic afterglow. I jerked my arms out of his grasp and headed for the bathroom to clean up, still trying desperately to recall if I were, at this moment, pregnant. Well, I knew it wouldn’t be “this moment.” I was a doctor, after all. His swimmers had to have some time to reach their target—my fat, juicy, eager and un-hormonally stunted egg.
I slammed the door behind me for no good reason. It wasn’t his fault I was such a great doctor for other people but forgot the most basic of my own care. My face hot with anxiety, I dragged a damp washcloth between my legs before I tossed it into the hamper. The tub sat full of warm water, with floating flower petals surrounded by flickering candles that cast strange shadows across my face as I stared at myself in the mirror. With a shrug, I decided to avail myself of the damn thing and leave Dr. Worry Wart to stew.
The water enveloped me like a glove. The light-scented aroma of the crystals he’d dissolved in it filled my nose. I sighed and draped a fresh washcloth over my eyes as my muscles unwound and my brain began to clear. I sat there for at least twenty minutes before realizing that an apology or something like it wasn’t about to materialize. I got out, dried off and wrapped myself in a large towel.
I emerged from the steamy room, relaxed, yet on guard for whatever might be waiting for me mood-wise on the other side.
“Ian,” I called. “Where are you?”
“In here.” His voice was tight but not angry-sounding. When I found him sitting at his raised eating counter, staring at an open bottle of red wine and two empty glasses, my heart contracted in my chest. Something else new, I thought, as I dropped into the chair opposite him and put my hands over his.
“I’m not pregnant, all right? Relax.”
He wouldn’t look at me. I could sense his tension as if it were my own, muscles bunched under skin, joints tight, jaw constricted. “Megan was an accident,” he said through clenched teeth. “I wasn’t ready to be a father. We’d both just started our fellowships—two tough ones, OB/GYN for me and plastics for her.”
I flinched. “Your ex-wife is a—”
Ian held up a palm. I clapped my lips shut.
“She was on the pill and ‘forgot’ to take it a couple of times.” He hooked his fingers around ‘forgot’ as I tried to get him to meet my gaze so I could gauge where he was going with this. “I insisted that we should terminate. That it made zero sense for us to try and raise a child right then—if ever.” He crossed his arms on the table and dropped his forehead onto them.
I touched his shoulder, now covered in a brewery-labeled T. “Trust me, Ian, I would terminate.”
His head shot up from his arms. He grabbed my arms and pulled me close, dragging me down onto his lap. “But that’s the thing, Lil. I don’t…I mean if you are pregnant, I don’t want you to terminate. I want to have a baby with you.”
I let him kiss my hair and run his hands up and down my arms before I broke away and stood, clutching the towel close around me. “I don’t want to have one.”
He sucked in a breath.
“I mean, maybe this is some kind of fucked-up karma so you’ll know how it feels to be told something like this, but I assure you that if I’m standing here on the verge of being pregnant, I will terminate. I don’t want a kid. I’ve never wanted kids. I can’t—” My throat closed up on me as my mind spilled over with memories of my own horrible childhood—ignored by my mother, abused and made to feel guilty for the abuse by my grandmother.
I wouldn’t know what to do with a baby, much less a toddler or a little kid. My knees were shaking, so I sat and leaned forward, my elbows on the table. “I’m sure I’m not pregnant, okay? Let’s eat and stop talking about it.”
That night, after he made love to me a second time—slow, with plenty of time spent on every inch of me, before I rolled him onto his back and did my own pleasuring with my fingers and lips and tongue—he held me close, his fingertips trailing down my bare arm, drawing goose bumps in their wake. “It wouldn’t be so bad, you know. I could stay home and be the dad, this time for real.”
I clenched my eyes shut and willed myself to have just forgotten that I’d dropped in at the gyno and had that stupid shot last month. Even as I was drifting off, I got the oddest vision—one that would haunt me in the weeks to come in ways that almost drove me stark raving mad. Ian was in his big leather recliner, dressed only in jeans with a tiny bundle of a human being curled into his bare chest. He was smiling at me, his giant hand cupping the infant’s backside as he—I knew it had to be a he—snoozed away, comforted by the feel of his father’s skin, by the rhythmic thumping of his father’s heart under his own.
Chapter Seven
Six Weeks Later
“Hey, psst….Jen, can you do me a ginormous favor right now?”
I motioned for the emergency department’s PA to join me in the women’s restroom. She glanced around, pointed at herself and mouthed “Me?” I nodded. She tucked her tablet under one arm and came in, her face wary. No wonder. I was usually a total raving bitch to these poor underlings, and I knew it. But she didn’t really know the real me, or steadfastly refused to acknowledge it, being the relentless positive person that she was—so I’d decided to target her for my scheme.
I was pregnant. I knew it like I knew the color of my own eyes. I could feel my very pores opening up, my lungs expanding, my hair growing, especially the last week or ten days, which I’d obsessively tracked using one of my old textbooks from med school. I wasn’t sick or anything, either in mornings or any other time of the day, but I was starting to crave naps around three p.m. and the last two nights had eaten double my usual share of pasta, veggies, and tofu for dinner.
All innocuous B.S. but still…something deep in my soul knew it was true. The scary part was, I wasn’t counting days to a termination. I was counting weeks and anticipating how each trimester would affect my ability to work.
In short, I was losing my ever-loving mind. But I felt jacked up, energized in a way I never had, even back in med school days when I survived on taurine-laden energy drinks and uppers. All that, plus the energy I spent keeping the whole thing from him, a doctor whose job was once caring for women in my condition, provided a total leveling up of the ante, as it were. I wasn’t going to be able to hide it much longer, that much was certain.
I’d never peed on the stick to prove otherwise to him. I just kept insisting that I knew myself, that I’d know it if things were altering inside me to transform my body into maternal mode. The fact that for the past four nights, I’d been like an insatiable succubus, demanding more frequent and intense orgasms from him—something he’d been happy to oblige until last night, when he’d dragged into the condo, after a long day spent wrangling junkies at the methadone clinic. We’d had a nasty fight. Me telling him he was wasting his talents stuffing addicts full of drugs that would only lengthen their addiction, and they were all doomed anyway. Him blurting out that I was a selfish cunt—something I whole-heartedly agreed with, at least lately.
I’d broken the détente by climbing up into his lap and snuggling, wiggling my ass just enough to entice him. We’d ended that night on the floor of his living room, me riding him like a circus pony until he’d grabbed my wrists and yelled, “What is wrong with you anyway?” I’d responded by lifting myself up off his cock and sucking it, tasting myself, which contained a tang of something new and interesting and a dead giveaway to my condition, until he came down my throat with a loud roar of satisfaction.
After that, I’d decided a bit of subterfuge was in order. Hence my current position, holding out a pregnancy test stick to a woman who I knew was not married and had no boyfriend, at least according to the ED gossip machine. “Will you pee on this for me?”
