by Cara McKenna
“Good, good, good,” I heard him muttering as I came down, a panting mantra set to the rhythm of his hips. “Fuck, here.” He grabbed my hand and forced it between my legs. I felt the smooth, wet crown of his cock for one thrust, two, then he jammed his body against mine, hot come filling my cupped palm. His breaths heated my neck in tight bursts, and I heard every tiny sound of his lips and tongue as he swallowed.
He pulled away. I scanned the floor, then wiped my hand on my tee shirt, sobering instantly. When I sat up I found Kelly stretched on his back, cock hidden by his underwear once more. I hadn’t even gotten a look at it.
“Well,” I said.
“Well.”
I cleared my throat and smoothed my wild hair, and hoped I sounded casual. “Guess you do get what you want, after all. I stand corrected.”
He didn’t reply, just shut his eyes and smiled some mysterious little Kelly smile. I studied his body in the warm, low light, watched this confounding, gorgeous, frightening animal resting on my covers.
“You seem like you should have a tattoo,” I told him. “A massive one.”
His eyes opened. “What? And let some asshole draw on my skin, and have to live with it the rest of my life if he fucks it up?”
“Just saying. It’d go with the motif.” I leaned close, skimmed my palm over his bristly hair, traced his ear, drew my thumbnail down the scar that ran the length of his throat. It felt thrilling and dangerous, like stroking a lounging panther. “Where did you get this? On the ward?”
“No, when I worked in the pen.”
“Oh good. I mean, not good, but . . . You know.”
Kelly yawned and shut his eyes.
“Don’t you dare fall asleep on my bed. It’s barely big enough for one reasonable-sized person.”
And he was on his feet a moment later, gathering his clothes, nearly making me regret the quip.
I tucked my legs beneath the covers, watching. What on earth had I just done? With a coworker, aided by exactly no alcohol? But a girl doesn’t need a drink with a body like that fogging her senses, I thought, fascinated by the flex of his shoulders as he hiked up his pants.
“Find whatever you needed when you decided to turn up and bother me again?” I asked.
“My needs are simple. Same as any man.”
Liar. You came here because of whatever happened with Don. He’d come here for sex, but not for sex’s sake. For something else, something I’d likely never know. You’re not as simple as you wish you were, Kelly Robak.
He zipped his jeans. “A man needs meat, sleep, and pussy, to keep from going insane. Not always in that order.”
My jaw dropped. I yanked the covers up to my neck and glared at him.
“You spoiled my view.”
I glared harder, and Kelly sighed. “Don’t give me that look, like we ever said this was anything more than exactly what it was.”
“Don’t you flatter yourself into believing that’s why I’m annoyed. But you’re just going to lump me in with a steak and a nap and expect me not to be insulted?”
“I don’t mind being the same to you.” He tugged his shirt down his chest, then stooped to get his socks and shoes on. “Never said women didn’t have the same kinds of needs. Color me flattered you deemed my cock worthy of the job.” He straightened.
I rolled my eyes, so hard I nearly pulled something. “Get out of my room, Kelly. I’ll see you at work.”
“See you right here,” he said, tapping his temple, “when I retire all alone to my cold, empty bed in a half hour.”
I gave him a mightily peeved look to remember me by. Kelly just smiled, then turned and closed the door behind him.
Fuckity fuck fuck.
Chapter Five
Morning came way too soon. I overslept, having been too distracted by my colossal mistake to remember to set my alarm, but it was a blessing. I had barely any time to lament what had happened between scrambling to the shower, scrambling into my clothes, and scrambling across the road and through the grounds to Starling, in dire need of coffee.
I didn’t run into Kelly until the hand-off meeting. Ignoring him was a tempting idea, but too cowardly. Ignoring what had happened was better, so I did my best to act like this was any old meeting, that he was any old coworker. Not one who’d made me come twice, then pretty much told me I’d merely been the most convenient pussy on hand to satisfy his caveman appetites.
Nope, that guy across the circle was just Kelly, an orderly who happened to work on the same ward as me.
The previous evening his gash had been the worst of it, but overnight a nasty greenish-purple bruise had bloomed around the cut. I was trying my level best not to study it and get caught staring, when Dr. Morris, the senior psychiatrist on duty, gave a curt, doleful sigh, and said, “So, most of you have heard, I’m sure, that Don made a suicide attempt last night.”
A few stoic nods, but I froze, only my lids able to move, blinking their surprise.
Why on earth had Kelly not told me? Not the hottest foreplay ever, I grant you, but you’d think he’d have mentioned it.
Jenny picked up the topic. “We don’t know how, but he got hold of a metal letter opener—”
The group collectively winced and grimaced.
“I know, I know. So please, be extra mindful. Guys, stay vigilant during those room searches. Kel, you saw him this morning, right?”
Kelly nodded. “He’s still groggy. Couldn’t tell you how he’s feeling.”
With Kelly talking, I had a fine excuse to stare at his bruise and cut. He’d got that wrestling the next best thing to a knife out of Don’s hand. It suddenly looked so . . . obscene.
“How real was it?” another orderly asked.
“He was serious,” Kelly said. “He was already bleeding when I showed up—he wasn’t sitting there with the thing at his wrist, waiting for someone to walk in on his big production. He was real pissed to see me.”
My angst toward Kelly faded. He’d come to me after finding his favorite resident in the midst of a suicide attempt, after he’d gotten his temple slashed with the weapon of choice, probably already slick from another man’s blood.
It sucked, feeling used. But it couldn’t have sucked half as bad as whatever Kelly had been feeling when he came to me, needing sexual medicating. I just had to make it clear I wasn’t here to be anybody’s soothing distraction. No man’s jab of temporary calm, infatuation or not.
“So Don’s going to be spending his day with the docs,” Jenny said, with a nod toward Dr. Morris. “We’ll have a couple guys on him, in shifts, but Kel, I want you to sit this one out.”
If you blinked, you’d have missed Kelly’s response. A fly’s wingbeat of overt annoyance, a narrowing of his eyes and hardening of his brow, then it was gone. “Sure.”
“Best we don’t chance letting him see that little souvenir he gave you. Once he’s lucid he’ll be primed to look for reasons to beat himself up over this.”
“You got it.”
The meeting wrapped and it was time for morning meds, residents arriving to queue beyond the large square painted on the floor before the nurses’ station window, the patients’ so-called “zone of privacy.” My heart thumped hard when it was Lonnie’s turn to approach. He’d avoided me my second day, dodged me like I’d been the business end of a skunk. “Not the apologetic type,” Jenny had told me. But today he looked right in my eyes with his magnified ones, and I looked right back, and smiled pleasantly, finding his pill cup and sliding it over. “Good morning, Lonnie.”
“Yeah, morning.” He filled a paper cone from the water cooler.
“Do you have any questions about your medication?”
Nothing.
Jenny asked, “How we feeling today, Lonnie?”
He swallowed his pills and slid the crum
pled, empty cone through the slot before shuffling off.
“Not talkative, that’s for sure,” I said.
“He won’t be, with you, not after what happened on Monday. Not for a while. Consider it his version of a sorry.”
Deep in my scrubs’ hip pocket, I felt my phone vibrate. I told myself to ignore it, wisely wary about letting myself get distracted while meds were being distributed and logged. But between careful notes and morning greetings, a thought slipped through.
What if it’s Kelly? A text or something.
Saying what? “Thanks for the pussy?” He doesn’t even have your number.
He could have gotten it from someplace. Same as he found out my birthday and my room number.
You shouldn’t give a shit, so you better at least act like you don’t. Let him wait.
It was I who ended up waiting, though, nibbling my psychic fingernails to the quick for an hour before I got a chance to check my phone. And it wasn’t Kelly; it was Amber.
Marco coming today, the text said. Don’t think it’s going to be good. Are you working?
Ah, fuck. Translated by someone who’s known Amber her entire life, that text said, Marco’s coming and I’m fucking terrified. Come fix this.
I texted back a quick, When? and waited for the longest ninety seconds ever for her reply. Noon, I think. On his lunch break.
Well, he had a job—that was a new development. But the fact that Amber was freaked-out now, before he’d even arrived, wasn’t good. If she wasn’t really worried, she’d welcome the drama, be more than happy for him to show up so she could make a big scene. This was bad.
I had to go.
No. Not in the middle of work. I needed boundaries.
But Amber needed me, and family came first. I was the only one she had. If I didn’t come running, nobody would.
“Jenny?” I asked as we reorganized the meds.
“Yup.”
“Is there any chance I could take my lunch break off campus?” Our lunches weren’t technically off-the-clock. We took them in shifts during the patients’ lunch period, and at least a couple of nurses needed to hang near the dining area, for emergencies.
She thought a moment. “That should be fine. I don’t think anyone else requested leave. Check the board, though.”
“Great. Thanks.” I bit my tongue, temped to overexplain. Like she needed to hear about my family issues, on top of the crises she was paid to give a shit about.
The morning passed way too slowly. Kelly was on the ward, and if he felt adrift without Don there to keep an eye on, he didn’t let you know it. I glanced at him every now and then, but I felt hardly anything—only the faintest glimmer of lust, a shadow of regret. Worries about Amber’s bad choices eclipsed my own.
So I’d fucked up and screwed around with my hyper-macho coworker. The boyfriend who’d once shaken Amber so hard she’d had to wear a neck brace for a week was coming over, and not for the latest of a thousand drunken, weepy apologies, from the look of her text.
The second the lunchtime meds were prepped and Jenny gave me the go-ahead, I was bolting down the halls and across campus to the apartment complex. It was twenty-five minutes’ drive to Amber’s, which meant if I sped, I had just enough time to grab her and Jack and pile them in my car and bring them back here, if things looked really bad.
My tires squeaked as I peeled out of my space, taking the speed bump at the exit so fast I bit my lip open. I tasted blood all the way to Amber’s and saw red when I pulled up and spotted Marco’s stupid, shiny, ’roided-out pickup parked next to her sun-bleached Cavalier. Three months he was behind on Jack’s child support, but his rims looked new. Probably never missed a truck payment. The fucking priorities.
Parking next to him, I slammed my door so hard I almost lost my footing on Amber’s gravel drive. I heard the argument before I caught sight of either of them, and whipped the screen door open, sending it bouncing off the siding with a rattle.
“Erin?” Amber called.
“Yeah.” I found them in the kitchen, standing rigidly on either side of the counter, Jack hugged to Amber’s hip, huge blue eyes full of confusion. I wanted to take him in my arms and shut those perfect little lids on all this.
Amber’s eyes were just as huge. Skinny legs in a too-short jean skirt, dirty-blond hair a wet tangle, flip-flops on her feet. Still my baby sister, in so many ways. She looked pissed, but not hurt or scared. Marco looked like the douche he was, nearly tall and nearly muscular, nearly shaved head. Like you’d left Kelly out in the sun for a week to soften and grow tan.
“Hey, Erin,” Marco said, gaze on my sister.
“What are you doing here?”
He did that thing I hate, sucking a snorting, snotty breath through his nose, a glimmer of the fat old townie he’d one day become. “Had some business to discuss with Amber. And to see my son.”
Don’t say it, I beamed to Amber. But I could see on her face, even my little instigator wasn’t calling Marco’s paternity into question, not today. Good girl.
“He thinks I’m seeing some guy he knows,” Amber said. “Some guy I’ve never even met, just because his stupid drunk friend thought he saw us together at some bar.”
“He wasn’t drunk. And it was you. I know that pink sweatshirt he said you was wearing.”
“He’s met me twice. How’s he supposed to fucking pick me out of a fucking lineup?”
I shot Amber a look. Don’t you fucking dare turn my nephew into one of those little shits who drops F-bombs before the training wheels have even come off his bike. He was her son, though, not mine. Her little barnacle, stuck following her into murky waters, same as we were Mom’s.
“You should go,” I told Marco. “Even if she was seeing someone, it’s none of your business. Your business is to pay child support and be a good role model for your son.” In my head, the studio audience roared with laughter.
“Don’t act like you get to boss me around, just ’cause you’re wearing those scrubs. You’re not a doctor and everyone fucking knows it.”
“Don’t act like you get to push my sister around, just because you’re bigger than her.”
“Er’n,” Jack interjected, reaching out a chubby arm and breaking my already banged-up heart.
“Hi, baby.”
“I ain’t touched her,” Marco said.
Not today, maybe.
“If you said what you needed to, just go, Marco.”
He took a couple backward steps toward the door, shouting past me. “I better not hear nothin’ about you and him.”
“You better not be threatening me,” Amber shot back, ignoring my telepathic commands that she keep her mouth shut, keep him moving toward the exit.
I matched Marco pace for pace, corralling him to the front of the house. “It was obviously a misunderstanding. Confront the guy about it, not the mother of your kid. Okay?”
“I will,” he said, nodding. “Don’t think I won’t.”
“Great. Fine.”
He reached the door and shoved it open. I followed, Amber and Jack a few paces behind me. “I have to head back, the second he’s gone,” I told her over my shoulder.
“Really?”
“Sorry. But yeah. It’s my first week and I can’t lose this job.”
She shot me a bratty, beseeching look but I saw resignation in her eyes. She stayed on the front stoop. Jack was thrashing, wanting to follow his dad or me. Amber set him down, holding his hand tight. I walked down to the driveway a few steps behind Marco, ever the bouncer.
He opened his door, leaning his meaty arm on the top of the window as he called, “Fucking pathetic, calling your sister to back you up.”
My eyes narrowed. “Pathetic that she should need to.”
“Fuck you, Erin. You love this, don’t you? Pl
aying mommy. Feeling all important. Bet you’d take the kid if you could. But he’s my son. Don’t you fucking forget that.”
My temper was fraying. Amber-words were begging to be said. Mom-words, impulsive and baiting. Don’t you fucking jump to any conclusions about who his father is, you worthless sack. “Just be a good guy. Chill out and send her the money.”
“I’m a good dad.”
Oh yeah, father of the frigging year. I locked my arms over my chest on the other side of his door. “Don’t let her wind you up,” I said quietly, changing my strategy.
It earned me a relaxing of his bunched shoulders, a softening of his features. If I didn’t hate his guts so much, I could’ve admitted he was actually pretty handsome.
“She knows just what buttons to push,” he said.
“I know that.” I knew them, too, I just chose not to do the pushing. “You’re a dad now. You have to control your own buttons.”
For just a second, I thought I’d calmed him down. Then his expression went dark as a flash thunderstorm. “I’m a grown man. I don’t need no advice from you. You never gave me a chance, not since the first time I met you.”
I couldn’t help it. I laughed. The smallest, meanest sound, plucked right from Amber’s mouth. “The first time I met you, you got wasted and called my little sister a bitch when she asked you to clean up a beer you spilled.”
“I was drunk.”
“Exactly, Marco. Exactly.” I shook my head. “Get back to work. Congratulations on landing a job.” I’d meant the last remark sincerely, but given the conversational context, I couldn’t fault him for misconstruing.
“Fuck you, Erin.”
I tossed my hands up and turned away, done with him. I dug my keys from my scrubs’ pocket.
“Yeah, that’s right. Play your little part. Little Miss Better Than Everyone. Like you didn’t grow up with the same slut mom your little slut sister did.”
I whirled around, the world gone crimson as a stab wound. “Get the fuck out of here,” I said, so quiet and slow and deadly I gave myself chills.
