by Kenna Ryan
Jake sets his flowers on a table beside the door. He unwraps his hand slowly, in a delicious threat, and crosses the room without taking his eyes off me. “I won.”
My eyes close involuntarily at the purr in his words. Cool air prickles my back and the heat of him radiates through my towel. He smells like sin and spice. “What?” I murmur, fingers resting lightly on the back of his hand.
“Best three out of five,” he whispers against my ear. “I won and I know exactly what I want for my prize.”
Me. Oh Jesus in a rave club. Jake wants me.
“This isn’t–” I swallow, trying to scrape together rational thought. “This is not really happening.” Clearly, I drank too much Moscato and drowned myself in the tub; these are my last oxygen-deprived fantasies before I kick the bucket. “What about Jenny?”
Jake blinks. “Jenny Halverson?”
Now it’s my turn to blink. “Are there a lot of Jennys I should know about? A whole boatload?”
“No but she…she’s my real estate agent. Fifty-five, married…”
And I just assumed otherwise, based on nothing but nerves and a low protein breakfast. I’ll take ‘Self-Sabotage’ for five-hundred, Alex.
“Kate, what you said in the exam room–”
I press a hand over Jake’s mouth. If this is a deathbed hallucination, I want all I can get before my body gives out. I bury my face in the curve of his neck and inhale him. “I don’t want to talk. Don’t talk.” For once, not talking about something feels like the right decision.
Jake chuckles. “Still want to climb me like a tree?”
I drop my towel, nipples perking with anticipation. There isn’t room to be self-conscious; not now, not with him.
Jake looks me over, caressing the curve of my breast with a slow stroke. “Because I want to bury myself inside you and make you forget your name.”
His clothes cling to the dampness of my skin. Our lips brush in the barest first taste. “Say the word, Kate.
“Jake.”
“What?”
“Jake is the word.” The only one I know right now. “Put your hands on me.”
-Chapter Twelve-
Jake carries me to the bedroom and sets my bare feet on a rug made from unicorn hair or some other mythical creature, softer than anything known to man.
I reach under his shirt and grip his belt buckle. He stops me, fingers around my wrist. “It’s not going like that,” he practically growls. “I waited two years for this; it won’t be fast, Kate.”
I shiver at the promise in his words as much as his breath on my bare skin.
“Is it strange to think about a woman all the damn time for two years and then see her naked and just–” Jake shakes his head. “The fantasy should be perfect but reality… this is better than anything I ever imagined.”
“You thought about me?”
“Kate, look at you.” He runs his hands down my back and over my hips. I’ve watched him touch countless patients and wondered how it would feel, and now...he’s right. It’s better.
Jake slides his hands around me and pulls me to him. His palms run up my back. We’ve half-kissed, and it was clumsy and panicked. Still, when he cradles my face, I hold my breath and anticipate the best kiss of my life.
His fingers tangle in my damp hair, dig into the meat of my backside, and his mouth fits to mine hot and wet in the closest sensation possible to sex without penetration. Then his tongue fills my mouth and the difference becomes trivial. He tears a moan from some deep, primitive place inside me.
We kiss like we’re starving. Jake lets me undo the buttons on his shirt. It takes everything I have to slow down, make this last. The hard planes of his chest and stomach meet my palms with delicious resistance. Pressed cotton hangs up on his biceps. Jake wrestles the last few inches. A button pings off the wall.
“Ok,” Jake pants against my lips. “I know what I said, but–”
I grind his hard length into my belly until he groans. “Yeah, too slow.”
“Yeah.”
Jake drops to his knees. He brushes kisses over my belly and thighs. He runs his nose along the crease of my hip, inhaling bubble bath and my skin. “I fantasized about this.”
“When?” My voice is barely a whisper, waiting for his next move.
“This morning,” his laughter vibrates along my stomach and down my thighs. “And the night of the holiday party. You in my chair with those knee highs? Mm.” He cups my waist and pushes until I fall to the bed. Steady thumbs part me and the firm wet tip of his tongue strokes up my clit. The feeling is silky and electric; I’m halfway there already.
It’s too intense. I grab his hair and try to pull away. “Jake, Jake…”
“Don’t say no,” he pants against my inner thigh. “You can’t, Kate. Not now.”
For once he isn’t the alpha; he isn’t the boss. He’s begging me.
I twine my legs around his neck and fall back on the marshmallow quilts. “Please, please.” It’s the only word I know besides his name. His lips roll my little magic bud and I raise from the bed, coming against his mouth. Jake slips his tongue inside and I ride out waves of sharp bliss as he fucks me with it.
“Stand up,” I gasp. When he doesn’t obey, I twist free and push him back with my foot. “Up.”
He licks his lips. “Kiss me first. Taste yourself on me.”
I struggle up and clutch his face and suck the taste of my pussy from his bottom lip. “Christ, Kate,” he utters. “I don’t know how I survived you for so long.”
The feeling is so mutual. “Stand up,” I say again.
Jake gets to his feet, an unapologetic bulge in his jeans. I take my time with his belt; it’s a turn-on I can’t explain, like unlocking a door to something forbidden.
“I want you in my mouth.”
Jake makes an animal sound, burying fingers in my hair. I tug his waistband, bringing him between my knees. Unzip, pull, jerk; I strip him to the knees in a fluid move of desperation.
His cock springs free, rock hard and beautiful. I grip his thick shaft and squeeze until he whimpers. His response wrecks the last of my inhibition. “While we’re swapping fantasies, sometimes I look at you while we’re in your office during lunch, and I imagine how easy it’d be to close the door and just…” I give him one long stroke, loving the way his knees buckle.
“To just what?” he grunts. “I don’t understand.”
I punish him for his teasing.
His pulsing head is salty against my tongue. I run a wet line along the underside of his shaft, digging, flicking his firm ridge.
Letting him past my lips is a mistake. Jake loses control, twists my hair and drives into my throat. I let him use my mouth, loving that he has the illusion of control and I have all the power. I prove it to him when I lock my lips and suck the tip of his cock without allowing more.
“It’s so good, Kate. So fucking good, but–” He bucks again, filling me until I can’t breathe, until my eyes water. He’s going to feel so damn good inside me.
“Condom?” I murmur between licks.
Jake shakes his head, eyes squeezed shut.
Dammit. “I don’t have anything.”
“That’s not what I mean.” He rasps out a laugh. “Didn’t get through the basket?”
Now feels like an embarrassing time to admit I stopped looking when I found cookies.
It’s a race for the other side of the bed where the basket fell forgotten long minutes ago.
“Do you remember the exam gloves?”
“What?” I don’t remember anything right now. My focus is on the aching need between my thighs.
“This morning when you didn’t wear the gloves. So trusting, so damn intimate. The day is going to come when I fuck you without one.”
I shiver at the promise in his voice and the implication.
“But for now…” Jake holds up the little foil packet, amber eyes molten and grin wicked as the devil. “Want to?”
“No thanks. I
practiced on the banana in Anatomy.”
He holds the condom out further, entreating me. “Will you judge me if I admit it checks a box?”
I want to know all his check boxes, all his fetishes. “Just go around getting women to glove up that gorgeous cock so–”
He claps a hand over my mouth. “You. Just you, Kate.”
This gets me wet all over again. My hands shake opening the package.
His girth strains the latex. My roll-job isn’t even a little deft. And the whole time I think about him being in me seconds from now.
“What does it for you, Kate? Woman on top?” he asks, already dropping to the bed and bracing me with an arm.
“Not this time. This time…” I flip fully onto my back and Jake settles his weight between my knees.
He drags my arms over my head and swirls his tongue around my taut nipple. “This time what?”
I raise my hips in a silent plea for him to fill me.
“Say it. I want to hear you say it.”
The alphahole is back. I love it. “I want you inside me. Fuck me, Jake.”
He swears, writhing his hips until his tip is poised hot and solid against my entrance.
“Feel what you do to me?” Jake grips my wrists tighter. “This is you, Kate.”
“Then we’re even. Give it to me.” I fight his restraints and his restraint, twisting.
Jake buries himself in one deep thrust. We cry out together. He’s almost too much, and the sting is a new point of pleasure.
For a long moment neither of us move. He throbs inside and my body pulses around his, and the whole time we gaze into each other’s eyes. I don’t feel like there’s anywhere on Earth I’m meant to be as much as in his arms.
“Jake…”
He takes my mouth with rough hunger and my body at the same moment. I raise for every inch. Jake rocks, deceptively slow. When I grip his ass, asking for more, I realize just how much he’s held back.
Jake drives into me rough and quick, thrusting a cry. The ridge of bone above his cock grinds my clit. This is the beginning of the end.
“Harder; oh god, harder.” He does exactly what I asked.
Our bed bangs the wall and I’m so grateful there’s no room on the other side.
“It’s everything, everything and more,” I moan against his jaw. My hands slip along the sweat of his back.
Jake loses all control. He punishes me and I open for it. Trembling starts where his cock strikes deep inside. It spreads to my thighs, my belly. Pleasure ignites and explodes. “Jake, Jake…”
I feel his nod, a short snap that says he feels it, too. He’s there.
He digs his hands under my ass, lashing me to his wild thrusts. I twine myself around him with shaking arms and legs.
Orgasm tears through me, spreading from my body to Jake’s like a wildfire. We cry out our satisfaction into each other’s mouth in a crushing, perfect kiss.
-Chapter Thirteen-
I surface from sleep to a dark bedroom. It’s disorienting, the city lights far off through the window, the smell of lavender and sex with no markers to tell me where I am or what time it is.
My eyes adjust slowly. Jake’s sprawled on the bed beside me, a boyish tousle of hair across his forehead. His breath comes in soft snores. I don’t blame him; I’m sore, a little banged up, and barely able to keep my eyes open. We used up half the condoms, all the bath salts, and then rest of the condoms.
And we fell asleep without knowing more about what we’re doing here than when he showed up in my room. Too desperate, too lost to each other’s bodies. It was all that made sense in the moment, but now reality taps its foot, waiting.
I know two things watching him sleep beside me: This is the best thing ever, and… like it or not, my life has moved on. Every part of it except my body is in Georgetown.
And also that Jake mentioned he’s thought of me a hundred times over the last two years, but he didn’t once get into the feelings. He definitely didn’t profess his undying love.
Wake him up. Talk to him.
There’s that voice, and this time I know I ought to listen. But I also remember deep in my heart how that went with Scott. Seeing him again this morning scuffed a lingering scab off an old wound.
It was bad enough when I thought Jake was oblivious to my feelings. Now I know he knew; he felt it, and he didn’t even make a move like I did in his car.
I run a knuckle from his forehead to his chin, tracing his profile. I’m not angry; he didn’t do anything wrong. I mean, I played my hand so close to my chest for so long, can I blame him for thinking I only wanted a hookup?
If I wake him up now and he rejects me… that’s it. That’s the last straw before I slide into permanent existence as a crazy cat lady. With Scott, rejection crushed me. With Jake, it would end me.
His skin smells like me when I lean in to brush a kiss over his cheek. No, I’m not upset. This was the most perfect fantasy; a beautiful suite, a gorgeous doctor, and the most incredible night of my life.
Plus, he practically broke his hand defending me, and he still used it to get me off about sixteen times. I brush his mussed hair. Absolute hero.
Jake doesn’t stir when I slip from bed. Part of me thinks I’m a coward, but that’s only true if Jake didn’t know the lay of the land when he showed up here today. When he switched my reservation. When he left me wine and a jumbo-pack of condoms.
I dig through the desk in our suite’s front room, grabbing stationery and a pen. There are a few last things I have to say, things I need him to understand when he wakes up.
As great as our time together was, I think Jake and I were finally honest with each other. That’s the second-best part of tonight.
-Chapter Fourteen-
Monday comes faster than it should, hurried on by finding my way around a new city and settling into the noises and spaces of a new place.
And if you’re wondering, yes. Tom brought me my stuff and a Bed, Bath & Beyond gift card. I had my lucky scrubs and stethoscope for my first day at the St. Francis Emergency Department. I try not to think about what I don’t have, but morning rounds just magnify that I’m in an unfamiliar place and he’s not here.
Shaylene, my nurse-supervisor, has spent the first two hours of our shift showing me the ropes, giving a tour of our massive department and demonstrating all the systems we use to treat patients, chart patients. This department must be four times the size of Maple Hills. It makes my old clinic look like a janitor’s closet. The idea sounds cozy right about now.
We’re passing the nurse’s station when Shaylene’s work phone goes off. She gives it a passing glance and rolls her eyes. “Girl, I tell you what,” she says to me. “Some people are gonna try you around here, so learn to pray for patience. Or to throwdown and run fast.”
I raise a curious eyebrow, but she doesn’t expand on the issue. Instead she points to a handsome, mid-fifties, balding surgeon with his feet up on the station’s low counter. “Dr. Gregory’s gonna take it from here. I’ll be back, though, so you better not lose her and you better be nice.” Shaylene points at him on this last word, brown eyes wide enough to make a point.
I love her so much already that I forget to miss my old team for a second. Only for a second, though. Ashley would give Shaylene a good-natured run for her sass-money. Rhonda would have checked on me twelve times and tried to feed me just as often.
Jake would have handed me coffee just the way I take it and asked with rare unprofessionalism if I’m ready to wake, slay, horseplay.
Dr. Gregory raises his palms. “Am I ever not nice, Shaylene?”
“Hmph. Gregory, don’t play. You know I ain’t got time for it. I’ll be back!” She shouts the last part to me, or maybe to him as a warning, and hustles off through a traffic jam of breakfast carts, equipment, and other nurses.
Gregory smacks the counter and stands up. “Alright, kiddo. I do things a little different than Shaylene. No mama-bird routine.” He grabs a charting clipboard from
beside the intake computer and thrusts it at me. “Trauma 1. Get after it.”
“Trauma? You mean exam…”
He leans into me. “Trauma. We do trial by fire here.”
I’m confident Shaylene does not do trial by fire, but she’s not here to save me. “I don’t know where anything is or how to log into EMR or–”
He shrugs. “This is a very busy hospital, and if you can’t hack it–”
“I can! I can.” I grab the clipboard. “If I’m not back in five minutes–”
Gregory falls into his chair again. “I’ll wait longer.”
I make sure I’m out of ear shot before I mutter what I think of him.
Flipping through the chart notes causes me to trip on a cord. I tangle in the curtain and almost drop my station phone. I’m still fumbling it out when I waltz drunkenly into Trauma 1.
Lacerations? Fracture? The notes don’t make any sense. “Why does it say no–”
“No amputation?” Jake sits on the end of the gurney, swinging his legs like a little kid. He raises his still-bruised hand. “Because I’d like to keep it. And if you could keep the gel to a minimum… I prefer to be lubed up in other ways.”
My heart beats a mile a minute, joy and confusion and maybe a teeny drop of lust rushing in my blood.
He’s here. After everything, he’s here. I try to conjure up all the fear and hesitation that kept me away, but it’s a shadow now.
I turn and look behind me. I turn in a slow circle and look everywhere. “What are you doing here?”
“Gregory was my mentor when I was a resident. He helped me pull a few strings.”
“I mean, why?”
“Your note. Your note was the ass-kicking I needed.”
“Oh my god.” My laughter bounces around the room.
Jake slides from the gurney onto one knee and holds out a crimson velvet box.
“Oh… my god.” This time I don’t laugh.
He opens it to reveal the most beautiful…
Set of keys?
“Kate… will you condo with me?”
That’s why he was talking with Jenny the Real Estate Agent. Knowing this doesn’t help my immediate confusion. Or my minor annoyance. “What does that mean?”
