Glen laughed. “Girl, you’re full of shit. I saw the way Murphy looked at you in the cafeteria the other night, like he wanted to spread you out and eat you like a PB&J. And I saw the way you got all blushy and tongue-tied when you were talking to him. And then you went to his office for some reason, and the talk around the place is you two made out in there. And this morning he asked me if you were on duty and looked wretched when I said you weren’t, so don’t tell me it wasn’t you on the footpath with him.”
Well, crap.
Bebe dropped into the armchair like a lead balloon. “It wasn’t me with him on the footpath,” she said, except it sounded like she was talking through a bucket of sand.
“Sure, okay.”
No way Glen was convinced.
“Can you tell Lyndal to stop telling people it was me?” Lyndal. An image of a tall nurse with long red hair and killer cheekbones filled Bebe’s head. Ahhh, that’s who Lyndal was; the nurse who’d spent ages describing what she thought getting kissed by Erik would be like.
“I’ll tell her you said it wasn’t you,” Glen agreed. “Even though I don’t believe you.”
Bebe let out a sigh and slumped back into the chair. Holy crap, what did she do? What the hell did she do? “Why would someone like Dr. Murphy have anything to do with me, Glen?” Maybe she could reason with her. “I mean, seriously. You know what he looks like. And doesn’t he date all these tall, thin, gorgeous women all over Perth? You told me that, didn’t you?”
Glen had told Bebe that. Stupidly, Bebe had totally forgotten about it until now. And if Erik constantly dated tall, thin, gorgeous women, what the hell was he doing with her? Was she just his…frumpy phase?
Crap. Again. Times a hundred.
Her stomach clenched, and she rubbed at her face. She felt sick. Scared, nervous, and sick. And confused. So freaking confused.
She’d had it all sorted out in her head after leaving the cafe: Erik would come to her after his dinner, they’d make love, and then tomorrow he’d tell her he wanted to see her again and again, and she’d say yes, and they’d make love some more, and then months later they’d let everyone know they were together, and then maybe he’d even ask her to—
“Bebe?”
Goddamn it, Erik had spent the last six months dating stunning single woman after stunning single woman.
What was the deal?
Perhaps this was just his M.O.? If she’d never gone into his office the night before last, if she’d never turned up at his door this afternoon, would they…would he…?
Her stomach clenched again. Had he just taken advantage of the fact she’d damn near thrown herself at him? She had. She’d just knocked on his door and asked him to kiss her. She’d freaking gone to his place and undressed in front of him, for Pete’s sake. It wasn’t like he’d chased after her, or told her he was interested in her or anything. She’d done the complete opposite of playing hard to get.
What if he’d just gone along for the ride, one she’d initiated? What if he was currently laughing about the stupid young nurse who threw herself at him, bragging about how she believed all his bullshit, and how easy she was to—
“Bebe!”
Bebe gasped, Glen’s shout in her ear painfully loud. “What?”
“I’ve been talking to you.”
Rubbing at her eyes, Bebe swallowed the sick lump trying to make its way up her throat. “Sorry. What did you say?”
“I said, you need a reality check. You may not be tall and stick-thin, but you are beautiful and smart and fearless, even though you try to keep that last side of you squashed. And I’ve seen the way Dr. Murphy looks at you. So, if it wasn’t you he was making out with on the footpath, I’d bet a hundred bucks he wishes it was you.”
“You’re insane.” Where had all the breath in her lungs gone?
“Maybe. But I know what I’ve seen.”
“I have to go.” This conversation was sending her crazy. She needed…needed…to get her head read? Possibly. “I need to get ready for work tonight.”
Her shift started at ten. Damn it, she’d forgotten that as well when she’d told Erik to come around after he’d finished with dinner. Of course, that was before she remembered about all his other women, so chances were he’d never come here anyway. Goddamn it, could she be any more of an idiot?
Perhaps she needed to start looking for nursing positions somewhere else? Somewhere not Perth. Maybe the Ukraine had great hospitals?
“Bebe?”
She paused, mobile phone an inch from her ear. “Yeah?”
Silence. And then Glen let out a sigh. “Nothing. I’ll tell Lyndal is wasn’t you, okay?”
“Thanks.” The word cracked. Damn it. “See you later.”
She ended the call, dropped her phone onto the coffee table, and shoved herself from the armchair. First things first: she needed chocolate. Then she would take the longest shower she could.
Maybe, if she was really lucky, she’d wash herself down the drain.
She didn’t, damn it. Forty-five minutes’ worth of standing under the water and nadda. All that time and she was still a completely and somewhat soggy confused and conflicted twenty-four-year-old.
“Fine,” she muttered, stomping her way into the kitchen, wrapped only in a fluffy green towel. “Chocolate it is.”
She shoved the last four Maltesers in the packet into her mouth as she poured herself a massive glass of water.
Glaring at the inoffensive, boring liquid, she reached for the remote. Getting good and drunk was out of the question; she had to be at work in a couple of hours, but damn a glass of wine would have taken some of the edge off. Not even expensive wine—what first-year nurse could afford the expensive stuff? But just a glass. Chocolate would have been perfect for the moment, but she didn’t have any more left in the cupboard and she was too damn attached to her towel to get out of it and hit the supermarket.
Plus, there’s the chance Erik could arrive…
She really needed to stop being a deluded fool.
Firing up the television, she settled in for an hour or so of Netflix distraction. Her normal play book when wanting to be distracted was to find the worst-looking movie available on Netflix—a D-grade horror, or something with Nicolas Cage in it—and press play. Instead, she decided on a Scrubs binge. She needed the laugh, and Zach Braff was funny and cute in a dorky kind of way.
It didn’t work. Three episodes in and she couldn’t remember a single thing J.D., Turk and the rest of the Sacred Heart staff had done.
Great. So Erik had ruined her for sitcoms. Excellent. Maybe if she got out of her towel—
“Nope,” she muttered, glaring at the TV as she wriggled deeper into her chair. “Not getting out of my towel.”
She persisted with Netflix, jumping from Scrubs to some movie about killer ants that invade a small town populated by people who deserved to be attacked by killer ants.
Yeah. This was better. At least she wasn’t constantly thinking about—
On the coffee table, her phone pinged with an incoming message.
Her heart smashed into her throat. Erik?
No. Glen.
“Damn it.” Oh God, she needed to get a grip.
Taking a deep breath, she read Glen’s message.
Just told Lyndal it wasn’t you. She said it 100% was you. Not only did she see your face, she described the dress you were wearing, and I know you own that exact dress because it’s the one you wore to the mixer we went to when we first started at Central Perth. So it is you, and denying it’s not isn’t working. Why would you deny it? Unless you’re trying to keep it a secret, and if that’s the case, you two need to pick way more private places to kiss. So again, I say, I need details! What’s he like between the sheets? I bet he’s amazing. Call me. I’m just going to keep bugging you until you do. K. xo
She read the message twice.
Scrunched up her eyes, counted to ten, read the message again, and then turned off her phone, and threw herself fr
om the chair.
“Damn it,” she muttered once more.
She needed a distraction. A big one. A ten-inch, lube-coated silicon distraction that required four AAs batteries to make it work.
If nothing else, she could lie back and pretend she was coming with Erik, the way she used to before everything in her world changed. Deluded she may be, but she’d own it.
If the only way Erik would ever make her come again was via her own vibrator-enhanced fantasies, so be it.
At least no one would ever see her kissing the thing outside of a cafe, right?
* * * *
Hell. He was in hell.
He’d been to more than one dinner with the hospital board, more than one important function for the purpose of bringing in more benefactor money for Central Perth, but never had he been so disinterested in being there.
The food was delicious, the accompanying wine the same. The conversation was intelligent and career focussed, and covered medical and science advancement, political situations…like all previous dinners with the hospital board.
The specialists schmoozed as only highly educated surgeons and specialists could.
Not even ninety minutes in, and Erik was over it.
He studied the wine glass in his hand, half raised to his mouth as he absently nodded at whatever the hell Franco Ponte, board member number five, was saying.
He wanted to have conversations about movies, and books, and food, and whatever Bebe wanted to talk about.
He wanted to hear her thoughts on why Captain America was better than Batman. He wanted to hear her thoughts on dogs versus cats, and cake versus pie, and…and…
What the hell was he doing there? This was not where he wanted to be.
“Sorry.” He placed his glass on the table and straightened from his chair. “I’ve got to go.”
Ponte blinked up at him. The global property investor liked to be fawned over. Expected it, in fact. “Go where?”
From the other side of table and a few seats down, Brogan Whittaker frowned at Erik.
What are you doing? Whittaker mouthed.
Dropping him a wink, Erik buttoned his suit jacket and strode from the room.
His mobile vibrated in his pocket a few steps out of the function room. Withdrawing it, he chuckled at the message from Whittaker on the screen:
I have an idea where you’re going. If I’m correct, you’d better have fun.
Did Whittaker know where he was headed? Did he care?
Did Erik care if he did?
“Nope.” He hurried to his car, buckled himself in and hightailed it to Bebe’s place. To hell with the speed limit.
Only one light burned in the windows of her apartment when he pulled to a stop in front of it.
Was she home?
He looked around the area. She lived in a Perth suburb where quite a few of the first-and second-year nurses and interns lived, one with low rental fees or inexpensive houses. If he were to stand there for a while, there’d be a very high chance of someone from Central Perth Hospital seeing him.
A part of him wanted to do just that, the part that wanted everyone to know Bebe was his.
The rest of him, however, just wanted to be in there with her.
Her apartment complex didn’t have an elevator. No matter. He took the stairs two at a time. Knocked on her door.
“Coming,” she yelled from inside.
His chest tightened. She sounded flustered. Why?
A few long seconds later, the door was flung open and Bebe stood on the other side, wearing nothing but a green towel and a surprised expression. “What are you—”
He snaked his arm around her waist, yanked her to his body and crushed her lips with his.
For a split second she didn’t react—and then she did.
Her palms flattened to his chest and she pushed. Hard.
“What…?” A cold fist twisted in his gut as his arms slid from her body.
She stepped backward, adjusted her towel, and then crossed her arms over her breasts. “How long have you been interested in me, Dr. Murphy?”
Dr. Murphy? The cold fist twisted some more.
“From the first time I saw you,” he said. “Why?”
What the hell had happened in the short time he’d been at the dinner?
She studied him, her expression impossible to read. “Because in the six months I’ve been at Central Perth, you’ve dated a string of women. And I don’t look anything like them.”
“What do you mean, you don’t look anything like them?”
She let out a ragged sigh. “I don’t look like your type, Erik. So I’m wondering why—”
“Why, if I’ve wanted you for six months, I’ve never made a move?”
She nodded. Uncertainty shone in her eyes. Christ, it cut to see it there.
Mouth dry, he released his own shaky breath and rubbed at the back of his neck. “My father is a grade-A prick, Bebe. He indulges every whim his ego has ever fed him, including fucking his way through the nurses of every hospital he’s worked in. He’s a brilliant surgeon and a narcissistic bastard. His hedonistic, selfish ways have destroyed my mother. I promised myself I would never be like him, so I set myself rules and I live by them. Ever since I graduated from med school, the most hard-and-fast rule has been no relationships with anyone at the hospitals where I work. Until you came along, I’ve never broke that rule. Never wanted to break that rule.”
She chewed at her bottom lip again, searching his eyes. “And the other women? The tall, thin, beautiful women?”
“Aren’t you.” Christ, how could he make her understand? “And from the second I saw you, I only ever wanted you.”
“So you dated other women to…what? Try to forget me?”
He ground his teeth. No wonder she was angry. When she said it aloud, it sounded inexcusable. Reprehensible. “I was worried my feelings for you were obvious. So I tried to…throw people off.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Throw people off. Screw other women when you really wanted to screw me?”
“No.”
“What do you mean, no?”
His chest tightened. “I never slept with any of the women I dated, Bebe. Not one of them. All they got from me at the end of dinner was a kiss on the cheek, if that.”
She studied him, expression indecipherable.
“From the moment I saw you, six months ago, I wanted no one else.”
“But you didn’t have me.”
“So I had no one.”
She blinked. “Bullshit.”
He puffed out another breath. “Bebe, I’ve wanted you for a long time. And as ridiculous as it sounds, I think I’ve fallen in love with you already. And I hope, maybe, you might one day feel the—”
She closed the distance between them in a single, purposeful step, wrapped her arms around his neck, pressed her stomach and hips to his, and kissed him.
A demanding, possessive kiss.
He kissed her back, hungrier than ever for her, and then pulled away, his lips moist and instantly craving hers again. “Bebe.” He smoothed his hands up her back. “There’s one other thing you need to understand.”
“What?” she whispered.
“You are beautiful. You are more beautiful than all of those women I took to dinner, more beautiful than any other woman I’ve ever met or known.”
The words were the most truthful he’d ever spoken. They came from his soul.
She stared at him.
“Do you understand?” he asked. Christ, he needed her to understand. To believe him.
She shook her head, her lips curling. Mischief danced in her eyes. “No, but I’m not going to complain about you saying it.”
With a low chuckle, he kissed her again. Deeper this time. Longer.
She kissed him back, her hands burying in his hair, her towel barely maintaining its grip around her body. Something needed to be done about that. He needed it gone entirely. She needed to be naked. Now.
Sliding his tongu
e against hers, he dragged his hands down to where the material hugged her breasts and tugged.
She broke the kiss and took a step back just as the fluffy green towel fell to the floor.
“Christ, Bebe,” he murmured. “You are stunning. Gorgeous. So beautiful.”
Her full, round breasts heaved as she sucked in a breath. “Thank you.”
He raised his stare to hers and drew in his own breath. “So beautiful, so sexy…and so mine.”
Her pupils dilated. “Yours,” she whispered, trailing the fingers of her left hand over her nipple.
Christ, he couldn’t control himself any longer.
He closed the door behind him and reached for her. “Any wall in particular you’d like me to slam you against?” he asked, slipping his hands over the lush curves of her hips. Her skin was warm and soft and velvety smooth.
Her eyes twinkled. “The closest one.”
“Done.”
He checked out the wall beside them, made sure there was nothing in the way—and then threw her against it. Hard. Forcefully. As close to a slam as he could get without hurting her.
She yelped out a laugh, the sound turning to a gasp as he captured one of her glorious breasts with an ungentle hand and closed his lips on the flesh of her neck. He sucked on her skin, the need to brand her, mark her as his, a powerful force he had no damn chance of denying.
She writhed against him, rolling her hips before wrapping a leg around one of his. Her naked pussy pressed to his groin, and he groaned, eager to be inside her.
But first, she needed to come.
Slipping his free hand between their bodies, he found her clit and wet folds.
“Oh God, Erik,” she moaned, arching.
He rolled his finger over the tiny button and she moaned again, tugging at his hair. Christ, he loved the way she did that. Moving his lips up to her earlobe, he nipped on the fleshy pad, and then traced his tongue over the lines of her ear. “I’m going to make you come, baby. Pull my hair as much as you want.”
Her throaty laugh turned into a throatier moan as he sank two fingers into her pussy.
Her hand fisted in his hair and she thrust her hips forward, taking his fingers deeper into her. His cock—already swollen and rigid—grew stiffer at her wet, contracting heat.
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