An Indecent Longing

by Stephanie Julian

  What happens when she decides two men are too much?

  Would he step back?

  He hadn’t known Dorrie as long as Ian had, but given the opportunity…

  Hell, best not even to think about that.

  Getting out of the car, he headed for the building, growling his name to the guard at the desk before heading up the elevator. But his brain wouldn’t shut down.

  Get out now. Before it’s too late.

  Everything in him rejected that idea. He’d made his military career out of stepping into situations, not stepping back.

  And if Ian decides he wants her for himself…?

  His jaw set as the elevator door opened. Taking a deep breath, Ben stepped off the elevator and shook his head, trying to clear it.

  Get a grip.

  Yeah, that would be a good thing. He’d like to get a grip on Dorrie, grab her by the hips, and pull her tight against him as he settled his mouth on hers. He liked the way she froze and then melted against him when he kissed her, as if she were giving herself over to him.

  He wondered if she did the same with Ian, wondered if Ian felt that same surrender.

  Shit.

  Pushing through the door to her office, he followed the sound of voices to the back and found Ian resting against the wall outside a door marked private. Ian’s gaze narrowed when he caught sight of Ben. “Hey. Everything okay?”

  Ben met Ian’s gaze. “Yeah. Is she ready to go?”

  Ian knew him too well. “What’s wrong? Something happen?”

  Yeah. I’m an idiot. “No. Talked to the guy who dropped her off. Apparently she’s one of Antonoff’s favorites so we’d better not let anything happen to her.”

  Which was absolutely the wrong thing to say to Ian. His cousin’s gaze narrowed and anger flared.

  Goddammit. Should’ve kept my fucking mouth shut.

  “What else did he say?”

  “Nothing. I’m just ready to have her out of sight for the night.”

  Ian’s brows rose. “It’s only two-thirty.”

  “Don’t care. My neck fucking itches.”

  Which didn’t mean he needed to scratch it. It meant something was going to happen. Years of military training had given him an extra sense where danger was concerned. He’d only been wrong a couple of times. And then only when a crisis had barely been averted.

  Ian didn’t answer right away, just stared at Ben through narrowed eyes.

  “Yeah, that’s not it.”

  “Fuck you. I’m fine.”

  Ian’s eyes widened even more. “Okay, now I know you’re not fine.”

  Ben sighed. “Look, we can talk later, okay? Like I said, my neck’s itchy. Let’s get the hell out of here before I decide I need to pull my gun.”

  “Ben—”

  The door opened and Dorrie stepped out, followed by a slow-moving Blank.

  Her smile when she saw them made the constriction around Ben’s chest ease. From the short time he’d known her, he’d realized she didn’t smile often or easily. That she did for them…

  “Hi. I didn’t know you were here yet.”

  “Just got here.” Ian nodded at Blank. “Glad to see you’re up.”

  Blank nodded, his gaze going between the three of them. “Good to be up. Dorrie said you’re gonna be filling in for me for a few days.”

  The way the guy said it made Ben’s back stiffen. Almost like a warning. What the hell was it about Dorrie that made the men in her life treat her like she was spun glass?

  Then again, maybe he was projecting. How the hell had she managed to fuck with his head in only two days? And how the hell was he supposed to deal with this and keep her safe?

  Ian shot Ben a quick glance before responding. Probably because Ben was usually the one to handle this part. The talking part. Not that Ian couldn’t. But when he did, he usually fucked it up. But Ben wasn’t sure he could think of anything to say that wasn’t “Fuck you” or “Fuck off.”

  And that wasn’t like him.

  “You need a ride back to your place?”

  Blank’s mouth actually quirked into an almost-smile. “Nah, I got a ride. But thanks for the offer.”

  “Are they waiting downstairs?” Dorrie frowned. “You can’t drive. Not—”

  “Dorrie.” Blank stared at her. “I got a ride. I’ll be fine.”

  Her lips and her nose wrinkled but finally she sighed. “Fine. We’ll walk you down.”

  Ben restrained himself from throwing his hands in the air and crying, “Hallelujah.”

  But just barely.

  *

  “And they haven’t touched you at all? Not once? All week?”

  “I mean, other than brushing against me accidently, no. I don’t have any idea what’s going on.”

  On the other end of the phone, Risa went silent but Dorrie could hear her sister tapping her perfectly manicured nails on something hard.

  Dorrie looked down at her own hand, currently drawn into a fist and clenched around a pen. She’d been writing reports in longhand, which usually put her in a Zen state.

  Not so much today.

  “Risa?”

  “Hmm. I’m thinking. You’re sure nothing happened? Did you say something that could’ve been misconstrued as you not wanting to have sex?”

  “That would mean we’d actually have to have a conversation. I mean, it’s not like they’re ignoring me. They talk to me. They ask me how my day went and what I want to eat for dinner and what I want to watch at night. But then I go to bed at ten and they say good night and watch me walk up the stairs. It’s almost like they’ve decided I’m off limits. But then Ian stares at me like I’m a steak and he’s starving or Ben smiles at me and I think, ‘Oh, good, he’s going to make a move,’ but he never does.”

  “Have you made a move on them?”

  Dorrie was glad her sister couldn’t see her now, sticking her tongue out at her like a two-year-old. “Of course not. What if they’re done with me? What if they don’t want me anymore?”

  Ugh, it even hurt her heart to say the words.

  Risa huffed. “No way. It probably has to do with the fact that Daddy hired them for a job. They don’t want to get their hands caught in the cookie jar.”

  “Huh?”

  “I mean,” Risa dragged that last word out to at least five syllables, “they don’t want to be unprofessional. They were hired to protect your ass, not fuck it.”

  Heat flashed through Dorrie and her brain started flashing images from the other night through her head. Then images from a night that hadn’t happened yet. A night she really wanted to happen.

  “Dorrie? Did I lose you?”

  “No, I’m here.”

  “Why do you sound like you’ve swallowed a gallon of drain cleaner?”

  She cleared her throat. “I have no idea.”

  “You’re thinking about sex, aren’t you?”

  “Well, yeah. That’s what we were talking about.”

  “Maybe you just have to ask them for it.”

  “Right. I’ll just say, ‘Hey, would you both like to get naked and have sex? Or maybe you could switch off nights?’ What if they don’t want me anymore? What if they had me and now they want to move on but they can’t because the local crime lord paid them to guard me? What if—”

  “Whoa, sis. Slow your roll—”

  “—they think I’m not worth the trouble? I’m not even sure they’d make a move if I stripped naked and spread myself out on the dining room table during dinner. They’d probably throw a tablecloth over me and decide to eat in front of the TV in the living room.”

  Risa laughed. And couldn’t seem to stop. She laughed so hard, she actually snorted, which made her laugh even harder.

  “I’m glad you’re so amused by my plight. Where are you, anyway?” Dorrie unclenched her fist from around her pen and dropped it onto her desk. “Obviously somewhere no one can see you.”

  “I’m at home. Dad has me under lockdown. He hasn’t said anything sinc
e Sunday, but I’m pretty sure he’s gotten some pretty graphic threats about me.”

  “Are you worried? I mean, if he’s this freaked out, maybe something’s really wrong.”

  “I don’t have a clue. I only know that it makes him overly twitchy if I even hint about going out so I’ve spent most of the past three days stuck in the house. I’m going stir crazy so I want us to meet for lunch tomorrow. Can you make it? We can talk about your little problem some more and maybe come up with a plan to get at least one of those men in your bed.”

  “Are you sure we shouldn’t wait until he gets this situation under control?”

  “Absolutely not. If we wait until life is safe, we’ll never do anything.”

  Risa had been telling Dorrie that variation on a theme for the past ten years at least. But for the first time in her life, Dorrie thought she actually might be tempted to take the advice.

  “Tomorrow. The Lazarus?”

  “No. I’ll get a suite at Haven. It’ll be safer. Tell your guys you’re meeting a private patient and make them wait by the door. We’ve gotten away with it before. We’ll be fine.”

  “Fine but—” Her phone chimed in her ear and she pulled it away to look at the screen. And grimaced. “Hey, I gotta take this. I’ll see you tomorrow. Love you.”

  As soon as she picked up the other call, a man said, “Incoming. GSW to the leg. ETA five minutes.”

  She recognized the voice right away. One of her father’s oldest lieutenants, Matthew Kaverin handled the most dangerous aspects of the business. And the one aspect of her dad’s life she absolutely loathed.

  The drug trade.

  She also knew if her dad didn’t control it, someone else would. And that someone might not be as ruthless as her dad. He had strict rules for his dealers. No kids. No pregnant women. No dealing near schools or hospitals or churches.

  “Acknowledged.”

  The call cut off and Dorrie closed her eyes, shoving all the stuff in her brain into little compartments to deal with later.

  Then she headed out to patch up the drug dealer headed for her back room.

  *

  Ben had drawn the afternoon shift that Friday, so he was sitting in Dorrie’s reception area, keeping an eye on the security feed from the hallway on his tablet while he flipped through a magazine without seeing the pages.

  For the past four nights, Dorrie had slept in his bed. Alone.

  He told himself he and Ian had made the right choice by not sleeping with her until this situation was resolved. That they were more focused and that she was safer for it.

  Which was true.

  But Ben’s neck had been itching again. And he was pretty sure it had to do with that back door into her office.

  That door connected to a service hall that ran between the office suites and could only be accessed through a steel door inside the office suite, meaning someone inside the office would need to open it for access.

  It bothered him that he didn’t have access to that security feed on his tablet. So, every now and then, he’d walk down the hall there and take a look into that hall.

  He never saw anything suspicious. Or anyone at all, for that matter.

  But his neck kept itching.

  Since it’d been at least an hour since he’d moved from this chair, he figured he was due to stretch his legs. And check that hall again.

  Afterward, he returned to his seat. Ian had told him there’d been a steady stream of patients through the office all morning and Ben had figured it’d be the same this afternoon but around two, he heard the receptionist call two patients to reschedule their appointments for this afternoon.

  He’d been keeping track and knew she had two patients in the back. But within a couple of minutes of each other, they left.

  Which begged the question… Why did Dorrie need to clear her schedule?

  He considered asking the receptionist, a middle-aged woman who rarely smiled and had said fewer than twenty words to him the entire time he’d been there, if he could talk to Dorrie but he figured he’d get a glare and be told to sit and stay.

  Fuck it.

  He got up, stretched his arms over his head then walked to the desk and leaned against it with a smile. “Would you tell Dorrie I’d like to speak to her? It won’t take more than a couple of minutes.”

  The woman didn’t even look up. “Dr. Haverstick is in a consultation. I can’t disturb her and I don’t know when she’ll be finished.”

  Bullshit. Total fucking bullshit.

  Nurse Ratched gave blank face even better than Ian but she was lying through her teeth.

  Christ, had she left through that back door? He didn’t think she’d be so reckless but…

  “Look, I don’t know what she told you about why Ian and I are here, but her life is in danger and I want to make sure nothing happens to her. I need to know if she’s still in the back.”

  The woman’s expression might have softened a very little bit. “She has not left the office. If she contacts me, I’ll be sure to tell her you’ve asked.”

  And short of pushing by this woman and busting into Dorrie’s office, that was the best he could hope for.

  Forcing a smile, he thanked her and headed back to his chair. It was comfortable enough but now he felt like he could feel every spring poking into his ass.

  Then he gritted his teeth and prayed for patience.

  *

  “So how was your day?”

  Frowning, Dorrie turned her head to stare at Ben as she sat in the passenger seat of his car on the drive back to his home. Something in the tone of his voice made her stomach clench. And not in a good way.

  “It was fine. Why?”

  Except it hadn’t been fine. That gunshot wound had been worse than she’d expected, and getting the bleeding to stop had taken much more time than she’d liked. As it was, the guy should be in a hospital but if she admitted him, there’d be questions she couldn’t answer and lies she didn’t want to tell.

  “Your receptionist said you had a consult.” He shrugged. “Guess I’m just curious.”

  No, he wasn’t curious. He was fishing.

  Damn it. He knew something had happened this afternoon. She should’ve realized he was too smart not to notice she’d had no patients but hadn’t come out of her office.

  So tell him. He already knows who you work for.

  She also knew Ian had a huge issue with her dad. She just didn’t know what that was and she wasn’t sure if Ben had the same issue. Maybe Ben just hid his loathing of her dad better than Ian.

  This is the opening you’ve been looking for. Go ahead. Talk to him.

  And if she did and he became even more distant than he’d been the past week? She wasn’t sure she could handle that. She’d have to call her dad and make him hire someone else, which she knew he would do in a heartbeat.

  And then he’d want to know what Ian and Ben had done to deserve getting fired, and she couldn’t exactly tell him she was upset that they hadn’t touched her after she’d spent time in both their beds, separately and together.

  Oh my god, she might just dissolve into a puddle and die right then.

  “Dorrie? You okay? You look a little flushed.”

  More like mortified.

  Shaking her head, she made her lips move in an approximation of a smile. “Yes, I’m fine. Just a little warm.”

  She glanced at Ben, who didn’t look convinced. In fact, his expression looked pretty damn disbelieving. But it was July in the city and close to ninety degrees. Yes, the air conditioning was running but still…

  And that’s your guilt talking.

  It was. At least she could admit it to herself.

  Shaking her head, she sighed. “You know who I work for. One of his men needed to be stitched up. That’s what I was doing this afternoon.”

  After a few seconds, Ben unclenched his jaw enough to speak. “Does that happen a lot?”

  She sighed. She’d cracked open the door, might as well throw it open
as wide as she could. Maybe she’d actually feel better with this all out in the open.

  “It depends. If there’s something going on street-level, I could see ten or fifteen guys a week. Gunshots, knife wounds, broken bones, bruises, punctured lungs, I can deal with almost anything in-office except massive internal injuries. I don’t crack chests and I don’t make cuts more than a couple of inches long.”

  Several beats of silence passed.

  “And you’re okay with this setup?”

  “Yes.”

  She could tell he wanted to say something else but he managed not to. Probably because they’d reached his home.

  But when he’d closed the back door behind him and reset the alarm, he turned to her and she knew they were about to have a conversation she wasn’t entirely sure she could handle.

  She’d much rather strip naked and spread herself on the counter than have this conversation now.

  So she took a page out of her sister’s playbook and went on the offensive.

  “Is that the reason you haven’t laid a finger on me since Sunday?”

  Ben’s mouth dropped open for a split second before his eyes went wide. “Excuse me?”

  Sucking in a deep breath, she pushed on, trying to channel her sister’s confidence. “Is the reason you haven’t touched me since we had sex Sunday morning because you think I shouldn’t be working for Mr. Antonoff? Or is it because I’m now a client and off limits?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t—”

  “I’ve worked for him for years. I’ve stitched up more gunshot wounds than I ever saw during my rotations at the hospital. I’ve saved more than one man’s life because if he’d gone to an emergency room, those doctors might’ve pushed him farther down the wait list because no one would care if some shady low-life thug stopped breathing, right? Except they’re not all thugs. Did you know most of the men in m—Mr. Antonoff’s organization have families? Their children get sick, they come to me. Their wives have a lump in their breast, they come to me. I diagnose their mothers with Alzheimer’s and help them find a good private care nurse. Which he pays for. Did you know that?”

  “Dorrie, wait—”

  “I had a guy the other day. You’d see him on the street and cross three lanes of traffic to avoid him. He has a daughter who’s the most beautiful baby in the world. She needs diapers and food and maybe one day she’ll need medical care because she’s diagnosed with asthma.”