by Virna DePaul
“I don’t understand why you’re calling,” she said, her voice clipped and tense. “I certainly don’t understand what has changed that you’re now apologizing for your behavior and wanting to meet up after all this time. The only decent thing you did, Samuel, was leave Graton’s to spare me having to work with you and Christina, and now you’re applying for Marcus’s position—”
I tried to quietly turn without crinkling the plastic bag the game was inside.
“I don’t care that you and Christina are no longer together.”
I tip-toed away from her office as quickly and silently as I could.
“No, Samuel, I’m sorry, I just don’t believe that you’ve changed all of a sudden. No—Listen— Jesus.” Lauren’s voice got louder as she approached her office door, likely to shut it for more privacy. “Well, I don’t want that. Please don’t call me again. Ryan?”
I sheepishly turned around like a child caught trying to sneak away with a cookie from the cookie jar. She stood in her open office doorway.
“Sorry,” I said, following her back inside. “I didn’t mean to listen, I just—”
“It’s fine,” she brushed her hair back and tossed her phone into a drawer of her desk. “It was nothing.”
I felt my mouth go dry at how good she looked in a simple navy blue shift dress. I could just catch the magnificent curves of her body under her unbuttoned lab coat.
“Should be a pretty quiet night unless there’s an emergency,” she said, grabbing a medical file and flipping it open.
“Well,” I grinned as I pulled out the game. “I was hoping for such a night.”
Lauren looked up and stared at the box before turning to me with a raised eyebrow.
“Care for a little friendly wager?”
* * *
“So, if I win, you’ll stop pursuing me and we will forever just be Dr. Castle and Dr. Decker who only see each other outside of work if we happen to run into each other at Trader Joe’s or the movies on a Saturday night with our respective dates?”
I nodded as I lowered the heart into the chest cavity of the Operation dude.
“But if I win,” I said, looking up at her with a smile, “I get a date.”
“Just one date?”
“That’s all I need to hook you.”
I winked and she rolled her eyes.
We sat together on the floor behind the front desk of the third floor. I passed over the little pair of pliers.
“Ladies first.”
She lowered the pliers down to the board toward the funny bone in the right arm. I grinned when I spotted her tongue dart out of the corner of her mouth as she focused on grabbing the plastic bone without touching the metal pliers to the metal sides.
“You do that in actual surgery, you know.”
She kept her eyes on the board. “Do what?”
“Stick your tongue out.”
Her head snapped up. “I do not!”
I laughed. “You were just doing it. You had your tongue out.”
“I do not stick my tongue out when I—”
The buzzer of the game sounded, loud and brash, and Lauren swore.
“Tough luck,” I said, taking the pliers from her for my turn.
She leaned back against the filing cabinet and crossed her arms.
“Oh, is that how it’s going to be?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
I had to try to remove the ‘writer’s cramp’, a toothpick thin plastic pencil in the left forearm of whatever this poor guy’s name was. It was a tricky one for sure and I tried to clear my mind before lowering the pliers. Gentle touch, gentle touch. I had the pencil in my grasp. I was raising it up, up, almost there and—
“Careful.”
My hand jerked when Lauren spoke and the buzzer grated my ears, wailing, Defeat, defeat, defeat.
I looked up at her to find a face of complete and utter innocence. “What the hell was that?”
Lauren held out her hand for the pliers, shrugged, and said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Oh, it was on. It was on. Lauren winked at me before lowering her head to the board. She’d never get the Adam’s apple. Not if I had anything to say about it.
“Bad angle. Oh, Dr. Decker, terrible, terrible angle.”
“I have over ten years of experience in the operating room,” she said, her tongue cutely poking out again from the corner of her lips, “I think I know what I’m doing.”
“Impressive.” I waited till she had the pliers tentatively around the apple before adding, “Ten years ago I was graduating high school.”
The buzzer went off just as I knew it would and I laughed as Lauren glared at me.
She pointed the pliers at me, “I’m coming for you, Dr. Castle.”
I smiled. “I sure hope so.”
She was quiet and the light-heartedness of the game fell away for a moment as she looked at me, really looked at me. There was a connection between us. I knew it. I knew it was there even if Lauren was reluctant to acknowledge it, scared to acknowledge it. I opened my mouth to tell her so, but then she shook her head, smiled, and tossed over the pliers.
“Take your turn,” she grinned. “Or are you scared?”
“Oh, I’m not scared.” Surprisingly, I wasn’t talking about the game.
It hit me like a tsunami—I really liked Lauren. I liked working with her. I liked playing with her. I absolutely liked fucking her. And I wasn’t scared of the prospect of something forming between us. Something that might be more than casual. I wasn’t sure if that would happen. I didn’t want to jump into things, not after Callie. And certainly not given our work situation. Lauren was already determined not to go there with me, and for good reason, so if I was going to truly pursue something more with her, I needed to make damn sure I was willing to go the long haul to convince her I was worth the risk she’d be taking by giving me a chance.
I stared at Lauren for a few seconds too long because she tilted her head. “What?”
I cleared my throat. “Um nothing. Just thinking about how I’m going to take you down.” I focused my attention on the cute plastic butterfly representing butterflies in the stomach and this time Lauren’s taunting didn’t stop me from successfully pulling the piece.
“Fuck,” she mumbled, when I held up the butterfly.
She failed on the ‘writer’s cramp’ pencil and despite some impressive trash talking, I removed the Charlie Horse from the poor dude’s leg. The Adam’s apple again gave her problems as the buzzer signaled her defeat. She groaned when I pulled free the collar bone.
“Hmm,” I said, handing over the pliers. “Where, oh where, do I want to take you on our date? So many options for our date. What should I wear for our date?”
I rubbed my hands together in victory when Lauren once again failed to extract the ‘writer’s cramp’.
One more piece, one more ‘successful operation’ and I won.
“Don’t get cocky quite yet, Ryan, honey.”
I laughed, but there was something in her voice. I studied her as she smiled and tapped her fingers against her knee.
“You’re planning something,” I said, wary of her calm, easy smile.
“Are you going to play or what?”
With one last look to see if I could somehow read her thoughts, I lowered the pliers to the board. I needed to focus. There was nothing she could say or do that would throw me off. She was grasping at straws. She knew she was going to lose and this was a last weak effort.
“I thought about you last night,” Lauren said, her voice casual.
“That’s nice,” I said, pliers around the bread basket in the guy’s gut.
“While touching myself.”
The bread basket slipped from my pliers and they bumped up against the guy’s metal insides, eliciting that awful blare.
“Oh,” I breathed. “That was dirty.”
She grinned at me. “So dirty.”
&nbs
p; I think I blacked out at the image of her alone, pleasuring herself, using the memory of me to get off. The next thing I knew Lauren was dropping the rubber band that connected the ankle bone to the knee bone in her palm.
I took the pliers. I knew her game now, I assured myself. Just the spare ribs and I was done.
“I was naked,” she whispered. “In my mind I let you watch me get naked.”
Block her out, Ryan. Block her out. Spare ribs. Spare ribs.
“I got on my hands and knees for you.”
The buzzer went off and I cursed. Lauren laughed, took the pliers, and pulled out the fucking bread basket. Fuck, fuck, fuck. The funny bone. The funny bone was easy, I told myself.
Lauren leaned over so her lips were just a few inches from my ear.
“In my mind,” she whispered, “you took me from behind.”
It was impossible to focus on a white plastic bone when she filled my mind with an entirely different bone pounding into her with her on her hands and knees.
“You grabbed a handful of my hair.”
My hand quivered as I shifted my position.
“You slapped my ass.”
I had it. I had the funny bone. I made it through fucking medical school. I could fucking do this.
“I can still feel the sting.”
I just had to lift it up now. Straight up. It wasn’t hard. Not hard like my cock in Lauren’s pussy. No, Ryan. Focus.
“I came screaming your name.”
With a moan, I blocked Lauren’s seductive whispers from my mind and pulled the toy free.
“Ha!”
“Shit,” Lauren laughed, leaning back with a smile. “I really thought I had you.”
I grinned. “Sounds like I had you.”
“I wish,” she said, then her eyes widened at what she’d said. “No, wait, I didn’t mean—”
I held up my hand. “It’s okay, Lauren. If we do anything, we’ll only do what you’re comfortable with. And anytime you need me to back off, I will. So even though I won—no, wait, even though I crushed you, I won’t hold you to going on a date with me. Okay?”
She took a deep breath, then released it. “Okay. Thank you.”
I started to pack up the game when she stopped me with a hand over mine.
“Ryan?”
“Yes?”
She tapped her finger against the box and studied my face, like some sort of 20s detective. With her blunt, black bob I could see her as an undercover detective dressed as a flapper. I didn’t know where that fantasy came from. But I liked it.
“When did you purchase this game?” she prodded.
“This morning.”
“This morning?”
“Yes.”
I felt myself wilting under the interrogation.
“Why was the packaging already removed?”
“Oh, um,” I rubbed the back of my neck. “No recycling at the hospital.”
“There’s recycling.” She frowned though there was light in her eyes. “Did you perhaps practice playing before our shift?”
I feigned being insulted. “What? How dare you?”
“So that’s a no?”
“That’s a no.”
Her hand moved to rest lightly on my knee and I knew I was caving.
“Maybe just a little bit,” I admitted.
“How much is a little bit?”
Her hand traveled further up my leg.
“Just a couple minutes.”
“A couple minutes?”
Up, up, up.
“Ok, just a little longer than a few minutes.”
“Emhmm.”
I shifted my lab coat over my crotch as I felt her touch getting a reaction from my dick. “I played for just one hour,” I said, hissing as her hand sent shivers through me. “Just one hour.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Fine, fine,” I playfully whined. “I played all afternoon, okay? Is that what you want to hear? I practiced till I had to come in for work so I knew I wouldn’t lose. You win.”
Lauren smiled sweetly and her hand stilled as she leaned over and placed her lips right by my ear.
“Dr. Castle,” she whispered. I could smell her hair and it was doing nothing to relieve the pressure in my quickly tightening pants. “You hustled me. And if you worked that hard to do it, you deserve a date. So bring it.”
Then she was pulling back and standing up and smoothing out her dress and walking away. I watched her, eager to chase after her, to stumble into her office together, to shove everything from her desk and strip her down naked and fuck her laid out with her legs over my shoulder. With a groan, I fell back and sighed. That woman was going to kill me.
But I had a date.
I had a date.
I had a chance.
Chapter Nine
Lauren
“People are looking at us,” I said without actually meaning to. I immediately cursed myself for revealing my insecurity.
If only I had pulled a fucking plastic apple out of a throat, I wouldn’t be sitting in a public place with a man ten years younger than me. If I hadn’t hit my pliers on the edge of a stupid Charlie Horse cut out, I wouldn’t be catching the attention of total strangers like I was. If I, an experienced surgeon, had just been able to play a child’s game of Operation, I wouldn’t be hearing their whispers about how much hotter and younger than me Ryan was.
But I knew all that wasn’t true. Ryan had given me an out. He’d told me he wouldn’t hold me to our bargain.
And I’d agreed to go out with him of my own free will.
Simply because I’d wanted to.
I was doing a lot of things simply because I wanted to lately. And while I wasn’t exactly unconflicted about it, part of me was excited by the prospect that I was finally reaching out and living outside the normal bounds of expectations people held for me.
Ryan sipped his beer and glanced around the crowded bar. “They’re looking at you,” he said.
“What?”
He shook his head. “For being such a brilliant woman—I mean kind of scary brilliant and most definitely intimidatingly brilliant, Lauren—” He leaned over to whisper as if it were a secret he was telling me, “—you are really, really quite dumb.”
“I am not dumb.”
“Oh, but you are.”
He touched my hand conspiratorially and sneakily pointed to a girl sitting across the bar. “She was looking at you.”
“I know. Because I’m with you and—”
“No,” Ryan interrupted. “She was looking because you draw eyes to you, Lauren.”
I started to laugh his comment off, but he squeezed my wrist. “Seriously, Lauren. Don’t take your ex’s inability to keep his dick in his pants as anything being wrong with you. Don’t take the fact that I’m a little younger than you as any big deal. You’re the light here and we’re all the moths,” he said, rubbing his thumb along the underside of my wrist. “And I don’t just mean dudes with eager dicks. I mean, I don’t know how else to say this, darling, but you stick out.”
I had no idea what he was saying, but I was trapped in his spell.
Ryan seemed to be searching for words. “You’re different. The way you look, the way you act, the way you think. Even the way you move is different. We’re all walking through air and you’re gliding through water. You sit differently, you hold your martini glass differently, you look at people differently. You look at me differently.”
He smiled at me and I almost thought I saw the hint of a blush across his tanned cheeks.
“All I want to do is watch you, listen to you speak, follow you, talk with you, be near you.” He nodded at the girl he’d pointed to earlier. “So I get why that girl wants to look. She’s trying to figure out who you are. And it’s driving her crazy that she doesn’t know.”
The green of his eyes seemed to deepen as he looked across at me. His voice was just above a hush.
“It’s driving me crazy.”
Dear Lord.
If I had successfully pulled a plastic pencil out of a toy game, I wouldn’t be feeling this way—like I was out of place in public with this young, sharp, stunning man. But neither would I have ever heard those words from Ryan’s beautiful mouth. I wouldn’t have been staring into the most gorgeous green eyes that looked at me the way no one had ever looked at me before. I wouldn’t have felt the way I did then: truly happy.
And horny.
That familiar heat pooled between my legs. It’d be so easy to give in to him. To accept more than a date from him. To feel him inside me again. Such a wicked temptation, I thought, even as I tightened the reins on my self control.
“Do you want to get out of here?” he asked suddenly.
I frowned, searching the bar. “Our appetizers aren’t even here.”
“I know, I know,” he admitted. “But I realize now I’ve made a terrible mistake.”
He must have seen the clear confusion on my face because he laughed and explained. “I’ve brought you to a typical restaurant for a typical drink along with a typical dinner while listening to typical music all to complete a very typical date. And as I just got finished explaining, you are not typical.”
“Okay…” Part of me wondered at his sudden about face. If he really was embarrassed to be seen with me. But no, I had to stop thinking that way. Honestly, before Samuel’s betrayal, I’m not sure I would have given so much thought to the fact that Ryan was younger than me. Now the fact that he was my resident was still another matter.
Ryan slipped his wallet from his back pocket and threw a hundred on the table before standing up and offering me his hand.
I slipped my hand into his and he led me out of the restaurant. With one final glance over my shoulder at the now empty table, I felt like I was leaving something behind there. I saw a woman sitting there that was satisfied with alright, okay with just okay.
The woman who held Ryan’s hand wanted more.
To be daring. Brave.
To take what she wanted, without guilt or remorse.
To take him.
* * *
With a contented sigh, I leaned back on the blanket spread out across the wild grasses next to the lake. Ryan wiggled up next to me and carefully eased my head onto his leg. I let my eyes fall closed as he started to run his fingers through my hair.
