He pumped her hard, slamming into her womb every time, making her G-spot explode upon each impact. She came again and again and again, until she thought every cell in her body would disintegrate into nothingness. Worlds, stars, galaxies formed between their two sweating, straining bodies.
Now she knew what the term “Big Bang” really meant.
Ed finally exploded into her. Then to her shock and dismay he immediately pulled out, bringing their bliss to a sharp, sudden end. He stood up and crossed the room, holding the wilted condom out in front of him, then dropped it into a wastebasket before he ducked down the hall and pulled a door shut behind him. Billie had already disappeared somewhere in the depths of the apartment. Wherever the two had disappeared to, the unspoken message was clear—we’re done with you now, so get out.
Shirley was all alone. Alone, naked, and rubbed raw in all the wrong places.
I knew there had to be a catch, she mused.
So much for threesomes. It was plenty of fun in the heat of the moment, but at the end of the day, someone always gets stuck being the third wheel.
Nine
Work was absolutely the last place Shirley wanted to be that morning. Her back ached, she had a painful crick in her neck, and the entire lower half of her body felt like it had been torched.
Not to mention the fact she hadn’t slept a wink all night long. Once she knew she’d been tossed out of Billie and Ed’s love nest, she’d headed back upstairs to her own bed. And she ended up spending the rest of the night staring at her cracked bedroom ceiling, wracked with all sorts of conflicting emotions. Was she a sophisticated, sensual goddess—or a cheap whore? Would she ever be able to look Ed in the eye if they ran into each other in her building’s lobby or in the parking lot? Would Ed ever want to fuck her again?
Hell, knowing that she’d spent the better part of a weeknight getting fisted hard by a hot blonde and fucked harder by a man in his twenties, would any man ever want to fuck her again?
And far most troubling of all, what would Dr. Randall Hamm think of a woman with her checkered sexual past? The guy didn’t exactly seem like a man who was into anything kinky.
He didn’t seem like a man who was into anything sexual at all, in fact. He was just about as unreadable—and cold—as any man Shirley had ever laid eyes on. It was a cruel twist of irony that he was also the hottest-looking man she’d ever laid eyes on.
For the first time in her life Shirley truly understood what it meant to be lovesick. In the Victorian sense. To the point of swooning. She had a nasty case of the vapors.
In fact, she’d seriously considered calling in sick today. And she would have, if it weren’t only her third day on the job.
How would she make it on through three operations today when her cunt felt like it had been stretched a mile wide thanks to Billie’s fisting and Ed’s fucking? How would she be able to concentrate when her head ached and her heart clenched with desire for the one man she couldn’t have—the very same man who’d be standing right behind her in the OR?
Shirley had absolutely no idea.
She could really use a stiff drink. Or several stiff drinks. Too bad it was illegal for nurses to drink on the job.
Shirley headed down the hall towards Beth Peking’s office, dragging her feet the whole way. Even at this ungodly hour, The Dragon Lady was already at her desk, dressed in yet another red silk Mandarin suit (this one decorated with lotus flowers) and yet another pair of four-inch spike heels. She stared Shirley down as she came into the room, frowning and drumming her long lacquered nails on her desktop. Something in the tiny woman’s fierce expression told Shirley that today was going to be even worse than she thought.
“Shirley Daniels!” the Dragon Lady squawked. “You not even here three days, already you making trouble!”
“I—“ Shirley stammered. “I—“
“Be quiet! Sit down!”
Shirley obeyed. She plunked herself down on a hard wooden chair, then winced when the impact stung her already-aching sensitive parts.
This didn’t slip the Dragon Lady’s notice. “What matter with you, Shirley? You constipated?”
“No, umm, ahhh”—Shirley searched for a plausible lie—“I just pulled some muscles working out, is all.” Which was true, in a manner of speaking. The vagina was a sort of muscle, wasn’t it?
“Well, today your lucky day then. You banned from OR today.”
“What? Why?”
The Dragon Lady rolled her eyes. “Come on. You know why. Because of what happened yesterday. You kill your first patient. Now you have to file incident report.”
“I didn’t kill the patient! From what I understand, the surgeon probably did!”
“You no argue with me! You my nurse. I say whether you kill patient or not.”
Shirley blinked twice. So much for Beth Peking’s soft side, which Shirley had had just a glimpse of yesterday. The Dragon Lady was back in force. Which must mean that the Dragon Lady was taking some heat from yesterday’s OR debacle herself. “Ms. Peking, I assure you that I was not responsible for what happened to the patient yesterday. And I am sure that will be proven beyond a doubt once the hospital’s investigation is complete. In fact, I will do everything in my power to show that you run the best nurse-anesthetists’ team in the entire Southeast.”
If there was one thing about nursing that Shirley had learned back in Statesville, it was when in doubt, butter up your boss.
And it seemed to work. The Dragon Lady’s expression softened; Shirley thought she might have even noticed the tiny beginnings of a smile tugging at one corner of the tiny woman’s birdlike mouth. “Just get Administration bozos off my back,” she snapped. “I up to here in paperwork now. All kind of big shots asking me all kind of question now. I no need any more trouble—I already too busy. You understand?”
Shirley nodded. “It’ll all turn out fine, Beth. I promise.”
“You no call me Beth! You call me Ms. Peking!”
Shirley sighed. What kind of Chinese woman was named Beth in the first place? “It’ll all turn out fine, Ms. Peking.”
The Dragon Lady smiled for real. “That better. Now get out. Go to President’s office. On third floor. They waiting for you.”
At this hour? Shirley thought as she left. It was just barely past six-thirty in the morning. But then again, hospital administrators weren’t known for keeping bankers’ hours.
She swallowed hard, bit her lip, and headed for the elevators.
As she expected, the hospital administration’s offices were mostly dark and empty at this early hour. But there was a single overhead florescent light burning in the small secretary’s nook that sat in front of the President’s office. A petite, elderly secretary with perfectly coiffed silver hair and an expensive-looking suit sat behind the brightly polished desk, typing a memo. She looked up from her computer screen as Shirley approached and smiled.
“Ah, you must be Shirley Daniels,” the secretary drawled in a voice that dripped of the old South. Her hair was a lacquered lavender helmet, and her wattly blue-veined neck dripped with fine cultured pearls. Back in her youth, this woman was probably the prototypical upper-class Southern belle, complete with ruffles, parasol, and her very own white verandah draped in Spanish moss. She probably went to finishing school instead of college, too, where she learned how to dance the quadrille and the delicate art of holding one’s pinky out while drinking tea. And now she was a hoity-toity executive secretary in a designer suit, probably earning double the salary Shirley did with a graduate degree in nursing.
Shirley disliked her immediately.
“The President’s waitin’ for you, darlin,” the woman drawled, turning back to her memo. “Make sure you’re honest, now. President Chalmers can tell when people lie, honest he can.”
The pit of Shirley’s stomach quivered. There was a sinister edge to the aging Southern belle’s voice. What was that hoity-toity woman implying, anyway? She had no intention of lying. In fact, the whole situat
ion seemed fairly straightforward to her. A routine inquiry into an unexpected OR death, that’s all. This sort of thing was commonplace in hospitals big and small all over the country. Wasn’t it?
Shirley glanced back at the snobby secretary, who was absorbed in typing her memo and no longer acknowledged her presence. She obviously wasn’t going to get any more help there. She took a deep breath for courage and padded into the hospital president’s office, her thick-soled Nurse Mates sinking into the deep plush pile of the office carpeting.
President Chalmers hulked behind a huge mahogany desk, reading a thick medical text. He was a pudgy man with a white beard and an expensive suit, and looked to be in his late sixties. Several framed diplomas and certificates decorated the wood-paneled wall behind him, and a brass nameplate reading “REGINALD CHALMERS, MD, MBA” sat on the edge of the desk. So President Chalmers was also Dr. Chalmers. That was unusual. In Shirley’s experience, doctors and hospital administrators hated each others’ guts. For Chalmers to be walking both sides of that line made him a hard man to read indeed.
President Chalmers didn’t acknowledge Shirley’s presence, so she cleared her throat loudly. Twice. After what seemed like an eternity, the gruff old man looked up. His flinty gray eyes scanned Shirley up and down, up and down again. “Well. You must be the new hire under Beth Peking,” he growled. His Southern drawl was even thicker and more patrician than his polished Steel Magnolia secretary. “I’ve heard a lot about you, gal.”
“All good, I hope,” Shirley chirped, trying hard to sound upbeat. But in reality, she was shaking in her Nurse Mates.
President Chalmers didn’t seem too impressed by that. “I hear from persons who have reason to know that you were the attending nurse anesthetist when Enola Higginbottom died in the OR. Is that true?”
Shirley swallowed hard. “Yes, sir, it is.”
President Chalmers’ thick gray brows knitted together, forming a single tuft that looked like the wrong end of a rabbit. “Anything else you’d like to say ‘bout that, gal?”
“Sir, with due respect, I would like to state that I conducted myself to the best of my nursing abilities at all times during the procedure. It was I who alerted the emergency response team when Ms. Higginbottom became—ahem—distressed. And I stayed with the patient and continued monitoring her until the attending physician determined that there was nothing more to be done for her.”
President Chalmers listened in silence, a baleful expression pulling at his ruddy wrinkled features. He seemed to be expecting something more from her. Something Shirley wasn’t entirely sure she was willing to give him.
But whether she wanted to spill the beans on Dr. Randall Hamm was beside the point. Her job was on the line, after all—not to mention her own personal ethics. She swallowed hard and did what she had to. “Sir, it gives me great pain to tell you that the anesthesiologist supervising me and the operation left in the middle of the procedure, abruptly and without explanation. He never came back to the OR, even after Ms. Higginbottom flatlined.”
President Chalmer’s tightened jaw relaxed the slightest bit, the muscles rippling underneath the snowy white hairs of his beard. He nodded once. “Ummm-hmm. And who was the anesthesiologist in question, Miss Daniels?”
“I think you already know that, sir.”
“I want you to tell me.”
“It was Dr. Randall Hamm, sir. I—I even tried calling out for him, to get him to come back to the OR, but he never did. And he never explained why, either.” Shirley felt her cheeks burn, felt her pulse quicken. She knew she was betraying Dr. Hamm, but she had no choice. In fact, a part of her was almost glad to be betraying him. That just made her cheeks burn and her pulse quicken even more.
President Chalmers didn’t say anything for almost a full minute. He coughed, shuffled papers on his desk, fiddled with a pen, shuffled more papers. “Good gal,” he finally said, his tone softer and much more friendly. “Now you’re sure that Dr. Hamm never explained where he went when he left the OR?”
“Not to me, sir.”
“Miss Daniels, may I ask what your impressions are of working at University Hospital thus far? As I recall you haven’t even been here a week, and yet you’ve already managed to see a fair bit of excitement.”
Shirley bit her lip. This was a trick question if there ever was one. “Well—“
“It’s all right, gal. This ain’t a test. Whatever you say in here stays right here in this office.”
“Well, sir, it’s certainly been—interesting. Definitely a big change from my days working in a small town.”
“You came here from Statesville, didn’t you?”
Shirley nodded.
“Nice town, Statesville. The wife an’ I got ourselves a hunting cabin out that way. Nice place to go for deer season. Pretty in the springtime, too.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I ‘spect that life here in the big city is a mite different than what you were used to back in Statesville?”
Shirley bit her lip again. This could get hairy in a hurry. “It’s been a bit of an adjustment, sir,” she muttered. Ha. If he only knew.
“Well, you seem like a resourceful gal,” President Chalmers chuckled, leaning back in his chair and putting his feet up on the desk. “I’m sure you’ll do just fine here in Raleigh. Which brings me to the whole reason I called you in here in the first place. I hafta admit, I called your boss Beth Peking on a bit of a false pretense. We never suspected you were responsible for what happened to Enola Higginbottom in any way whatsoever. But I couldn’t exactly come up with another reason to have you come into my office at six-thirty in the morning. Not without havin’ The Dragon Lady get suspicious, anyhow.”
Shirley stifled a giggle. So even President Chalmers called Beth Peking The Dragon Lady behind her back. That went a long way to show just how unpopular she really was. “Ms. Peking is a very interesting person to work for, sir.”
The jowly old man guffawed. “Well, you sure are polite, ain’t you? Which makes me think you’re perfect for the little job I’ve set up for you to do.”
“What kind of job, sir? Something besides anesthesia work?”
“In a manner of speaking. What I want you to do, Miss Daniels, is try to find out more about Dr. Randall Hamm. Spend some time with him. Find out what makes him tick. My administrators and I have been up and down this whole Enola Higginbottom thing, and we can’t for the life of us figure out why Dr. Hamm would have bolted outa the OR like that. An’ he ain’t telling us why, neither. An’ even though he’s department head an’ worked here at University for nigh on ten years, nobody, not even the snoops up in Human Resources, have one iota of personal information on the guy. Not even his home address. He uses a PO box on his HR form, an’ his emergency contact number is a pager service. The guy’s locked up about as tight as an ugly virgin’s legs in winter. I need you to find out everything you can about Dr. Randall Hamm, then report that info back to me.”
Shirley could hardly believe her ears. The President of University Hospital was actually ordering her to spend time with Dr. Randall Hamm! It was a dream come true.
Or then again, it could also be her worst nightmare.
“This is a top-secret operation, by the way,” President Chalmers went on. “Nobody is to know about this, except you an’ me. An’ whatever you do, don’t do anything that’ll make Dr. Hamm suspicious. The guy’s already too tightly wound as it is.”
“Well, it this is supposed to be so secret, how will I get Dr. Hamm to spend any time with me in the first place?” Shirley asked. “He’s not exactly social. Every time I’ve tried to have any kind of conversation with him, he always finds some excuse to disappear.”
Shirley knew she had to tread lightly here. If President Chalmers got any inkling of her true feelings for Dr. Hamm, the whole plan was doomed.
The gruff old administrator paused to think. “Tell you what,” he said. “I’ll cook up some story ‘bout how I want Dr. Hamm to spend some time socializing
with all the new nurse-anesthetists as part of a nurse retention effort. Chalk it up to high turnover an’ the nursing shortage. Tell him to take you to lunch, show you the ropes ‘round the hospital a bit. He’ll probably bite. He knows he’s ‘bout three steps away from bein’ fired here as it is. Sound fine?”
Shirley nodded.
“Good. You keep me up to date on what you find out, now. And remember, this is our little secret.”
“Yes sir,” Shirley replied. She turned on her heel and trudged out of President Chalmers’
office.
And then, her entire lower half went up in flames.
Ten
Shirley strode back into The Dragon Lady’s office, a huge grin plastered on her face. Her tiny boss jerked bold upright in her chair. Clearly this was not the expression she’d expected Shirley to have after being grilled by the hospital president.
“Well, I’m back,” Shirley sang. She was walking on air. She even made a point to do a little dance in front of The Dragon Lady’s desk, soft-shoeing it with her Nurse Mates on the linoleum.
Her boss was aghast. “What happen? Why you so happy? President Chalmers never make people happy! He grumpy and mean! He make my life hell!”
“On the contrary, I found President Chalmers to be quite the Southern gentleman,” Shirley sang. “Really, what a nice man.”
“I thought you in big trouble!” The Dragon Lady squawked. “Why you so happy? I thought they going to fire you! I thought they going to fire me!”
Shirley reached out and patted Beth Peking’s tiny, red-taloned hand. “Don’t worry. Both our jobs are safe, I promise. Everything is just fine. Fine and dandy.”
The Dragon Lady eyed her suspiciously. “Either you lying, or you crazy. Nobody go into President Chalmers’ office the day after somebody die in OR and come back singing and doing stupid dance. Something really fishy going on here.”
Hot Bodies Boxed Set: The Complete Vital Signs Erotic Romance Trilogy Page 26
