After Hours (InterMix)

chapter Four


I slept. Didn’t feel like it, but I must have, since I’d shut my eyes and when I opened them again it was light outside my window. Every joint creaked as I left my warm bed, and when I stripped for my shower I discovered a garden of ugly blossoms smudged all over my arms, a bruise for every color of the rainbow. I covered them with a long-sleeved shirt and hiked yoga pants up my achy legs, chugged cold coffee left behind in the machine in the common kitchen, and headed out to earn myself some fresh war wounds.

I didn’t see Kelly when I entered the gym, and prayed maybe, just maybe, he wouldn’t show. I needed a day with no booze, no Kelly, no intoxication of any kind. Clarity.

“Good morning, Erin!” Audra must have been the only senior staffer who hadn’t gotten plastered at the party, as she seemed her usual boisterous self, her booming greeting ricocheting around my skull like a dodge ball.

“Morning.”

“You’re early. Want to help me out and spread these mats?”

“Sure.” The mere effort of dragging the first one from a pile by the wall had me sweating and flushed. The other attendees arrived shortly, and I straightened from squaring up the final mat just as Kelly appeared, blocking all the sunlight coming in from the hall with his big, ridiculous body.

Don’t even look at him, I told myself. Not his face or his snarky-ass smile or those stupid arms.

Of course that was a promise that couldn’t be kept. Within a half hour we were paired up, and I acknowledged him with a weary wave.

“Morning,” he said, oh-so casual.

“Yeah, morning.”

“Sleep well?”

“Very well. And all by myself, just how I like.”

He nearly grinned. I could see his lips straining to hold it in.

Audra told everyone to improvise techniques for single-man restraints, stalling would-be attackers as best we could while we waited for theoretical backup. After a sloppy, slow-motion struggle, I wound up straddling Kelly’s ribs, pushing down on his arms with all my might. He smiled up at me. “You’ve done this before.”

“Oh sure,” I panted. “All the time.”

“Not last night.”

I shot him a withering look. “I reserve my man-pinning skills for deserving parties. Not just whoever turns up with some old lady’s stolen lilies.”

“Ooh, you go right for the groin, don’t you?”

“In your dreams.”

My wrist hurt and I shifted my weight. Kelly took the opportunity to grab my arms and flip us over, him suddenly pinning me, though surely not in the way he’d prefer. I tried using the arm-hold-escape trick, but it was useless in this position. In an instant I felt angry and helpless, my face burning, sinuses welling.

Kelly must have seen the tears glossing my eyes. He let me go and I sat up, rubbing my arms where he’d grasped them. I eyed Kelly’s biceps, at the unmistakable finger marks there and a faint, shiny scar. Would my arms look like his after a few years here? I didn’t know how I’d ever make it that long. Not as a nurse. Maybe as a patient, if I kept up this exhausting pace and gave myself a nervous breakdown. I felt real tears brewing and stood, dusting myself off and praying Kelly hadn’t noticed. He was the last person I needed catching me crying, twice in my first week.

“That’s why prone’s always better than face-up,” he said mildly, getting to his feet.

“Clearly.”

“You okay?”

“I’m fine.”

He leaned close, poised to impart some wisdom.

“I’m fine,” I repeated, stepping back when he went to touch my shoulder. Just a minute ago we’d been borderline flirting, now I was a panicky mess again. Big men made me feel weak and unsure, and with Kelly the sensation seemed to fluctuate wildly between distress and . . . well, some kind of perverse attraction. The man gave me mood swings. Clinical strength.

Audra began explaining the next drill, the perfect excuse to ignore him.

“Rotate!” Audra called, and I made my escape.

* * *

To his credit, Kelly behaved after that. Leave it to female tears to accomplish what a perfectly articulate rebuffing hadn’t. The next day at training he didn’t toss a single provocative murmur my way, not even when he had me on my knees in a headlock.

I spent the afternoon at my sister’s, playing on the floor with Jack, enjoying more than my share of belated birthday cupcakes, and hearing all about how Amber’s ex was late with his child support payment and apparently “banging some total skank from the lake who must be, like, seventeen.”

That’s what you got, chasing after meatheads with big arms. I pictured Kelly’s big arms, and told myself I was completely over the temporary insanity known as lust.

If Kelly had been suffering from a similar lapse in good judgment, it seemed he was over it as well. We were both back at work on Friday, and though he didn’t ignore me, if felt like we’d never met before. Certainly not like we’d ever flirted, or like he’d ever shown up at my apartment, hoping to get laid.

The infatuation had been fun while it lasted, but this was better. Wiser. Safer.

In the late afternoon, Don had some kind of incident, Jenny told me, and I didn’t see Kelly for the rest of our shift. By the time I was signing out, I’d started to wonder if maybe I’d dreamed all that sexual tension. Dreamed that he’d smiled at me at the bar, sat on my bed and informed me there was something brewing between us, and that I’d once been fool enough to agree with him. Whether it was a dream or not, I was awake now. Wide f*cking awake, and steering way clear of Kelly lest I ever lose my mind again. My sister and mom were welcome to his type, and all the pleasurable mistakes those men offered. As for me, no thank you. All set. If you want me, I’ll be at the coffee shop, looking for a nice boy of manageable proportions with no scars and a basic grasp of feminism.

And if you’d asked me at eight o’clock that evening if I still had the hots for Kelly Robak, I’d have told you with perfect conviction that no, I did not.

I was rereading a book from one of my certification courses, cramming for an imaginary quiz on the various disorders of Starling’s patients. My patients. I wasn’t learning anything new, but going through the motions of preparation soothed me. Kelly was the furthest thing from my mind, until a curt knock jerked my head up from the page.

I yanked on a cardigan over my tee to hide the fact that I wasn’t wearing a bra. I opened the door, and there he was. All tall and huge and with a dark, fresh gash on one temple.

“Hi,” I said.

“Hey.”

How regular a thing was this going to be, his turning up at my door unannounced? I probably needed to invest in a less-dumpy sleep wardrobe.

I stepped aside and he stalked past me, moving in a way that told me his brain was still firmly clocked in. “You okay? What happened?”

“Don,” he said.

“Jenny said there was an incident.” I stepped closer, examining his cut and counting six stitches. “He attacked you, huh?”

He nodded. “Got ahold of a letter opener from someplace.”

I shut the door behind him. “Shit.” Don was his favorite patient; everyone knew that. But why was Kelly here? “Is he stable now?”

“They tranqed him—asleep before I even got sewn up.”

I glanced again at his wound, black with blood. “Jesus. Thank goodness he didn’t get you in the eye.” What can I do for you? I wanted to ask, but it felt like I already knew the answer, and the answer was, he didn’t know any better than I did why he was here.

We got a little something between us, don’t we? The words trickled cool foreboding down my back, chased by a dangerous warmth. All that lust I thought I’d gotten over . . . It’d gone dormant, that was all. Now it was wide-awake, hungrier than ever.

I asked a different question. “Would you like to go out for a beer?” It was what he’d done for me when I’d been upset, and it wasn’t terribly late. We needed to go somewhere—anyplace that wasn’t my bedroom.

“Nah.”

“You look like you could use a drink. I wish I had something exciting to offer,” I said, and he took a step closer. “But I’ve only got iced-tea mix . . .” I trailed off, took a step back as he took another forward. My gaze dropped from his eyes to his mouth.

His big, warm hand touched my side beneath my cardigan, and I made a soft noise, the sound of sense being knocked from my skull, a tiny ooah. As we took another step together, his palm slid around my ribs to my back, fingers strong and bossy, just as I’d known they’d feel.

Push him away, my brain coached. Then, Oh shit, my breath must be awful. My libido elbowed it aside, reaching for the wheel.

I mumbled his name, having no clue if it was the sound of a protest or a swoon. Like a nineteen-sixties secretary fielding a pass from her boss, fingering her pearls, breathless. Mr. Robak, we really mustn’t.

The back of my knee hit the mattress, but his hold kept me from falling. He put his other hand to my arm, that intense gaze watching as he pushed the sweater from my shoulder.

My heart stopped. He’d peel me like a banana if I let him. I couldn’t remember a man ever looking at me like that, like there was a Very Important Message printed on the bare skin under my clothes, and that reading it was a matter of life and death. Then Kelly’s gaze hopped to my face and I got frozen in those cold eyes. He touched my collarbone, my throat, my cheek and ear; then he cupped the back of my head, fingers tangling in my hair.

He’s going to kiss you. Better decide if you want that or not.

I’d pretty much told him after the party that I didn’t want it—or didn’t want to act on it—and the fact that he was here, coming on to me this hard, should have been enough to piss me off.

But my sex drive had clubbed my better judgment unconscious and locked it in a trunk, and all that came back was, Jesus, he’s got big hands, coupled with an irrational urge to suck on his fingers.

His pale irises had grown as dark as his intentions, lids heavy. I felt my lips part in invitation, but the look he gave wasn’t one that sought permission. More a warning than a request, and I remembered again what he’d told me, about how controlling he was. I want what I want, the way I want it, my memory echoed, and my brain translated.

I f*ck who I want, where and when and exactly how I want to.

As he lowered his mouth to mine, gravity dissolved. My heart dropped to my feet and the room seemed to float, then the only force of nature left to obey was Kelly’s lips.

A soft kiss for only a moment, firmer as his grip in my hair tightened.

I shivered, wondering if this was how my sister had felt, all those times she kissed one of her terrible boyfriends, made one of her awful mistakes. If her mistakes felt half as good as Kelly’s mouth, I forgave her. Soft lips making callous suggestions. Three orderlies couldn’t have held me back.

He released my head, pulled at my hips with both hands, drawing me close so our thighs touched. I had to crane my neck to keep kissing him, and it made me feel small. It made him seem huge. His tongue was firm, slick, his fingers rough and restless. My p-ssy tightened, hot with impatience, squeezing every last scrap of rational thought from my head. I held his biceps, grabbed on to that thick, locked muscle like my life depended on it.

I was tilting, somehow, my weight in his arms. My head was on the pillow, back on the covers, Kelly’s thigh between mine, and his mouth plundering. I held his face, stroked his neck as we kissed—as he kissed me, more accurately. The bristle of his buzzed hair was soft, interrupted here and there by smooth furrows of scar tissue. I wanted to memorize every cut and bruise and hard swell of his body, to possess that knowledge with the accuracy of a map and pore over it in my memory on lonely nights.

His other knee moved, joining its twin between my legs. I should have been offended, but all I wanted was for him to lower his body and let me feel what I might have stirred between his thighs. Or what taking advantage of me might have stirred—that was how it felt, everything smacking more of coercion than seduction.

It felt like something I’d lament come morning, an impulsively downed shot that offered reckless exhilaration chased by hours of regret. It stirred the curiosity gnawing at me. I stroked his shoulders, the muscle pinched to hard crests from how he was braced above me. My touch was telling him I was okay with this. My body was telling us both that, a million invisible hands reaching for him, wanting him, welcoming him. Instincts warred in my gut, the urge to f*ck trading parries with the urge to protect my heart.

No, not my heart. No.

My pride, only. I was in danger of getting my ego bruised, not my heart broken. My pride wasn’t such a guarded commodity, and the chance to explore this man’s body was a tempting trade. My pride had been fine for ages, but I hadn’t felt desire like this in years—I’d thought my capacity for it had faded with the rest of puberty’s insanity. Kelly’s touch made me feel young and dumb again, excited and awake. Wanted, no matter how fleeting or selfish his needs might prove.

He kissed me slower, deeper, filthy as f*cking, and lowered his hips to mine. Unbidden, my hand tugged at his shirt. He let me peel it up and over his head, then stripped my sweater away, tossing it to the floor. Dark sounds rumbled from his throat as he claimed my mouth, moans and grunts brewing. My fingers curled against his bare back.

He’ll f*ck like an animal. I’d never been with a guy who was like that. I’d always picked safe guys, generous but civilized in bed. And I’d always looked forward to their final sprints toward release, for those frantic, impolite moments of driving flesh and fevered groans. Maybe he wouldn’t be generous, but I bet f*cking Kelly would be nothing but frantic, driving flesh and beastly sounds. Maybe he’d give me memories worth pleasuring myself to for the next six months. Or maybe not.

I freed my mouth and gulped a breath. Kelly went still above me, waiting.

All I managed was a croaky, “Well.”

“Well.”

I found the wherewithal to inch myself back, pushing up on my elbows. “Where are my roses?”

I hadn’t realized I needed it so badly, but when he smiled, my heart unraveled.

He crawled a bit closer, and spoke against my lips. “Brought you something better, if you want it.”

“You really are shameless.”

“You want this, same as me.”

“Want what?”

Kelly left me to stand beside the bed. Laces were tugged loose, shoes and socks kicked aside before I could realize what was happening. A freed button, a lowered zipper, and he pushed his jeans to the floor. As I sat up I stole only a glance, just enough to know his boxer briefs were black and his cock wanted out. He looked big and hard and obscene, and getting caught staring would’ve felt incriminating. I studied his bare chest instead, his chiseled belly. I memorized the shapes of his shoulders and hips, drank in the finest, most masculine body that’d ever been offered to me. I took a crisp mental snapshot of the very big mistake I was about to make, and swallowed.

He stepped out of his pants, and in seconds his weight was bucking the bed once more, his bossy hands urging me to lie back.

He’ll take a mile, some goody-goody in my head warned. Give this man an inch and in a blink he’d be halfway across the county and already forgetting me, just some newbie nurse he vaguely remembered nailing during her first week on the job.

But he felt too good. Sinful, the way his warm palms stroked my shoulders, the way he wedged his knees between my thighs and loomed over me. His body was tense in the glow of my reading lamp, at once heavy and lean like some rare predator, every inch of skin and tendon and muscle seeming to thrum with life and impulses. Reflexes.

He braced one hand at my side, and trailed the knuckles of the other down my arm, up my ribs and along the edge of my breast. I held my breath, flesh tightening under his caress. He traced the curve with his thumb then closed me in his heat, squeezing softly. His gaze jumped to my face and snatched the air from my lungs.

Tell me I’m beautiful.

Kelly’s hand slipped from my breast and he leaned in close. “Turn over.”

The words sounded ominous in his deep, dark voice, but I did as he said. A strong hand settled me against him on our sides, his chest melting my back muscles like butter. I felt his cock just below my butt, hard and hot through his underwear and my pajamas. He stroked my thigh, kneaded it, then coaxed it up.

His mouth brushed the back of my neck; soft, slow kisses fogging my brain so thoroughly I didn’t protest as his hand crept closer, closer. His palm slid over my mound, cupping me, the other hand tucked beneath my ribs. Something in his touch told me to trust him, so I let him hold me, feeling warm and fragile and protected, a captured bird.

He told me things without uttering a syllable. The kisses behind my ear said, You’ll give me anything I want tonight. The palm heating my sex added, And anything you don’t offer, I’ll take. Promises, not warnings. I’d always been a girl whose spine stiffened the second she felt a man trying to sweet-talk or pressure her, but not with Kelly. Had to be the voice, or maybe the hard length of him pressed to my ass. One dose of Kelly and I went docile, welcoming the surrender.

He plucked at my hem, and without thought, I helped him take my shirt off. There was cool air on my bare skin, then the hot whisper of Kelly’s lips across my shoulder. I shut my eyes as he freed the bow of my pajamas, slackened the waistband with a tug.

You hadn’t even kissed him twenty minutes ago, and now you’re going to let him touch you? Down there?

F*cking right.

He slid his hand inside, the tips of his fingers tracing me through my underwear. I reeled. His hips shifted, cock pressing harder at the juncture between my thighs.

What if he wants actual sex?

That question grounded me. Surely he did want actual sex, and I wasn’t on anything and I didn’t have condoms. Even if he’d come prepared, I’d have to tell him no. That was too far, and as good as these horrible mistakes felt, I’d have to find out what happened when Kelly Robak didn’t get what he wanted, how he wanted it.

What if he gets mad?

Better to find out now than in a few minutes, before I gave him too much implicit permission.

“I can’t go all the way tonight,” I murmured. Oh Jesus, I sounded like a scared-shitless high schooler in the back of some horny upperclassman’s car.

Kelly said nothing, just kept whispering things with his hips and fingers. You’ll go where I tell you to go, they informed me. I imagined the worst, of his pressing the issue and my not telling him to stop. Us, as we were now, but my underwear gone, my body ready, Kelly pushing his shorts down and sliding inside me. The breaths heating my neck would deepen to grunts, the fidgeting of his hips speeding to thrusts.

I wanted all those things as badly as I feared them. I wanted to know what he sounded like as the need mounted, what he’d say as he chased his pleasure. A man so in control, coming undone. I didn’t know which of us I distrusted more, on this bed.

He made me curious—me, the girl who’d always planted her feet firmly in place when the other kids wanted to race after trouble. I was in my sister’s shoes now. Shoes that felt like roller skates, bad ideas like magnets and me dipped in steel. I’d glide right into whatever Kelly wanted, I could feel it. And I hated myself for it.

But you can’t f*ck him unprotected.

He’d be the one f*cking, silly girl.

Still. If that happened . . . it’d feel awful, come the dawn. I’d feel foolish and reckless, and any pleasure that giving in might offer, it’d sour to days or weeks of disappointment, cast a shadow over my working relationship with this man, maybe even wreck the professional trust I’d already invested in him.

“Where’d you go?” Kelly whispered.

I’d turned still and stiff, I realized, brittle with regrets I hadn’t even earned yet. “I’m right here.”

He kissed my ear, and when he spoke it was like he’d stepped inside my mind. “Not all of you.”

“You scare me, a little.”

Another soft kiss. “What about me?”

Your intentions. And the way you garble my intuition. “I don’t know. You’re just more . . .”

“More what?” Another kiss, another hot exhalation.

I spoke from some thoughtless, honest place. “I don’t trust myself around you. This way.”

“There’s something between us,” he murmured. “We’re just doing what it’s asking.”

“It feels like I’m just doing what you ask.”

“And you don’t like that?” As he said it, his fingers traced my lips through my panties, cock pressing close. Heat flashed, dizzying me.

I swallowed a moan, scrabbling for words. “I like it now. I’m afraid I’ll wish I hadn’t done so much in the morning. It feels good, but it won’t last.”

“That’s what pleasure is.”

Indeed. That was what made much of it decadent. Every one-too-many cocktails a person downed, every cookie that wrecked a diet, every bad-idea boyfriend taken by my mother or sister . . . all just pleasures given in to, consequences be damned. But I hated consequences. I’d spent my entire life searching for calm in the fallout of other people’s shitty impulses.

Push him away, my brain said.

F*ck him, my body begged. All these years you’ve wasted cleaning up after other people’s parties. Quit reaching for the dustpan.

Kelly slid my pajama bottoms over my hips. Thoughtlessly, I shifted to let him pull them to my thighs, my knees, then I kicked them away myself, all those fresh chances to tell him to stop heaped on the growing pile.

His hand was on my belly and slipping lower, lower. His cock was against my ass, insistent. I felt his knee nudging my legs, and I did as it said, raising the top one. He moved behind me, adjusting his erection, pressing it deeper between my thighs. My breath was shallow, cheeks fevered, lips swollen. Drunk again. Drunk on Kelly.

“Jesus,” I muttered.

“Got a better name you can say, if you want.”

Before I could reply, his hand slipped inside my underwear, robbing me of words. His fingers tickled my curls, warmed my skin. They glanced my *oris and I bucked. It was too much and nowhere near enough. His breath steamed hot on my neck, and with a low, sharp moan, he stroked my *. I gasped.

“Good,” he murmured. He withdrew his hand but only to wet his fingertips at his mouth. Then they were between my legs again, hot and slick, teasing me with explicit caresses. I groaned, imagining his tongue. His cock. He was imagining the same, I knew. I could feel his hips moving, rubbing his thick length against my inner thighs with steady thrusts.

I’d never wanted a man so intensely. So simply. His flesh inside mine, two greedy bodies taking what they wanted from each other. I imagined him above me, working. That harsh face, cruel with arousal, that voice hijacked by the sounds of his nearing release. My own climax was building against his quickening touch. I fondled my breast, toying with my nipple to double the sensations.

I was close, so close, and Kelly could tell. His hips bumped my backside again and again, clothed cock f*cking my thighs. He grunted behind my ear with each impact, and it was his voice that did me in. The orgasm swallowed me whole, drowning me in perfect, violent heat; too much, way too much. I grabbed Kelly’s wrist, forcing his hand higher, the pleasure so intense it hurt.

I heard myself panting, gulping air.

I heard Kelly murmur, “Good girl,” and he kissed my jaw. I let his wrist go and the ball of his hand brushed my throbbing * with a jolt. His fingers dipped lower, parting me like water. I blushed, shocked by how wet I was.

That’s been permission enough for too many pushy men, I reminded myself. But his fingers delved deeper and a lust-heavy sigh in my hair erased the worries.

“That’s where I want to be,” he whispered. He stroked my * with his slick fingers, then slipped back inside with a moan. “You want me there, too, don’t you?”

I wouldn’t lie, but I wouldn’t forgive myself if I didn’t take this chance to reassert some boundaries. “I want you,” I admitted. “But not tonight. Not that far.”

“I heard you the first time.” Not a jot of irritation in his tone—just a fact. His hand left my p-ssy to fumble behind my butt. Suddenly I could feel him, his unmistakably bare cock between my thighs, pressed to the damp crotch of my panties. Then he was touching me again, warm fingers penetrating with slippery suggestion, erection stroking me through the cotton. He spoke right against my neck, lips tickling my skin. “Feel that?”

“Yeah.”

“Feel how bad I want you?”

He pressed roughly against me, a thrust that would’ve made us lovers if not for my last stitch of clothing. I answered with a little moan.

“You’re so wet,” he whispered. He rubbed my *, letting his length tease my lips with the friction of wet cotton. I felt the flex of his hips as he thrust, muscle as hard as his dick. “I can’t wait to feel you.” His body sped at the suggestion, alongside my pulse. I hadn’t had many lovers, and none had ever been able to do this—to make me this crazed. Certainly not to make me come without instruction or assistance. But his fingers read me like Braille, and in no time at all I felt a second climax building against his touch.

F*ck, I wanted him. I wanted him above me, those strong hips spreading my thighs. I wanted to see him—his face and chest and cock as he took me. But not tonight. Not tonight.

“I’m gonna make you come,” he said. “Tell me.”

“You are.” Oh, he was. His bossy words alone had me close.

“I’m what?”

“You’re going to make me come.”

A smug hmmm at my ear, wet fingertips at my *, hungry cock begging for entrance. He pulled my panties aside. I froze. But it was his fingers that taunted my folds, not his cock.

“So tempting,” he muttered.

Indeed. Just one bad decision and I’d be able to feel his hard flesh inside me.

“Someday you’ll give yourself to me,” he said matter-of-factly. “Let me have whatever I want, do whatever I say.”

It would’ve been a pretty pompous announcement if I hadn’t suspected it was completely true.

“I’ll have you pleading for my cock.” He pumped me with his fingers, hips mirroring the rhythm. “Can’t wait to hear you beg.” He let the crotch of my panties go, slipping his fingers back down the front to rub my * again, erection taunting my swollen lips. I imagined him rolling me onto my stomach, taking me from above and behind at once.

I’d never wanted someone this way before, never wanted to be dominated. I’d always seen strong or pushy men as dangerous creatures to be kept at a distance. But with Kelly I wanted to see the beast set free to take what it wanted, exactly how it wanted it.

Behind me, he changed. His thrusts were for him now, designed for his pleasure and not mine. He was that thing I coveted most during sex, a man losing control. One second’s massive lapse and he could have me—slide his thick cock between my slick lips and prove himself a liar, and me a fool. Do it, I thought.

He moaned, a long, desperate, needy sound. His fingers abandoned my sex, a gruff hand angling my hips so his dick rubbed my * with every thrust.

“F*ck.”

“That’s right,” he muttered. “That’s right. Lemme feel you come.”

The position triggered a stitch in my side and his fingertips dug hard into my hip, promising yet more bruises. But I felt my body obeying, the next orgasm drawing me tighter, hotter, closer and closer against his punishing cock. His chest pushed hard into my back, tilting me so I had to brace myself on my elbow. He was half on top of me now, but f*ck, he was hot.

I wrenched my neck to steal a glimpse of that mean, scarred-up face, and I was done. Those irises like ice, red-black blood and white stitches, lamplight making a golden halo of his hair. I turned back and shut my eyes tight, came against his cock, trembling, shuddering, moaning.

“Good, good, good,” I heard him muttering as I came down, a panting mantra set to the rhythm of his hips. “F*ck, here.” He grabbed my hand and forced it between my legs. I felt the smooth, wet crown of his cock for one thrust, two, then he jammed his body against mine, hot come filling my cupped palm. His breaths heated my neck in tight bursts, and I heard every tiny sound of his lips and tongue as he swallowed.

He pulled away. I scanned the floor, then wiped my hand on my tee shirt, sobering instantly. When I sat up I found Kelly stretched on his back, cock hidden by his underwear once more. I hadn’t even gotten a look at it.

“Well,” I said.

“Well.”

I cleared my throat and smoothed my wild hair, and hoped I sounded casual. “Guess you do get what you want, after all. I stand corrected.”

He didn’t reply, just shut his eyes and smiled some mysterious little Kelly smile. I studied his body in the warm, low light, watched this confounding, gorgeous, frightening animal resting on my covers.

“You seem like you should have a tattoo,” I told him. “A massive one.”

His eyes opened. “What? And let some a*shole draw on my skin, and have to live with it the rest of my life if he f*cks it up?”

“Just saying. It’d go with the motif.” I leaned close, skimmed my palm over his bristly hair, traced his ear, drew my thumbnail down the scar that ran the length of his throat. It felt thrilling and dangerous, like stroking a lounging panther. “Where did you get this? On the ward?”

“No, when I worked in the pen.”

“Oh good. I mean, not good, but . . . You know.”

Kelly yawned and shut his eyes.

“Don’t you dare fall asleep on my bed. It’s barely big enough for one reasonable-sized person.”

And he was on his feet a moment later, gathering his clothes, nearly making me regret the quip.

I tucked my legs beneath the covers, watching. What on earth had I just done? With a coworker, aided by exactly no alcohol? But a girl doesn’t need a drink with a body like that fogging her senses, I thought, fascinated by the flex of his shoulders as he hiked up his pants.

“Find whatever you needed when you decided to turn up and bother me again?” I asked.

“My needs are simple. Same as any man.”

Liar. You came here because of whatever happened with Don. He’d come here for sex, but not for sex’s sake. For something else, something I’d likely never know. You’re not as simple as you wish you were, Kelly Robak.

He zipped his jeans. “A man needs meat, sleep, and p-ssy, to keep from going insane. Not always in that order.”

My jaw dropped. I yanked the covers up to my neck and glared at him.

“You spoiled my view.”

I glared harder, and Kelly sighed. “Don’t give me that look, like we ever said this was anything more than exactly what it was.”

“Don’t you flatter yourself into believing that’s why I’m annoyed. But you’re just going to lump me in with a steak and a nap and expect me not to be insulted?”

“I don’t mind being the same to you.” He tugged his shirt down his chest, then stooped to get his socks and shoes on. “Never said women didn’t have the same kinds of needs. Color me flattered you deemed my cock worthy of the job.” He straightened.

I rolled my eyes, so hard I nearly pulled something. “Get out of my room, Kelly. I’ll see you at work.”

“See you right here,” he said, tapping his temple, “when I retire all alone to my cold, empty bed in a half hour.”

I gave him a mightily peeved look to remember me by. Kelly just smiled, then turned and closed the door behind him.

F*ckity f*ck f*ck.