Naughty Bits 2 (27 page)

Today coffee wasn't just a want, it was a physical need, and not poofy designer coffee, either. Eve gripped an industrial-size double espresso as she rounded the corner to her pod and stopped short.

“Morning.” Lane bent over her desk. “I'm here to fix your computer.”

His tie, patterned with a long, ceaseless stream of numbers, fell over her keyboard. She couldn't stop staring at it. She didn't think she'd ever seen him wear a tie before. “Oh.”

“Routine inspection.” Lane worked the mouse to bring up a scrambled bunch of files Eve couldn't interpret. “Apparently management wants to replace some of this equipment, rebuild some of the databases. Yours was logged as one of the ones having trouble.”

Eve leaned against the padded wall of her pod. “Have you figured out why my chat connections keep dropping?”

“Let me bring up your directory.” Lane pointed to her monitor. “I'll be able to figure out what's going on from there.”

He straightened. Eve watched his fingers stroke the smooth material. Over the past two years she'd watched those hands dismember a hard drive and fly over a keyboard with the precision and genius of a piano virtuoso playing a concerto. Lane
had very, very nice hands. Strong and nimble, yet gentle enough to coax a recalcitrant computer back from death or force it into submission.

Eve had spent hours thinking of Lane's hands.

“Nice tie,” she said abruptly, when he caught her staring.

“It's pi.”

“Pie?” Eve's brow furrowed momentarily as she imagined cherry or blueberry, only after a moment realizing he meant the number. “Oh. Pi. I get it. Clever.”

Again Lane's long fingers smoothed over the satiny material. “Yeah. I felt like wearing a tie today.”

“I like it,” Eve said.

Silence.

Lane smiled.

An inferno burned in her cheeks as Eve busied herself suddenly with a stack of paperwork. She'd never considered herself shy by any means, but she wore her lust for him in the quirk of her lips and flutter of her lashes. She didn't want him to see it.

“Here's your problem.” He pointed to her monitor. “Someone's been playing around online.”

“It wasn't me,” she said a second before his teasing smile told her he hadn't meant her. “Must be the night shift.”

“I know. I can tell who it is,” he said with a lift of his chin at the long list of files. “The time they logged in, what sites they're surfing. All of it.”

Eve thought of the day he'd brought her coffee and was very glad she'd resisted blogging at work over the past week. “The night shift must have a lot of free time.”

“Yeah.” Lane bent to peer at the screen. “And someone likes to hit the personals sites.”

“Is that what's screwing up my computer?” Not that she cared, actually, because as long as her chat connections kept dropping she'd be paid to watch Lane work.

“Yep. But don't worry. I can fix it.” He shot her another grin and heat flared again…this time, much lower down. “Just call me Dr. DeMarco.”

He was killing her. Absolutely killing, she thought as he bent back to work, fingers caressing her keyboard with as much intimacy as if he were touching her body.

And he didn't even know it.

 

This is what I want.

The lines around your eyes and mouth should make you look haggard, but they only remind me of how beautiful you are. Even exhausted, rumpled, smelling of bad cafeteria coffee and clad in crumpled scrubs, you are lovely.

You lean over the desk to hand the charge nurse your clipboard. She smiles at you and bats her lashes, and I want to laugh. She thinks she has a chance at you, her own personal Dr. McDreamy, but she has no idea. Not a clue.

You are mine.

You are weary from hours on your feet, hours in the operating room. You've put on clean scrubs, but I know you want to shower and shave, sleep for a few hours, maybe grab another cup of disgusting coffee. I know that's what you want, but instead you'll have me
.

You look up from your place on the hard cot they give the on-call staff to use when I close the door behind me. I lock it. When I smile, you smile, too
.

I don't ask you how long we have. At any moment the black box clipped to your waistband can bleat. People will need you. You fix them with your scalpel and your knowledge. At any moment someone could need you more than I do…but for now there is only me
.

I don't like the smells of antiseptic and despair that fill the air here, or the metallic scent of blood we can't seem to escape. I miss your clean scent, soap and hot water, but there's no time for that
.

Your head tips back when I thread my fingers through your hair
and pull, and you moan. You might be a god to that nurse at the desk and the people who you heal, but I know you're no god
.

You're a man.

I know you're bare beneath the scrubs, a habit surgeons have to prevent their personal clothes from becoming soiled. I know if I reach between us I'll find your cock half-hard already beneath the thin, soft cloth. I know if I slid onto your lap I'll feel that heat against me, that hardness, and my body clenches at the thought of you filling me; my nipples tighten.

I brush your lips with mine, the barest hint of a kiss. When your mouth reaches for mine I pull back. I'd like to make you beg for me, to hear you say my name in that low, deep, grumble-growly voice, but I know we don't really have time for those sorts of games.

“Touch me,” I say into your ear.

You do.

One of those hands, those big, strong hands, slides between my thighs up high, against my heat. I push forward, into your touch. It takes only seconds to lift my dress, to push down my panties, to ease your scrubs off. To straddle you. We rock together, your cock sliding against me without friction or effort. I'm so wet for you it takes only one small shift of hips and limbs to settle you inside me.

“Fuck me,” I say, and you do that, too.

It's slow and easy, the way you roll your hips to push your prick up inside me. You slide one of your hands that make so many miracles between us and use your knuckles on my clit. Your other holds my ass as we move, silent, biting our lips. I clench your shoulder so hard my nails leave half-moons in your flesh, but neither of us cries out.

Someone might know we're fucking in here, and I don't care, but there's pleasure to be had from pretending we do.

Your throat works as you swallow your groan. I lick you and bite you softly. Beneath my lips I feel your pulse beat, beat, beat. The steady throb is echoed between my legs.

I come forever and you follow me with an intake of breath and a murmured curse. We rock together slowly, finishing, and the bed under us creaks.

From the puddle of clothes on the floor, your beeper buzzes. You close your eyes, briefly, though your lips open under mine when I kiss them.

“I have to go,” you say without moving.

I'm the one who gets up, who gathers the clothes, who lifts the small black box and places it in your hands. “You go,” I say. “Someone needs you.”

They all need you.

But you're still always mine
.

 

Why would anyone want to be anything else?

Tell_me had replied even before Puppetboy. The thought he'd been waiting for her to post caused Eve's heart to skip a couple beats. Eve would've made a self-deprecating comment, but it wasn't Eve who answered.

I can be a demanding mistress
.

Endless minutes passed while she refreshed her browser and replied to a few other comments. When the familiar user icon—a hundred-by-hundred pixel square photo of a single red rose—appeared, she actually clapped and bounced a little in her seat.

Please. Demand.

This time, she laughed aloud. Puppetboy might have offered to be her slave, but Tell_me's genuine sense of humor only added to his appeal. Puppetboy, perhaps sensing he was losing his place in line, had graduated from sending her shots of his cock to attaching photos of his entire body, each including a small hand-drawn sign with PUPPETBOY BELONGS TO ERIS inside a lopsided heart to prove it was really him and not some stolen shot of an abs and pecs model.

Eve didn't care what Tell_me looked like…well, okay, maybe she did a little, but only because in her mind he looked like every single one of her fantasies, and she couldn't pretend that every one of them didn't look quite a lot like a certain IT
guy from work. Still, while Puppetboy's body was impressive and his willingness to debase himself for her pleasure intriguing…Tell_me had stolen her heart.

They'd only been corresponding for a week, but it felt like a lifetime. He commented on her blog; he e-mailed her privately. Their conversations in public had been light and flirty, the way she was with everyone who left a response to her entries, but in private he dug deeper. He didn't just fawn over her. He asked her questions about what she wanted and why. He answered them, too. He'd managed to give her a clear picture of himself without ever resorting to sending a blurry snapshot of his erection.

They'd graduated to instant messaging, a privilege she'd granted to so few of her readers she could count them on one hand. His conversations in real time were as easy and sexy as his e-mailed replies had been.

Now, though the hour had once again grown late, her fingers flew over the keys as her eyes stayed locked on the computer screen, watching for his next words.

You like fantasies.

Who doesn't?

But not everyone can express them as well as you can. Or else they stick with clichés.

You don't think a doctor fantasy is a cliché?
She'd had a record-high number of comments after that one. They were still trickling in.
Some people want me to write about a cop next. Or a fireman.

Are you going to?

Eve paused.
I don't think so
.

Because it isn't what you want?

Because I don't take requests.

She imagined a bright smile and the low rumble of laughter, a pair of dark blue eyes.

I don't think you should write about a cop or a fireman.

What do you think I should write about?

Surprise me.

 

This is what I want.

At the base of my throat, where my pulse throbs in unsteady rhythm, blood pools. The wound is fresh, but numb. The monster's kind in that way. It doesn't hurt when he comes to suck my life from me.

I don't know how long I've been in this hole. Time has ceased all meaning. I stopped counting the minutes against the steady, slow drip-drip of water from an unseen pipe long ago. My eyes stare, wide, into darkness, but I see nothing. The cold has raised gooseflesh on my arms and legs, but I don't feel that, either.

When your light shines on me, I don't even throw up a hand to block it though it stings my eyes worse than anything else has, lately. I look at you, a dark silhouette behind the golden circle from your flashlight, and my mouth forms the shape of your name. I'm not sure I've even spoken. I'm not sure if I remember how.

I thought I'd forgotten the strength of your arms, but when you gather me into your embrace, your breath warm on my cold flesh, I remember all of it. You. Me. The promises you made, and broke, and the one you've finally kept.

You take me home, to the house in which you refuse to live but visit often. You bathe me. You dress me. You put me into bed and stand guard at my door until I sleep.

I think you're afraid I won't wake, but I do. I open my eyes and wince at the sudden stabbing sensation in my wounds…but I welcome the pain. It means I'm still alive.

You open your eyes at once when I touch your face. The chair jerks as you do, and your hand comes up to catch my wrist hard, not quite flinging it away. You see it's me within a second and the embrace softens. I frown when you let me go.

“Go back to sleep,” you say, as if I could. As if all that happened can be put behind me the way you so often have done.

But I'm not you.

Days pass this way. I wait for you to leave, and one day you do. You come back stinking of blood and garbage, your hands in fists, and I know you've killed it. Hunted it down and taken its life the way it tried to steal mine.

I would be happy but for the fact that this means, at last, you'll go for good.

“Stay.” It's the first time I've ever asked. I know the score, the rules, what to expect from you. Your life circles mine and only sometimes intersects.

You shake your head, your back to me, the duffel bag I've grown to hate thrown over your shoulder. Outside your car awaits. I don't want to see the taillights. I hate them, too.

“I can't.”

“You can. If you want to.”

Your shoulders hunch. I want to touch you. To offer comfort. But you don't want my comfort, do you? You don't want me…. And too late, I realize I've spoken aloud.

I'd be frightened at the way you turn and the fire in your gaze except that now I've faced much, much worse. You grip my arms and I love your touch, even as it bruises. I can see you want to shake me, but you stop yourself. You let me go. You step back.

I step forward. “Stay. Please. I want you.”

I open the buttons of my shirt and offer myself. Shameless, ready to be embarrassed when you refuse me, but not caring. I want you so badly I shake. I need you.