by Katy Kaylee
Two weeks had passed since my ill-fated attempt to win Claire over. The entire time I had been torn between despair and hope. The former was for obvious reasons. Claire had said that it was against the rules, that we couldn’t be together.
The latter was because that was the only reason she’d given.
She’d said that she was glad she wasn’t another casual fling for me. That she’d been scared that she was. And she hadn’t said that she didn’t want to be with me—just that we couldn’t because of the hospital rules.
Well, rules could be gotten around, if you were careful enough about it.
I just had to convince her that what we had was worth the risk, worth pursuing. I had never thought about anyone like this before—who was to say I would ever think about anyone like this again? I wanted to seize my chance, to be with this person that drove me so crazy. Every time I got a glimpse of her I felt like dying. I could understand that her career was important to her, but if we missed this opportunity… I felt like we would both regret it.
And now—now was my chance.
I was doing a follow-up meeting with Claire in her office about Tabitha’s progress. I thought Tabitha was doing great. She was cheerful, relaxed, and taking all of the treatment like a trooper. I was proud of her. And relieved. It was like finally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.
Seeing Claire in private, though—that idea had my stomach in knots. God, you’d think I was the one who’d never had sex before with how nervous I was. But as much sex as I’d had, I’d never been in a relationship. I’d never wanted one.
Now I did, and it was scaring the hell out of me.
I entered Claire’s office, closing the door behind me. “Doctor, doctor,” I joked, “gimme the news.”
Claire gave me a decidedly unimpressed look that was so adorable I wanted to kiss her. “I’d like you to look at Tabitha’s charts with me.”
I sat down and took the paperwork that Claire handed me. “Her charts are fine. She’s doing remarkably well, everyone’s been saying so.”
“I know that. I just want us to be cautious and not push too hard and not to forget the risks involved.”
“Like what?”
Claire pointed at one of the results on a test that Tabitha had done a couple of days ago. “This right here? This worries me. Oftentimes kids will catch an infection at this stage, and I’m worried that Tabitha will as well—that her levels could crash and burn.”
“Is there anything we can do about it? Can we predict it?”
“No, unfortunately. We can only be on alert and then help her fight the infection when the time comes. Unless you want to seriously slow down the procedures we’re doing…”
“That would mean that her cancer would be in her longer, though, wouldn’t it? That it wouldn’t be attacked as… ferociously.”
“To put it in layman’s terms, yes, basically.”
I shook my head. “Tabitha’s strong, she’s going to be fine. I don’t want to risk this cancer getting the better of her again. I’d never let anything bad happen to her.”
I had to believe that she would get better, that this was going to go into remission. I couldn’t believe anything else. If I let myself doubt, if I let myself believe even more a moment that she might not make it…
Losing family once had been bad enough. To lose my little girl—the idea didn’t even bear thinking about.
Claire nodded, taking the paperwork back. “All right. It’s your call as her guardian, I can only advise you.”
I realized that our meeting was coming to an end—that my private time with Claire, the only time I’d gotten in two weeks and possibly the only time I would have for God knew how long, was coming to an end. I had to do something, I had to try and convince her that whatever the rules were, they were worth breaking, for us, for this chance.
“Claire…” I reached across the desk, taking her hand. “Look, I don’t know what these weeks have been like for you, but I’ve missed you.”
Claire’s eyes widened. She tried to pull her hand away, the way that she had when we’d been in the diner, but I didn’t let her. Instead I tightened my hold, standing up and walking around to the other side of the desk—her side.
Quick as a whip, Claire stood up, our hands still caught together. “I have to keep things professional.”
“I am so fucking tired of keeping things professional,” I confessed. “I want you, and you want me too. That’s the only thing that matters.”
Claire looked both stunned and like she might actually say something, make another protest, and I wasn’t going to have that. I grabbed her and pulled her in, kissing her.
Claire gasped, grabbing onto me. For a moment she was stiff, trying to talk through the kiss, yelling at me, almost—but I kept kissing her, over and over, and then like a puppet with her strings cut she relaxed, moaning.
It felt like the sweetest victory I’d ever tasted.
Claire wrapped her arms around me and kissed me back ferociously. I got my hands on her waist, kissing her for all I was worth. God, she was so eager, no shame or calculation about her movements. She wasn’t the most experienced, and so I guided her, just as I had on our first night, leading her into the kiss. Claire whimpered and followed my lead, until she was grinding up against me, her nails digging into my shoulders, and I could barely stand how much I wanted her.
I got my hand on her ass, guiding her into rolling her hips against me, slow and sensual, and Claire moaned, her legs spreading. I was getting harder by the second, desperate for her, and Claire clawed at my shoulders as if no matter how close we were she still wanted us even closer.
I had no problem with that.
Claire wrapped her leg around me as we continued to kiss. I moved my mouth down to her neck, careful not to leave any marks, and Claire just about melted. It was clear to me that Claire hadn’t done much sexually in her life and I wasn’t about to let her go another day without being properly taken care of, without getting to experience everything. I wanted to just pull her onto her desk and fuck her but not without a bit more action first, letting her see how good fooling around could be, how much fun it was to just make out and press against each other.
At last Claire began to get bold, sliding her hands underneath my shirt. “Alex—Alex please,” she moaned.
“What do you want, sweetheart?” I asked, squeezing her ass and nibbling at her collarbone.
“I want you to stop teasing me,” she begged, sounding a bit embarrassed but also a lot put out. I couldn’t help but chuckle. She was adorable, getting riled up like this, demanding things.
“Whatever you say,” I promised, and I got my hands under her thighs, lifting her up.
Claire squeaked in surprise, holding onto me as I set her on the desk. I spread her legs, wishing that we were in a proper bedroom where I could undress her. This would be the second time now that we would have sex without even getting our clothes off and while it was hot as fuck, I also wanted to get my mouth on every inch of her skin.
Later. We would do that later—I promised myself that we would. But first…
Then Claire sat up, her hand sliding down my pants. I groaned as I felt her fingers rubbing at my cock through my underwear.
Claire watched me carefully, her gaze burning into me, licking her lips as she wrapped her hand around me properly, drawing me out of my pants and stroking me. It was like she was learning as she went, touching me in different ways to explore how I liked it. I braced my hands on the desk, trying to be patient as she had her fun. A slow, delighted smile spread over her face as she faced me struggle not to fall apart completely.
“You really just melt for this, don’t you?” she asked, sounding like she was trying not to laugh. “Look at you, Mr. Powerful, the alpha male in the room, and you’re just falling apart on me because of this.”
“And you’re a little minx who likes doing this to me a bit too much, I think.”
Claire just laughed, then slid down the desk, licking th
e head of my cock. My hips jerked and I growled instinctively.
“I’ve never done that before,” she admitted, sounding not shy, but contemplative. Like I was an experiment. It really should not have been so attractive to me, and yet, here we were. “Can I?”
“Fucking hell,” I burst out. “Yes, yes, Jesus Christ…”
Claire slid down all the way to her knees, licking at my cock over and over, like she was once again trying it out. When she sucked the head into her mouth I thought I might actually lose my goddamn mind. She wasn’t acting all… naïve, she clearly knew what a blowjob was, but she was also being very thorough, determined, and if this was how she approached everything else in her life, no wonder she had gotten so far in her life. She was approaching this like a task she had to absolutely one hundred percent obliterate, like taking me apart was her number one goal in life.
She was succeeding.
I had one hand in her hair and the other on the desk, struggling not to blow my load. I wanted to fuck her, I wanted to be inside of her properly, but Jesus Christ if she kept taking more and more of my cock into her mouth like that, if she kept making me lose my fucking mind like that, I wasn’t going to manage to last.
“Claire,” I groaned, and when she hummed around my cock in response I thought I might actually die. “Claire, baby, you gotta stop, Jesus fuck—”
I pulled her off. Claire’s mouth was red and slick, her lips swollen. She grinned up at me. “Not bad for a first time, right?” she asked.
“Oh, I’ll show you how not bad it was,” I promised her, hauling her back up onto the desk.
Time for me to blow her mind.
20
Claire
The promise in Alex’s voice after he pulled me off his cock made me shiver delightedly. I’d had fun trying out different things to make him groan, to make him thrust instinctively into my mouth. I hadn’t ever thought of sex as something fun before. As something hot, yes, as something that made you feel good, yes, but something more lighthearted? Something full of teasing? That had never occurred to me.
Now, though, I was feeling like my blood was full of champagne, bubbling and golden.
Alex spread my legs open, a man on a mission, and on fuck, that was hot. “You want me to fuck you like this?” he asked. “Or do you want to be… punished for being such a tease?”
Oh, God. That might have been the sexiest thing I had ever heard in my life.
“Punished,” I whispered.
Alex flipped me over so that I was bent over the desk on my stomach, my ass in the air. He yanked down my pants without preamble, and then I felt his fingers sliding along my wet pussy. I hadn’t even touched myself yet—just making him so turned on, having my mouth on him, had turned me on to the point where I was worried my underwear was going to be beyond repair.
Alex rubbed at my clit and I mewled helplessly. “Gotta stay quiet, baby,” he warned me. His free hand wrapped around my mouth as he continued to finger me, stretching me open. Fuck, he was moving fast, just rough enough to make it feel good and give it that hard edge but not enough for it to actually hurt.
I moaned into his mouth as I felt him slide his fingers out. God, I wanted him, I wanted him so badly—and I wanted more—
Alex slid into me hard and fast and I screamed against his hand. Fuck, it was so much, so fast, it was overwhelming. I shook with the force of sensation, trembling, already close to orgasm. Alex kissed along my spine, letting me have a moment to adjust, taking care of me even as he playfully got rough with me.
“You good?” he murmured, and I nodded.
He kept his hand around my mouth. “Not sure you can stay quiet, sweetheart,” he teased, and then he was fucking me. God, it was so hard, so fast, I could barely keep up. Sure enough, I was unable to keep quiet, moaning and crying out into his mouth as he thrust into me over and over. He would rub my clit, sending delicious spirals of pleasure through me, right up until I was about to come—and then he would back off and leave me hanging. I felt like I was on fire, desperate for orgasm.
But I’d asked to be ‘punished’ and this was what he was doing. Keeping me on the edge. Teasing me.
I clawed at the desk, wishing that we were in bed so that I could get my hands on him, get both of us undressed properly—next time, I thought, and I really was sunk in it, wasn’t I, already thinking and hoping for a next time?
Alex’s hand slid back down between my legs, rubbing—and this time he didn’t stop, not when I seized up—oh fuck, oh, God, oh, Alex, Alex, Alex—
I came with a muffled cry against his hand, and a moment later I felt him coming inside of me.
That was the hottest thing I had ever experienced. I’d thought that our first time together was sexy and it had been, but that was nothing compared to this. I lay there gasping, trying to get my breath back, ecstasy still sliding through my veins. I felt like I was floating.
God, we shouldn’t have done that. We really should not have done that. But it had felt so good, and so right, like we were supposed to fit together like this. I never wanted to stop being able to touch him, not even sexually just… because I could. In little ways.
Dammit, why did he have to be the parent of my patient? Why did it have to be like this?
“We can’t keep doing this,” I said. Once was a mistake. Twice was… the beginning of a pattern. A very dangerous pattern.
“We can’t stop, either,” Alex pointed out. “Neither of us.”
He was right. We’d just tried that and I’d given in the first moment that he’d kissed me. Our self-control around each other was clearly nonexistent.
“We have a connection,” Alex continued, pushing himself up and settling himself in my chair. He pulled me in, so that I was sitting on his lap. I knew we needed to clean up, so I idly grabbed tissues from my desk drawer, wiping us up while he spoke. “You know it. We owe it to ourselves to see where this goes or I just know that we’ll regret it.”
To my joy and my horror, I wanted to agree with him. I wanted to say yes. What was it about this man that was drawing me in so much? I was never the type to fall for the magnetic older man, or the player, or the rich guy, or… anyone. It wasn’t just Alex’s body or his face, although both were handsome as sin. It was his kindness, his consideration, his love for Tabitha, the way he was generously taking care of the entire hospital with donations and presents. I could tell he was trying hard to respect my boundaries, but I could also see that he wasn’t the kind of man who would walk away from something just because there were obstacles.
“A relationship would put my job at risk,” I said. “It’s not that I… if it were any other circumstance, Alex…”
“I would never tell anyone.” Alex’s hand gently brushed up and down my thigh, soothing me. “I don’t kiss and tell in the first place, but especially not here. I know this job is important to you. And once Tabitha’s no longer your patient we can wait a bit, to be safe, and then be more public. But until then we can just keep it between us. I don’t mind.”
“But Tabitha…”
“I know you won’t compromise her care. I trust your decisions with her.”
His faith in me was getting to me, making me feel warm and fuzzy inside.
“I can’t go on like this,” Alex admitted, his voice a bit hoarse. “I can’t keep thinking about you all the time, wanting you all the time like this, and not be able to have you. I’ll go insane. I’ve never felt this way about anyone and I want to see where it leads. I’m not saying that there’s a guarantee that we’ll be together forever, sunshine and rainbows, but don’t we owe it to ourselves to give us a chance?”
I wanted to give us a chance. I wanted to be with him and see where this led. I felt the same way—dumbfounded, almost, but how I felt and how it was different from anything else I’d ever experienced. “I…” I took a deep breath.
Never in my life had I taken risks. Never in my life had I been bold like this.
“I can’t believe I’m saying t
his,” I said, “but yes. I’ll keep an open mind and I’ll… we can give us a chance.”
The kiss that Alex gave me in response seemed to make everything worth it.
21
Alex
Although it had been a week since I’d seen Claire, I was whistling as I walked to the elevator. Part of it was the new stuffed animal I’d gotten for Tabitha. It was an anteater, which was one of the harder stuffed animals to find, but Tabitha was on a rainforest kick, wanting to learn all about animals in South America, and the anteater was one of her favorites.
I was also finally getting a chance to see Claire privately again. We hadn’t done anything since our decision last week, which was understandable. We had to be careful about how and when we met, and I didn’t want to rush Claire over such a big decision. We would go as slow as she wanted to. When we had seen each other around others, in Tabitha’s room, she had been warm and friendly to me.
Things were looking up, and I couldn’t wait—
Why were there people rushing into Tabitha’s room?
I ran forward, clutching the stuffed anteater to my chest, bursting through.
Doctors were surrounding Tabitha, calling out orders, her machines beeping like crazy. Pippa was there, explaining something to someone—I grabbed her. “What’s going on?”
“Tabitha has a very high fever,” Pippa explained, leading me out into the hallway. “We’re trying to bring it down.”
“What—how—”
“I need a stretcher!” Dr. Franklin called. “We’re moving her to the ICU!”
The room spun and I felt dangerously sick, like I might throw up. This couldn’t be happening. Not my baby girl.
Someone came up to me—Claire. “Alex. Alex, I need you to breathe for me, okay?” How could she sound so calm?
Tabitha was wheeled out on the stretcher and I felt my legs giving out. Pippa and Claire caught me, helping me into a chair.
“We think that Tabitha caught an infection,” Claire said. The as I feared went unspoken. Fuck, had I just doomed my daughter to die? By pushing, by rushing? Was this my fault? “Unless we get the fever down, she’s in danger of serious harm.”