She whispered near his ear, and her warm breath puffed down his collar, “Promise me. Promise me that you’ll let me open a spreadsheet and type in ultimate outcomes and interim goals and metrics. I adore metrics.”
He chuckled. “I promise.”
She cuddled closer to his chest. “I’ll hold you to that one.”
Peyton wrapped his arms around her and stroked her back until he realized that she had fallen asleep in his arms.
He carried her limp body into her bedroom and covered her up before he grabbed his bag and caught a ride to the airport for his afternoon flight. The sound check for that night’s concert in Reno was scheduled to begin in four hours.
Mom’s Parking Ticket
“HEY, Amma,” Raji said, lying on the lower bunk in the on-call room. She had ten extra minutes she could wedge into her day, she figured. “How are you?”
“Oh, fine,” her mother sighed, her thick Indian accent making even those words sound like music.
“You don’t sound fine.”
“I don’t want to trouble you.”
Raji sat up on the bed and swung her legs around to the floor, ready to run and get on a plane to New Jersey if she needed to. “What is it, Amma?”
“I got a parking ticket.”
“Oh.” Raji laid down on the scratchy blanket. “So?”
“It’s fifty dollars.”
“Mom! You don’t have to worry about stuff like that anymore. Now that I’m a resident, I’m making some money. It’s no big deal. I’ll transfer the money to your account right now.”
“But you have had to take on so much debt. I don’t like asking you for money.”
“Fifty dollars is nothing!”
“It’s a lot to me.”
Raji’s mother had been an eighteen-year-old immigrant bride who had barely spoken any English and was illiterate in every language when she had arrived in America after an arranged marriage to a stranger. Eleven years later, Raji’s father had blindsided her with divorce papers.
After a swift divorce so that her father could marry his secretary who was pregnant with a boy, Raji’s mother had nothing. Her father had already moved most of their money and the house deed into his business accounts. She had trusted him when he had put everything in his name. After all, she had lived her whole life in India. She had never known anyone who had gotten divorced, ever.
Raji hadn’t seen her father since then because he had been too busy with his new, Indian-American wife and their son.
It had taken Raji years to figure out that her mother had been eating only one or two spoonfuls of rice for supper on many nights so there would be enough food for Raji, not because she was dieting. She had already been too skinny. She had been eating Raji’s leftovers in the kitchen afterward, if there were any.
Even now, her mother barely made enough to get by, even though every month, Raji transferred a thousand dollars to her checking account.
Raji put the phone call on the speaker so she could use the browser while they talked. “I’m transferring the money now. Any time there’s an expense, I need you to tell me right away, got it?”
“I don’t like to trouble you.”
She popped over to her banking website and transferred a hundred dollars to her mother’s linked checking account because she suspected her mother was minimizing the cost of the ticket. “It’s done. No more talking about it. Now, how was work today?”
“It was the same as always, Raji-ma. The scheduling was done. People did the things.”
“All right. I have a surgery in three hours, so I need a nap before that. I haven’t slept for two days.”
“Oh, poor darling. I don’t like that you work so very hard.”
Raji bit back any response like, it pays the bills. “It’s my dream, Amma. I want to be a heart surgeon.”
“Your uncle was asking again when he can arrange your marriage. One of his friends has a son who is a very nice boy.”
Over her dead body. “I’m not ready for that, Amma.”
“You are thirty years old, now. You should be married already. People are beginning to talk.”
“It’s important to me to get my education, first.”
“All right, then, Raji-ma. You let me know when we can go ahead with that. Maybe when you finish your residency.”
The education strategy always worked. Brahmins are suckers for everything educational. “Maybe then, Amma. Good night.”
“Good night, Raji-ma.”
Raji needed to video-chat with her cousin Aarthi in India, too, just to see if all of Aarthi’s pujas and prayers had worked and she had gotten knocked up yet, but she was so tired. She needed at least a quick nap before she cut open some guy’s chest and sewed in some new veins.
Passing out into the sterile field while operating, a faceplant into the patient’s open chest, would be so embarrassing.
Maybe Raji would call Aarthi tomorrow.
As Raji drifted off to sleep, she thought of Peyton, out there somewhere, probably still on a stage singing backup, and her body relaxed as happiness suffused through her.
Taos
RAJI practically sprinted into the little cabin in Taos, New Mexico with her rolling suitcase dragging behind her. Late spring sunlight shone in the windows. Desert dust filmed the glass on the outside, making everything glow with a golden aura.
She wouldn’t think about it, wouldn’t think about it, wouldn’t think about it.
Not at all.
Because if she did, she might fall apart.
She was here with Peyton now, and she didn’t have to think about the twenty-one-year-old girl who had died on her table yesterday. The girl had a congenital heart condition and had been too long on the transplant list, until her condition had become suddenly, catastrophically worse.
A heart was assigned, but it came too late.
Nope.
Raji called out, her voice ringing off the textured plaster walls. “Peyton? Are you here yet?”
A growl beside her.
The door slammed shut, blocking the hot desert breeze.
Hands grabbed her waist and tossed her toward the high ceiling, and she spun in the air. She landed on Peyton’s wide shoulder, and he walked with her head dangling as she laughed. His cologne—herbs like sage and rosemary and a whiff of clean lemon—drifted from his blue tee shirt right in front of her nose.
He threw her on the bed, stripped her summer shorts and tee shirt off, and landed on her, kissing her hard. He scrambled to grab her wrists and pin them over her head on the soft mattress.
When they were together, Peyton fucked Raji any time, any where, any way he wanted to. Sometimes he packed her with lube and fucked her hard until she came with his cock in her ass. Sometimes, when they were sitting around the hotel room, he commanded her down on her knees, grabbed a fistful of her hair, and fucked her face until he throbbed on her tongue and spilled down her throat. Sometimes he fucked her pussy from behind, from on top of her, with her astride him, or any other position he chose.
When they were together, Raji became a body to be done to, flesh and blood and bone and desire, without any thought of refusal in her head, without an ache in her heart, without the heaviness of guilt or responsibility pressing on her soul.
She hated leaving him and going back to work.
Just Another Hook-Up
RAJI lay on the bed in a Denver hotel room, spread-eagle and naked.
Scarves roped her wrists and ankles to the four corners of the bed, looping over the mattress and secured to the bed’s frame underneath.
Outside the wide window in the distance, jagged mountains cut into the cloud-streaked sky. The huge bouquet of pink roses that had been delivered right after she arrived, luckily before she had set all this up, perfumed the air.
The door rattled as someone swiped a keycard through the reader. The knob turned.
Raji prayed that the next thing she heard was not Housekeeping!
Peyton sauntered into the room, dragging a sm
all rolling bag behind him, the kind that fit into the overhead compartment of airplanes. The door slammed hard, rattling the thin plaster walls. He called, “Raji-lee?”
Okay, the nickname was kind of cute. It had grown on her over the weeks.
“Eh-hem,” Raji pretended to clear her throat.
Peyton’s head whipped around, his sunshine-blond hair swishing around his ears. He was growing it out a little, and it had finally reached his ears and collar.
His turquoise eyes found her.
The suitcase thudded to the floor.
He pulled his yellow Zildjian tee shirt off over his head and stumbled out of his shoes as he scrambled across the bed toward her. His gaze was laser-intent, not leaving her eyes for even a blink.
Raji laughed at his earnestness. “Oh, come on. It’s only been two weeks.”
His teeth closed on her neck, raking over her skin, and she gasped. The fresh scent of his cologne—herbs and citrus—filled her nose, and her muscles began to relax. He moved down to suck the peak of her breast, which hardened with the first swipe of his tongue.
Her hands flinched in the silk scarves, trying to touch his hair that brushed across her skin, but she was bound.
He sucked and tongued her until she was arching against him, panting and trying not to cry out already. Those hotel walls were pretty thin.
Peyton slid backward on the bed, nipping and mouthing his way down her stomach.
She said, “You don’t have to—”
“You’re tied up. I can do anything I want to you.”
“But you really don’t have to—”
“Do those ropes come with a gag?”
She laughed.
He splayed one of his huge hands on her stomach and pressed. “Now lie back. You tied yourself up like this—”
“And it wasn’t easy, let me tell you!”
“—and now I’m going to take advantage of it. No more talking.”
She laughed. “Or you’ll what?”
“Tie you up much more securely than those slip knots you’ve used.”
“Oh.” Knowing she could get out of all the knots with just a jerk of her hands was keeping her from panicking at the loss of control. “Okay.”
“Good girl.”
He dragged his tongue across the outside of her folds, just grazing her clit.
A zing whipped through her, and her whole body rose off the bed as she braced on her heels and elbows.
Peyton palmed her ass with both hands while she was arched up and grabbed her whole pussy with his mouth, sucking her folds and clit hard, aggressively eating her out.
In another few seconds, the orgasm slammed through her, a sharp, bright spike that blasted the world away.
Waves rolled up her spine, and Raji grabbed the scarves and hung onto them as intense bursts made her jerk in the bonds.
As the barrage subsided, Peyton’s weight settled on her, and his thick cock nudged between her legs and then pressed inside her swollen tissues.
His sudden invasion almost hurt, but she gasped, “Did you use a condom?”
“Of course,” he said, holding still even though he was buried in her body. “Always.” His voice was tight in his throat. When Raji opened her eyes, he was holding himself above her. “I wouldn’t do that to you.”
She nodded.
“Too much?” he asked.
“A lot,” she admitted.
He retreated a little. “I can stop.”
“No! Just give me a second.”
Peyton pushed inside her again, slowly, and held himself there. Beads of sweat dotted his hairline. “Okay?”
“Yeah,” she said. “Good.”
He kissed her slowly as he fucked her, and Raji moved under him while he slowly, gently, rocked her world again.
Afterward, after Peyton untied Raji and she lay in his arms, spooning as they dozed, she whispered, “Are you going to let me open that life-planning spreadsheet for you this weekend?”
Behind her, Peyton chuckled. “You really want to do that, don’t you?”
“It seems to me that you’ve gotten sidetracked,” she said. “You got the chance to make it up to Georgie, which is commendable, but now you’re derailed, to take this train metaphor way further than I intended.”
“I don’t know.”
“Oh, come on.” Raji slithered away from him and hung halfway off the bed, searching her carry-on bag for her laptop.
A sharp pain stung the bare cheek of her ass. “Ow!”
When she looked back, Peyton was grinning over her naked back at her, and a fresh bite mark reddened her butt cheek.
“Jesus, Peys. Let me just get my laptop powered up—”
Her leg moved to the side.
“What are you—”
Pressure between her legs, and then the firm, familiar rub of Peyton’s huge cock filling her. “Oh!”
“I like the look of you hanging off the bed, there. Be quiet, or I’ll fuck your ass instead.”
Raji braced her arms on the carpeting beside the bed while Peyton grabbed her hips and drove himself into her core. She said, “You say that like it’s a threat or something.”
“Sounds like you want it.”
Raji knew better than to say anything at this point. Peyton would do with her body what he wanted, and she loved that.
Cool slippery stuff wormed into her butt, and then Peyton pressed his fingers in while he fucked her pussy until she relaxed around them, and then the wide hardness of his cock spread her ass open.
Raji bit the edge of the mattress when he pushed into her, rubbing every secret, forbidden part of her body, until the ache became a rough, deep pleasure.
He went slowly, shoving himself in and dragging himself out, until Raji’s panting breath became ragged and keening for release. He buzzed the hard calluses on his fingers over her clit until she throbbed under him, helplessly crying out at how he controlled her response.
His control was why she kept coming whenever he called.
He jerked as he pounded her ass, his body straining into hers, and his strong fingertips dug into her hips.
She would have faint bruises tomorrow, something to remember him by.
Awesome.
Peyton collapsed on her, his weight smothering her as he gasped, and he bit her shoulder as he growled.
More marks she would have to cover up.
More secrets she should keep from everyone.
Raji hoped they could meet next month. She was already dying to find out what else he would do to her.
He rolled off of her and lay beside her, breathing hard. “God, you have a tight ass.”
She laughed and wiggled back on the bed to lie beside him, still on her stomach. She didn’t have the energy to roll over just yet.
He adjusted himself to lie on his side and stroked her spine. “I’m glad you decided to meet me this weekend.”
“I probably shouldn’t have,” she admitted. “I traded shifts with a couple of people to get the weekend off. It means I’m going to be working fifty-six hours next weekend without a break.”
“You didn’t have to,” he said, nuzzling her hair.
Raji struggled to turn in his arms so that they were face-to-face, their lips close together. “I wanted to.”
“I’m glad.” He stroked her nose with the tip of his, an affectionate, silly thing he did sometimes. “I miss you when we can’t meet.”
Raji almost jumped out of bed, but it was just a Peyton thing. All those artsy-fartsy emo types were the same.
And yet, Raji always told her patients the truth, and so she told Peyton the truth. “I missed you, too. That’s why I traded shifts. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be able to meet you for another month.”
“Does that residency give you vacation time?” he asked.
“Not really,” Raji said.
“Too bad. We’re going to Europe again in the fall for three months. I’d love to show you Paris.”
“What makes you think I haven’t
seen Paris?” she asked, laughing.
“Have you?”
“Um, well, no. During the summers in high school, I did community projects and went to math camp. I didn’t have time to go gallivanting around France.” And her mother certainly hadn’t had the money. Even Raji’s math camp had been paid for by need-based and merit scholarships.
“Come with me,” he said.
She cracked up. “There is no way on the gods’ green Earth that I can take three months off from my residency.”
“At least a few days,” he said. “I’ll kiss you at the top of the Eiffel Tower. I’ll take you to my favorite restaurants.”
“Okay.” Raji was breathless at the thought. “Okay. I’ll figure it out. I’ll trade shifts and save up time. Just for a day or two.”
He kissed her and murmured, “I’m glad.”
While she showered, Peyton ordered them some room service, because of course, they did not go out to restaurants and were never seen in public together.
Raji wondered just how they were going to manage necking at the top of the Eiffel Tower without someone recognizing the rock star.
San Diego
IN a penthouse hotel suite in San Diego, Raji sat on the balcony, basking in the June sunshine and cool breeze like a lizard on a warm rock and reading the latest New England Journal of Medicine on her tablet.
Peyton was lying on the other chaise lounge, squinting at sheet music displayed on an oversized tablet while he strummed a guitar. His swim trunks rode low on his hips, and his muscular body was slowly turning bronze in the sunlight.
A thick safety wall surrounded the balcony. No one could see the two of them lying up here, and the privacy of it felt wonderful.
His guitar had six strings, Raji noted, and it was the one he always carried and noodled on when they met. “Why don’t you work on a bass guitar?”
He shrugged one strong shoulder. “A bass is easy to play. I’m just messing around with this music.”
“Is it a Killer Valentine song?”
“No.”
“Are you writing songs?”
“No.” He frowned. “Sort of. Not really. I’m just messing around.”
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