“Shauna,” I said, grinning as I turned around to face her in all of her womanly glory. Those gorgeous, viridian eyes of hers stared at me from under a curtain of bleach blonde hair, accompanied by a ruby-lipped smile that had more than once begged to be wrapped around my cock. “I thought you didn’t work today.”
“I don’t,” she giggled, stepping closer as she rested her hand over my chest. “I came here just for you, babe. After the work-over you gave me last night, I thought I’d surprise you with a little treat at work.”
Shauna slowly walked her fingers up my arm. “How does that sound?” she asked. “You? Me? The on-call room?”
I heard the soft ding of the elevator car reaching the landing. It was so tempting—one last round with one of the sexiest doctors in the hospital. But there was one very big problem: Shauna wanted more than I could give her. Seemed like they always did.
“Listen, Shauna,” I began, backing up a step as the doors to the elevator opened behind me. “You and I were having a really great time, and if I was any other guy, I’d drop everything in a heartbeat just to keep you under lock and key.”
“What’s the matter?” she asked, narrowing her eyes. I watched her perfect lips turn down in a mask of confusion, maybe even a little suspicion. “Is this about what I said last night?”
“Yes and no,” I said, taking yet another step back into the elevator proper. “I just don’t think I’m the right guy for you, that’s all. I don’t do the whole ‘dating’ thing.”
“What, am I not good enough for you?” Shauna asked, her voice rising, her confusion turned into anger as she took a step toward me. “Who the hell do you think you are?”
“Slade Jarvis, one of the best emergency doctors in this entire hospital—maybe even the whole city, or possibly the state,” I said, shrugging as the elevator doors began to close. “But hey, we had fun, right?”
“Don’t you walk away from me, Dr. Jarvis. I—” Her anger was cut short as the heavy metal doors slid closed and I began my descent toward the cafeteria, putting an entire floor between the two of us.
She’s much better off, I thought, listening to the low hum of the motors lowering the metal elevator car down to the cafeteria. I didn’t like attachment, to put it mildly. More accurately, I hated the thought of anyone getting too close to me—and vice-versa. Attachment only led to one thing, as far as I was concerned: pain for everyone involved.
I’d had more women than I could possibly count, all of them willing to spread their legs for a brilliant doctor like myself, but once the promise of commitment reared its ugly head, I was gone faster than a bat out of hell. I knew the agony of loss. It was torture. I never wanted to feel—or make someone else feel—that kind of pain ever again.
Keeping everything casual meant there was less of a chance of anyone getting truly hurt. Sure, there might be some bruised egos, like in Shauna’s case, but I knew she’d get over it. After all, she came into my life knowing the kind of guy I was, how I operated—I had a reputation. But all of that seems so small when a girl gets it into her head that she can change you, make you into the kind of guy she can show off to her folks.
I’d never be that guy, not for anyone.
The elevator door opened as the car finally came to a stop, a soft chime resounding from the speakers as I stepped out into the laminated tile hallway. I hated how clean everything looked in hospitals. All of the painstakingly cultivated order seemed so forced and contrived—which is why I loved the emergency department, the definition of controlled chaos. I loved the lights, the sound, the shouting and the occasional fist-fight that would break out between the paramedics and some of the more unruly patients. It felt like all of humanity was focused into a single spot for everyone to see, the very best and the very worst.
I passed a couple of new nurse interns and flashed them a winning smile and a wink. Both of them smiled, biting their lips and hoping that I’d been looking at one and not the other. I loved having that effect on women, the power to make them practically shout, “Pick me! Fuck me!” It made me feel like a god—as though I didn’t get enough of that from actually being a doctor, holding a person’s very life in my hands day in and day out.
What can I say? I guess we’re all addicts, in one way or another. Mr. Velasquez had his heroin, and I had my ego.
Without warning, I was knocked to the side and damn near crashed into the wall. At first I didn’t realize what had happened, or what had hit me, but as I gave my head a shake to get my bearings, I realized that it wasn’t a what, but a who.
“Oh, God, I’m sorry,” said the young woman who’d barreled into me, kneeling down as she picked up the contents of her purse that had scattered in her unwitting assault on my person. She was probably no more than twenty-five, with gorgeous, dark hair that covered any hint of her face.
But I was less concerned with her face and more concerned with her flawless set of tits that I’d love to get a hold of. She was wearing a form-fitting, button-down blouse and skinny jeans combo that showed off her figure so perfectly, flaunting her hips and the pert little ass of hers.
“I didn’t see you coming,” she said. “I was looking at my phone.”
“It’s all right,” I assured her, regaining my balance and offering her a hand as she picked up the last item she’d lost in our head-on collision. “I don’t think either of us are going to need to call the insurance company, and it definitely doesn’t look like I dented that killer body of yours in the crash.”
She chuckled as she put her purse back onto her shoulder, shaking her loose mane of dark hair as she stood once again. Something in my stomach clenched, though at the moment, I couldn’t understand why—everything about this girl seemed so horrifyingly familiar. I heard a slew of warning klaxons going off inside my head; I just couldn’t figure out what they meant.
Until I looked into her familiar brown eyes.
“You never change, do you, Slade?”
A pit opened up right in the bottom of my stomach as I watched her push her dark locks aside, revealing a face I hadn’t seen outside of my dreams in over seven years. My breath caught and I felt my face drain of its color. I couldn’t believe it. How did she find me?
My head spun as I tried to come up with something to say, words that would put into context the sheer amount of emotion I was feeling as I looked down into her eyes. What in the world does a person even say after all this time? After everything I’d done?
“Hi, Iris.”
~ THREE ~
Iris
My name leaving my stepbrother’s lips was like the slow drip of honey, sweet and almost musical. I bit my lip on instinct and felt a throb from down low as I raked my gaze over the man who’d almost ruined my life a mere seven years ago.
He’d gotten taller. Christ, I thought guys stopped growing at eighteen, but Slade towered over me more now than he ever had before. He was an imposing figure with broad shoulders, a thick, solid chest, and arms that bulged with lean muscle beneath his scrubs. He’d certainly filled out. Even his face was different, more chiseled, his eyes more intense. Gone was the boy I’d gotten into so much trouble with, and in his place was a man.
A man whose help I needed. Right. Kellan. I felt awful that I’d almost forgot.
I cleared my throat, evading my stepbrother’s piercing gaze. “Good to see you’re hot-blooded as ever,” I said, nodding to the two nurses he’d been checking out.
“Iris Walker,” he said again, like even the sound of my name defied belief. He looked me over from head to toe, and for a second, his tongue darted out across his lips. When he ran his teeth over the bottom one and pulled it into his mouth, that throb between my thighs returned full-force.
Down, girl.
“Yeah. Iris Walker. Your stepsister.” At this point, I was reminding him as much as I was reminding myself. “I need a favor.”
I should’ve asked him how he’d been, should’ve made small talk. That would’ve been the polite thing to do. But I w
as in a rush. I wanted to get this over with. I wanted the feelings flooding me—both good and bad—to dissipate and leave me the hell alone, and the only way to do that was to get in, get out, and never look back again.
With how fantastic Slade looked, that wouldn’t exactly be easy.
As soon as the word “favor” left my mouth, my stepbrother’s expression darkened. He took a quick look around the hall and said, “Well, it’s going to have to wait. I’m making rounds.”
I raised an eyebrow at him. “In the cafeteria?” There weren’t any patient rooms on this floor.
Slade shrugged. “Just taking a shortcut to the elevators. Point is, I really don’t have time. You in town long? You should call me sometime. We can figure out a rain check.”
He was already moving past me before I could answer. I fell into step beside him. “I get it. You’re busy. We’ll walk and talk.”
Slade laughed, but there was no joy in it. “Please. I can’t bring my little sister with me on my rounds.”
“Stepsister,” I said again and caught the look he flashed me. It was a quick one, just out of the corner of his eye, but I could see it, feel it, taste it. There was an electric charge in the air and I could practically hear the gears in Slade’s head turning. He remembered what we’d done, and he knew why I was making the distinction.
Still, he shrugged it off. “Whatever. Stepsister, then. Still, you can’t come with me on my rounds. This stuff is confidential information.”
I shrugged too. “Better stop and talk to me, then, I guess.”
Slade did stop, right in the middle of the cafeteria where everyone could see us. He tilted his head toward the ceiling and shut his eyes like when he opened them, I might have disappeared. When I didn’t, he looked disappointed. He lowered his voice.
“There are things more important than us having a little tête-à-tête right now, Iris,” he said through his teeth. “People’s lives are at stake. And believe it or not, you dropping in here unannounced after… how many years has it been? Five? Ten?”
I stared at him. He knew exactly how long. “Seven.”
“Right.” He snapped his fingers. “Lucky number seven. So after seven years, you show up at my work in the middle of the day and expect me to take a timeout to chat about old times? To ask me for a favor?” His eyes smoldered as he drew an inch closer. “You could’ve used a phone for that, sweetheart. But you’re here in the flesh. Why’s that?”
My jaw sagged. He couldn’t possibly be implying that I was here to fuck him…
Oh, wait. This was Slade Jarvis. Of course that’s what he was saying.
“Because nobody has your number,” I snapped, recoiling from Slade like I’d been burned. He chuckled, stoking my fury. “And anyway, I called this hospital—several times—and left you three messages, none of which you ever returned.”
“I’m a busy man,” Slade said, rolling his eyes and starting to walk again. He gestured to the nurses, patients, and doctors littering the cafeteria. “As you can probably see, I’m a doctor. I save lives. You’re gonna have to wait to get a piece of me, Iris, just like everyone else.”
I could read the subtext as clearly as if he’d written it in the air with a Sharpie: You’re not special. Somehow, my stepbrother had turned into an even bigger asshole than he’d been at twenty-one. He was a hotshot doctor now, the cock of the walk, holding pride of place in a henhouse full of young nurses and impressionable interns. No doubt he was screwing every one of them that came within spitting distance. He’d gone off to Harvard for a doctorate and left with a swollen ego, instead. I tried not to think about the implications of what else of Slade’s might be swollen as I stopped walking and clenched my fists.
Somebody needed to take him down a notch.
“Slade!” I barked, and it seemed like the whole cafeteria put down their sporks and stared at me all at once. Slade stopped so short I heard his sneakers screech across the floor and turned to me, eyes narrowed. Defiantly, I met his gaze. “You don’t get to walk away from me, Slade Jarvis. I don’t care if you’re a doctor, a unicorn, or God Himself—you will get your ass back here and talk to me, because we’re family, and right now I need you.”
My stepbrother looked at me for a long time. Even from a distance, I could feel his heat, his anger irradiating me right into my bones. He cocked an eyebrow and glanced around the room, noting the silence, the weight of all eyes focused on him and me. My knees turned to jelly and my stomach flopped, but I never wavered. If I did, he’d walk away again, right after he laughed in my face.
Poor Iris, he’d say. You really haven’t changed, have you? You’re still the naïve little teenager in way over her head with a man you can’t handle, much less control.
I couldn’t back down. Not with what was at stake. But when Slade crossed the distance between us in three great strides, it was all I could do not to shrink away.
“This way,” he said, a grin on his face that was less like a smile and more like a baring of teeth. As he gestured to the opposite end of the room, he added, “Sis.”
I followed Slade out the cafeteria doors to a long hallway with too-bright lights and floors that reeked of sanitizer. Wordlessly, my stepbrother swiped his ID badge over a scanner near another set of doors and held one open for me to walk through. I had to duck under his arm to do so, and the way he glared at me made the hairs on my nape stand on end.
The rest of this wing was under construction. There were plenty of signs denoting this, but Slade ignored them, jiggling the handle on one of the doors and then kicking the bottom of it to spring the lock. This one he pushed open, letting me see myself in, and once I heard that door close behind us, my guts tied themselves into knots.
I turned and looked at Slade. The air was thick with tension, though of what kind, I wasn’t sure. He looked angry—his brow was deeply creased and I could see the muscle in his jaw twitching. Slade never did like being called out like that, especially in front of friends. And I’d gone and done it in front of his colleagues. No wonder he was looking at me like he’d just love to break me in half.
I wasn’t sure that was all he wanted to do to me, though. Or at least, I wasn’t sure if he wanted to break me with his hands, or with his body while he bent me over his bed. It was always hard to tell with Slade. For him, there was a fine line between rage and desire.
“Look,” I began, “I know you’ve got a lot going on here, and I know we haven’t exactly kept in touch. And trust me, if I had any other options…”
Slade was moving toward me, stalking like a panther, the muscles beneath his blue scrubs rippling and stretching taut with each of his slow, methodical steps. I tried to hold my ground, but my heart was already in my throat by the time he grazed a fingertip down my blouse, letting it come to rest right at the center above my breast.
“You’re not wearing your visitor’s badge,” he said. “You could get in a lot of trouble for that, Iris. Since when do you break the rules?”
Since you put your dick in me, I thought, but didn’t answer. Your big, amazingly thick dick…
“It’s in my purse,” I said, finally taking a step backward. Slade grinned. He knew he had me now. “Like you’re such a stickler for hospital protocol.”
“Aw, sis. You really didn’t forget all about me,” he chuckled, tracing one of the buttons keeping my breasts shielded from his view. Heat rushed to my neck and face. I knew I was blushing, and I knew, even in the dim light, that Slade could see it.
How could I have forgotten about him, after the things he’d done to me, the way he’d made my body sing? Then again, it wasn’t like I wanted to remember all that, either—not on most days. Most days, I wanted to forget the way Slade made me feel—how big his cock was, how talented those hands of his were when it came to the human body. Slade had always been a master of anatomy, only now, here, as a doctor, he had an entirely different reason for utilizing those skills.
Well, I thought, remembering how he’d been checking out those
nurses in the hallway, mostly.
As if reading my mind, Slade’s lips quirked. “Is that why you’re here?” he asked. “Because you haven’t forgotten me—because you can’t stop thinking about everything we did together, and you needed another taste?”
“Please,” I said, though my voice cracked, “shut the fuck up for one second, would you, Slade? That’s not why I’m here.” My knees were quaking. No, not why I’m here at all…
“Is that so?” His eyes darted around the room momentarily. “You know how many nurses I’ve fucked in here, sweetheart?” he said, his breath hot on my cheek. There was a dark note to it—coffee, rich and savory, with just a hint of cream, plus Slade’s own masculine spice. I wanted to look away from the heat in his eyes, from the low flames burning there, but I couldn’t. I was trapped in his gaze, in that same desirous stare he’d ensnared me with so long ago. And some deep, primal part of me—the one that made my thighs clench and my lips tremble—was loving it.
Slade brought his lips to my ear. In a sound somewhere between a groan and a purr, he told me, “A lot, Iris. I’ve fucked a lot of nurses in here. Right where you’re standing now. Right up against this wall. So if you were here because of my dick, you sure as hell picked the right place and the right time to…”
“It’s Kellan,” I blurted, pushing my back against the wall in a last, desperate bid to put space between my stepbrother and I. “Kellan’s missing, Slade. Has been for over a week now. And I think you’re the only one who stands any chance of bringing him back.”
The burning in Slade’s eyes faded, replaced by a cold glare that gave me chills. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the only reason I was shivering. But I had to keep my head in the game. I couldn’t let my stepbrother, this cocky ass, get the better of me. Not when Kellan’s well-being was on the line.
Still, it was so damn hot when he growled, “What the hell?”
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