Hot Bodies Boxed Set: The Complete Vital Signs Erotic Romance Trilogy

by Hughes, Jill Elaine

  Dr. Wilkinson looked Joanna up and down yet again—slower this time. “I pictured you as middle-aged, frumpy, overweight, and with a blue-dyed beehive hairdo.”

  Joanna laughed. “You just described my boss, Maryam Malone.”

  A slow smile tugged at one corner of the surgeon’s mouth. “Well, that’s amusing,” he said. “Though in my experience, most good OR nurses look just like that. I haven’t run into a decent OR nurse under the age of forty-five in, well, never. Let alone one as young and attractive as you are.”

  Joanna blushed to her eardrums. “Well, thank you for the compliment,” she said. “At least I think it’s a compliment. For all I know, you’re insulting me for not having enough experience.”

  “I doubt you’d have such a stellar reputation if you lacked experience,” the surgeon replied, his eyes sparkling. “Though you don’t exactly look like someone who’s tough enough to work for twenty-four hours straight on your feet in the OR.” He looked up and down her body again, and this time, every pore of Joanna’s skin felt as if he were caressing it under his gaze. “You’re awfully petite for OR work, Watson. And you look pretty damn good for someone who claims to be overworked and exhausted.” Dr. Wilkinson shifted his weight, leaned back against the elevator’s cold steel wall. “Hell, if this is how you look on a bad day, I’d love to catch you on a good one sometime.”

  Joanna’s breath caught. Was this man coming on to her? It certainly seemed that way.

  Several awkward minutes passed. There was a harsh, metallic grinding noise from somewhere high above. The elevator jerked sharply again, then dropped further and stopped short, sending Joanna toppling forward into Dr. Wilkinson’s arms.

  Then the lights went out.

  They weren’t getting out of there anytime soon, that was obvious. Dr. Wilkinson took it as his cue to hold Joanna even tighter.

  The feel of Dr. Wilkinson’s firm-yet-tender grip on her body sent Joanna reeling. Now, her entire lower half was on fire. She could hear heavy breathing somewhere in the darkness—and she was shocked when she realized it was her own.

  “Well, now it really looks like we’re screwed,” Dr. Wilkinson said through the darkness, his voice suddenly deeper. “I hope that poor fratboy doesn’t bleed to death because of this.” He didn’t let go of Joanna, as she expected he would. Instead, he just pulled her even closer.

  “I’m sure the Trauma people will stabilize him until we can get out of here,” she replied, breathless.

  “What do you propose we do in the meantime, Joanna?” Dr. Wilkinson said, using her given name for the first time. “Because it looks like we could be stuck in here for quite a while.”

  “I—“ was all Joanna could muster before Dr. Wilkinson’s mouth closed upon hers. They kissed for almost a full minute, their tongues doing a wild, wet tango until Joanna finally had to come up for air.

  “What the hell was that for?” she stammered.

  “You’ll have to forgive me,” Dr. Wilkinson said. “Sometimes I have a tendency to come on a little strong.”

  “I’ll say.” The proper, refined Southern lady in Joanna was mortified and offended at what had just happened. But the raw, repressed, sex-hungry woman she was inside wanted things to keep progressing just as they were. Joanna had had sex on the brain for days, and now, here it was just inches away from her. She’d be crazy not to take advantage of it—even if it would be with her new boss. Still—

  “It’s all right, Joanna,” Dr. Wilkinson said, caressing the side of her face. “No one will ever know. It’ll be our little secret.”

  “Dr. Wilkinson—“

  He held a finger to her lips. “Hush,” he said. “And as long as we’re stuck in here together, you can call me Harlan.”

  Joanna could tell just how aroused Harlan was when he pulled her closer. The bulge at his crotch was unmistakable.

  Either he was glad to see her, or that was a nuclear warhead in his pocket.

  And Joanna wasn’t exactly a cold fish at the moment, either. Her panties were swimming in an ocean of her own juices. She hadn’t gotten laid in more than three years. She was obsessed with Viagra commercials. Even if it went against all her principles as a properly raised Southern lady, Joanna would be lying through her teeth if she said she didn’t want to get down and dirty with her arrogant-SOB-surgeon-slash-boss right here, right now.

  “All right, Harlan,” she said, her voice husky with desire. “Let’s do it. As long as what happens here, stays here.”

  “What happens here, stays here,” Harlan repeated. “Now you’re talking.” He fumbled in the darkness, searching for the simple tie fastenings that kept Joanna’s scrub bottoms on. He loosened the ties quickly and the scrub bottoms fell to the floor in one fell swoop. Another flick of his supple surgeon’s wrist in the darkness, and Joanna’s panties were on the floor beside them. And no sooner than that little slip of nylon and cotton hit the elevator’s steel floor, Harlan’s long, lithe surgeon’s fingers were between the folds of Joanna’s cleft. He groaned lightly in his throat when he felt how wet she was. “You’re ready to go right now, aren’t you?” he whispered.

  Joanna moaned softly as she ground her crotch against Harlan’s hand. “Yes,” she sighed. She was embarrassed at her sudden nakedness, even in pitch darkness. She was even more embarrassed by just how much she was enjoying having a total stranger’s hands crammed up her lady parts.

  So much for being a proper Southern lady. At this moment, Joanna was a dirty girl through and through.

  Harlan’s long surgeon’s fingers probed deep inside Joanna’s sheath. She ground against them even harder, desperate for the kind of penetration that can only be had one way. She flailed her hands in the dark towards Harlan’s bulging crotch, and fumbled until she managed to loosen the waistband to his own scrubs. She reached out in the pitch blackness until her fingers encircled Harlan’s giant cock.

  A cock so gigantic, in fact, Joanna was thankful it was too dark to see. If she had actually seen it up close, she would probably have lost her wits entirely and brought the whole liaison to a standstill. Even in the darkness, Joanna knew that Harlan was as well-endowed as any number of surgically enhanced male porn stars. Joanna wasn’t even sure she could take that kind of massive machine into herself without getting some very delicate surgical enhancement of her own.

  But at the moment, that hardly mattered. All that did matter was Joanna’s desire to somehow get that ridiculously huge male member inside the part of her anatomy that needed it most. She heard the unmistakable crinkle and tear of a condom wrapper in the darkness. An instant later, Harlan’s cock was looking for her cunt.

  Joanna was far too petite to just let Harlan slide himself into her from his high perch against the wall. No, making Joanna’s barely five-foot-one frame match up to Harlan’s six-foot-two was going to require some gymnastics. Joanna craned her arms around Harlan’s neck, braced one still-shod foot against the elevator wall for leverage, and wrapped the other around Harlan’s waist. She somehow wedged her splayed vagina against the tip of Harlan’s huge cock, and thrust her hips forward at the exact instant that he pushed right into her.

  Joanna felt herself stretch to the outer limits as Harlan pushed his cock home. And just when she thought she couldn’t possibly take in any more of him—she did.

  Joanna screamed. In pleasure.

  Of course.

  Harlan’s cock had stuffed and filled places in Joanna’s body she had never known existed to the absolute brim—and then some. And with every thrust, he found deeper and deeper places to fill, bump, grind—you name it.

  Joanna and Harlan rammed into each other for almost ten minutes. Each and every thrust hit Joanna’s G-spot with perfect precision, resulting in an almost constant orgasm that exploded and re-exploded in the deepest recesses of her body. Her teeth clattered together at each resounding impact of Harlan’s cock against her cervix, and just when she thought she couldn’t take any more of this insane pleasure, Harlan maneuvered hims
elf so that those teeth-clattering impacts were transferred from her G-spot to her clit. Using some kind of space-aged sexual technique, Harlan somehow managed to rub Joanna’s clit with his cock at each thrust while simultaneously rolling and rubbing it with two dexterous fingers between thrusts—all in pitch blackness. For a split second between the orgasmic pulses rocking her clit and vagina, Joanna silently wondered where the hell he’d learned how to do that.

  Medical school, perhaps?

  She should really screw random surgeons in stuck elevators more often.

  Harlan picked up the pace as his own orgasm approached, grunting and moaning in deep rhythmic fashion as his cock moved inside Joanna at light speed. Joanna in turn let out one long, slow, low unnnnnuuuhhhhhhhh as Harlan’s final bodyslam into her vagina sent her over the edge into one final, heart-shattering full-body orgasm. Harlan’s climax immediately followed, exploding into her like a giant supernova. Harlan spilled so much seed inside her that Joanna could feel his essence—mingled with her own nectar—slipping down the inside of both her legs until it dripped onto the hollow chrome floor of the elevator, creating a stir of echoes that blended in a perfect mini-symphony with the lovers’ panting exhaustion.

  Joanna collapsed against Harlan’s shoulder. “Thank you,” she whispered. “Thank you so much.”

  “You’re welcome,” he whispered back, gently nuzzling her ear. “I hope it was good for you.”

  “It was better than good,” Joanna sighed. “It was the best I ever had.”

  As if on cue, the elevator lights flashed back on, and the elevator suddenly lurched back into motion. Joanna and Harlan barely had enough time to disentangle themselves and dress before the elevator car landed on the first floor, just steps away from the trauma center.

  Dr. Wilkinson stepped out of the elevator, then paused to turn around, holding open the battered doors with one immaculate hand. In an instant, every shred of the ardent lover Joanna had come to know in the darkness was gone, replaced by the hard-edged surgeon she’d first met almost a half-hour before. “I’ll see you upstairs in a few minutes,” Harlan said, his voice curt and businesslike. “Be scrubbed, masked and ready to go by the time I get up there. And don’t be late. If you are, I’ll write you up.”

  Write her up?

  What the hell?

  “But—“ Joanna stammered. “What about—“

  Dr. Wilkinson pointed inside the elevator with his free hand. “What happens here, stays here,” he said. “As we agreed. Goodbye, Watson.”

  Nurse Malone had been far too kind in her description of Dr. Wilkinson. “Darth Vader on crack” was no way to describe him. The man was Ivan the Terrible, Joseph Stalin, and Attila the Hun all rolled into one.

  As the elevator doors slid shut, it was all Joanna could do to keep from pounding her fists against them in rage.

  THREE

  Shirley Daniels was totally fed up with Covington Community Hospital.

  She’d been slaving away as a certified nurse-anesthetist there for years, working double shifts six days a week for less than half what she could earn working at a big research hospital in Raleigh-Durham or Charlotte. As if that weren’t bad enough, now she had to anesthetize patients in the OR for that rat bastard Dr. Harlan Wilkinson, who apparently flew down to North Carolina from his hoity-toity research hospital in Boston for the sole purpose of making her and everyone she worked with miserable.

  Not only did the rude, crude Yankee make no secret of the fact he thought nurses had no business administering anesthesia, he had absolutely no respect for common courtesy. He swore like a sailor in the OR, called her “Daniels” (as if she were a grunt in the U.S. Army instead of a well-educated Southern lady) and even insisted that Shirley play heavy-metal CDs in the OR sound system instead of the light easy-listening tunes she preferred—because, as Dr. Wilkinson put it, “the patient’s already asleep, Daniels. The rest of us don’t need to join him in Dreamland because of your sappy choice in music.”

  What an asshole.

  And yet, the aggressive Yankee surgeon stirred feelings in Shirley’s mind and body she hadn’t felt in a long, long time. When she walked out of the OR ten minutes ago, her head was throbbing and her throat smarting with anger and offense.

  But her crotch was on fire.

  Shirley stood under the lukewarm shower in the nurses’ locker room and ground her teeth. She couldn’t work under these conditions. She decided it was high time to start looking for another job.

  But where? She couldn’t leave Statesville—not as long as her mother and father both remained ill and frail in a nearby nursing home. Her family obligations had kept her in this godforsaken town for way longer than she’d ever planned, but there just wasn’t anything she could do about it now. Shirley was all her parents had in the world—and they needed her close by. As much as Shirley wanted to get away, there was no way she could leave Statesville until both her mother and father were dead. And that could take years.

  In the meantime, Shirley could only watch helplessly as her youth and her chances at romance and a family of her own slipped away further and further with every passing year. Shirley might be a hardworking, stiff-upper-lip nurse who put the needs of her family above her own—but she wasn’t dead, either. She had needs, damn it. Needs that just weren’t being met.

  Needs that seemed to become more pronounced whenever she was in the same room with Dr. Harlan Wilkinson.

  Shirley pushed the faucet all the way over to “COLD” and stood under the icy shower stream, hoping the frigid water would chill things out down south.

  It didn’t. Her crotch was still on fire. Something had to give, and fast.

  Shirley peeped around the edge of the shower curtain to see if she was still alone in the locker room. She was—at least for the moment. And that meant she had an opportunity. A golden opportunity to do something she hadn’t done in a very, very long time.

  Shirley Daniels really, really needed to come. Now.

  She pushed the faucet back over to “HOT” and took a deep breath as her body adjusted to the scalding water. She poured some body wash onto her right hand and lathered it up well. Then she let that hand stray to her sex, and parted her already swollen vulva with her fingers. She found ground zero in less than a millisecond, and immediately went to work.

  Shirley rubbed and prodded her clit and vulva, relishing the feeling of her fingers mixing with the soapsuds and scalding water against her skin. All the while she saw Dr. Harlan Wilkinson’s tall, hard body and rugged Yankee face in her mind’s eye—and the vision just made the already scorching temperature of her crotch even hotter.

  Dr. Harlan Wilkinson was definitely an asshole. But he was also an aphrodisiac.

  Shirley came hard, almost losing her footing on the slippery shower tile as her body spasmed against her fast-flitting fingers.

  Ahh, now she felt so much better. She hadn’t had a decent orgasm in—well, she couldn’t exactly remember. It had been so long since Shirley had had sex she could barely remember how the actual mechanics of it worked. Until this morning, she’d been so dried-up and frigid in that department that if the hottest man in the universe had shown up on her doorstep with open arms and an erect penis, Shirley wouldn’t even have known what to do with him.

  How pathetic.

  Shirley’s love life had been so dormant for so long, the sensual part of her was almost dead and buried. And if Dr. Wilkinson hadn’t perked Shirley up in the crotch department upon his arrival, Shirley would probably have qualified for born-again virgin status.

  But that was then, this is now, Shirley thought to herself. Now, I’m a different woman.

  Shirley lathered up her hand again and headed south for round two. Only a few caresses of her red-hot, swollen sex was enough to send a second orgasm rollicking through her body. She was making up for lost time.

  But all the time in the world couldn’t bring back all the frigid, barren years she’d lost. She’d frittered away her youth working double h
ospital shifts and caring for her aged parents—years she could have spent partying, dating, and having lots of hot casual sex, like all her sorority sisters from college had. It didn’t seem fair.

  Still, Shirley was only thirty-four. She was in good shape from pulling so many long, hard shifts in the OR. She still had a good complexion, and long, shiny brown hair that she conditioned with a homemade lemon-and-mayonnaise concoction every Sunday night. And her deep violet-blue eyes—by far her best feature—were arresting. Or they were when she wasn’t completely exhausted from too many double shifts in the OR, anyway. There was no reason she couldn’t attract a man. Even at her most ragged, she was an attractive woman, damn it. Some man, somewhere—maybe not a man as smoking-hot as Dr. Wilkinson, but at least something male and possessing a good-sized dick could be persuaded to fuck her. The only question was when and how.

  Hell, if she could manage to get a facial, a new haircut and a couple days off, Shirley Daniels could even be hot.

  The last pulses of Shirley’s second orgasm finally subsided. She rinsed off, turned off the tap, and grabbed her towel from its hook just outside her shower stall. As she toweled off her now-buzzing body, Shirley decided it was high time to turn over a new leaf—where sex was concerned, anyway. Sure, she still had to work ungodly hours in the OR in order to keep her job and keep a nursing-home roof over her parents’ heads. But that didn’t mean she couldn’t have a sex life. The arrival of the sexy Yankee with the cocky attitude—unattainable as he might be—had inspired Shirley to look for sex and sensuality in new and unlikely places.

  Shirley Daniels had entered a new phase of her sexual life. And she knew her next encounter would involve something far more than her own soapy hand in the hospital shower—of that she was sure. The only question was, when would it happen? And who would her partner (or partners) be?

  Only time would tell.

  FOUR

  In all her nursing career, Joanna Watson had never once wished to trade places with the person on the operating table. But she supposed there was a first time for everything. Because at that moment, Joanna would have given anything to trade places with Jonah Jones, the twenty-year-old college student who lay unconscious on the operating table with pieces of his femur sticking out of his leg in three separate places. At least he was enjoying some peace and quiet underneath all that anesthesia.