by C. M. Stone
She put the rest of the DVDs back. “Ooh, beneath that cold exterior beats the heart of a poet. I like it.”
He frowned at her description, wondering if it was worth it to argue with her. “What are we watching?”
“Thor.”
Rather than ask what the hell Norse gods had to do with Shakespeare, he bit his tongue. Part of him worried that trading valuable sleep time to watch a movie would make it impossible to actually enjoy it, but that worry was soon forgotten as he found himself engrossed in the story. By the end, he had to admit she was right about them having appeal for everyone.
Darla turned off the TV and dropped the remote before turning to face him on the couch. “You liked it, didn’t you?”
“I liked it.” The earnest concern in her eyes gave him the sudden urge to kiss away her worries. He leaned back from her, distancing himself from temptation. “Of course, we just watched it so you could drool over Thor, right?”
She scoffed with such offense he had to laugh. “Are you kidding? He’s a great hero, but Thor isn’t who I drool over in this movie.”
“Oh, I see how it is now. Loki? I should’ve known. Women always want the bad boy.” He paused to try to hide his amusement, doing his best to look serious. “But I think lusting after a genocidal maniac might be pushing it.”
This time it was her turn to laugh, and she gave him a playful nudge with her elbow. “It’s not like that. It’s more like the lady version of wanting to rescue the damsel in distress.”
“The villain isn’t a damsel in distress.”
“But movies don’t make heroes emotionally vulnerable in the same way, and that’s what appeals about the bad guy. It’s not him being evil, it’s his pain. He’s hurt and looking for something. If he just let himself be loved, he could be saved.”
Jackson glanced at the screen. Had they watched the same movie? “Saved from what?”
“Himself.”
There was something in the way she said the word. This time he couldn’t resist touching her. His hand cupped her cheek, his thumb stroking her skin. “Are we still talking about the movie?”
“Well, everybody could use a little saving now and then.” Her eyes closed as she leaned into his touch, and he had the urge to kiss her eyelids and feel the brush of her lashes.
“What do I need saving from?”
His fingers slid from her cheek to the side of her neck, lightly tracing the lines of her body to memorize them through touch. She melted back against the couch and rolled her head, exposing more of her neck to his touch.
She was quiet for so long that he began to wonder if she’d respond at all before her eyes opened a slit. “Being a stick in the mud who only ever wants to do things the same way?”
His fingertips just barely teased behind her ear and at the fine hairs of her nape. It was the lightest touch he could manage without breaking contact, but it still flooded his body with heat. “Is that what you think of me?”
“I’m not sure, but it seems like you try really hard to make people think that.”
He drew his hand away, torn between what he needed to do and what he wanted. “Maybe. I might be compensating a little.”
She licked her lips, her heavy-lidded eyes never wavering from his. “Compensating for what?”
“For occasionally being very, very unprofessional.”
…
Jackon’s hand came back, this time burying itself in her hair. Her eyes widened a millisecond before his lips were on hers, and she shut them to focus purely on the kiss. It started out soft and almost hesitant, their lips brushing and caressing each other, before Jackson seemed to make up his mind. His mouth crushed hers in demand, and she moaned as her lips parted, opening herself up to him and the sweetness of his need. The tight control he kept on himself and everything around him was slipping, and she reveled in being swept up in the storm. The pounding of her heart in her ears grew louder, becoming a vibration through her whole body, until she had to break the kiss to gasp for breath.
Her head still spinning, she drew her cheek against his and let her breath tickle at his ear. “Is this unprofessional?” Her teeth caught his earlobe, worrying it before she sucked it between her lips.
They were close enough she could feel the rumble of his groan in his chest. “Pretty sure it is.”
“Good. I think I like you unprofessional.”
She found his lips with hers, giving herself up to the moment. The touch of his tongue against hers made her shudder, and she tangled with it, not so much to take over the kiss as to just keep feeling the struggle for dominance. His fingers ran through her hair, playing with the locks and making her toes curl. Instinctively, she pressed closer to him, trying to bridge every bit of distance still between them. One of his hands rested on her knee, sending electric shocks of arousal up her thigh to her core.
This time he broke the kiss, but he didn’t pull away far, moving to her throat. “We shouldn’t do this.”
“If you don’t think we should, then you can stop.”
His lips followed her pulse back up to her ear to tease it. “I don’t want to.”
She laid her hand on his knee and squeezed, in part to stop her fingers from inching up any higher. “Then we might have a problem.”
Each time his lips brushed her skin, she felt another bit of rationality slip away. Her thoughts were tumbling into one another until they didn’t even form words, just impulses. Need. Desire. Something more tender and so new and dangerous she didn’t want to acknowledge it was there at all.
He dragged her long skirt up until his hand could slide under it. The first brush of his fingers above the line of her stocking made the muscles in her thighs tremble from the unbearable anticipation. Had she ever felt so aware of the throb of blood through her veins, or the way the heat of it settled between her thighs? She doubted it. Certainly, she’d never been so tempted to ignore hospital policies.
Her hand caught his before it could travel any higher and nudged it back. “Whoa. Okay. Yeah, we should stop.”
He drew away immediately, dragging his hand through his thick brown hair, which had taken on a fairly wild appearance since they started kissing. His olive-toned skin was flushed, his pale green eyes dilated. God, the man was sex personified. “Probably. Sorry if I crossed a line.”
“You didn’t. I was about to.”
He went still, like a big cat spotting prey. The hungry look he gave her made her mouth go dry. “Were you? What were you going to do?”
She thought longingly of the chilled champagne flutes she hadn’t touched at the gala and how badly she needed something to cool off despite the air conditioning in her apartment. “I don’t think I can talk about them out loud,” she teased.
He shrugged a little, one corner of his mouth curving up in a smile. “You don’t have to, but I hate not knowing things.”
Oh, the things she wanted to know about him. The temptation of his lips was far too much, and she needed to lean in to taste them one more time. With the way his arms automatically moved around her, he had to be suffering in the same way.
No matter how much she told herself this was a bad idea, she couldn’t break the kiss. She felt helplessly dragged along by her body’s reactions, like her craving for him was some compulsion that overtook everything else. This time there was no holding back. She slid her fingers up his thigh until they found the growing bulge through his slacks, and his groan sent an answering shudder through her. The heat of his arousal through the cloth was mesmerizing, and she traced the shape of his shaft with her fingertips again and again until she thought she could have sculpted him.
His hand cupped her breast, cradling the weight of the mound in his palm as his thumb sought out her satin-covered nipple. That touch sent tingles across her skin, flooding her veins with heat that left her body yearning. He grasped her waist with his other hand and tugged her closer, and she moved willingly to climb into his lap. She tugged her narrow skirt up to her knees so she could str
addle him, her last shreds of self-control now lost.
He skimmed his hand from her waist around to the small of her back, then lower to grip her ass. The touch made her gasp into the kiss, and her hips rolled. She was rewarded by another quiet groan from him. Wicked possibilities began racing through her head, of riding him on the couch or taking him in her mouth.
There was the familiar sound of feet heavily tramping up the stairs outside. Before she had a chance to fully process it, Jackson had lifted her out of his lap and set her away from him. Legs tangled up with her skirt, she tried to sort herself out so she could sit properly again.
When she looked semi-decent, she narrowed her eyes at him. “What’s wrong?”
“Your roommate could see us.”
No one was opening the door, and she was fairly sure Brandon wouldn’t be home for hours yet. Telling Jackson that was beside the point, though. They had to work together and men like him didn’t fall for women like her anyway. She had felt so confident all night long, it had been easy to forget that she wasn’t Cinderella at the ball. Reality came crashing down, crushing all those stupid little fantasies and hopes she’d let herself build up.
She tipped her head back over the couch to look toward the door, which remained as shut as ever. “My roommate isn’t the only other person who lives in this building.”
“Yeah, I know. That was stupid of me.” He rubbed his hands over his face. “I really should go home.”
“Okay.” Still stinging, she stood up and avoided looking at him. She couldn’t blame him for being concerned about being seen together like this, but that didn’t make his extreme reaction hurt any less. Finding something else to talk about could, at the very least, distract from the rejection. She sought something to say, latching onto the first thing to come to mind. “They don’t give us first years much of a break between shifts anyway. I hope I can get some sleep.”
“You probably won’t. Remember what you said about insomnia?”
She made a sound of disgust, hoping he was wrong. “God, how does anyone survive this?”
“When you get those little gaps between patients, knock back some coffee as fast as you can and then go to sleep in an on-call room.” There was gentle concern in his voice, which soothed her bruised ego. “The caffeine will take about half an hour to kick in, and so you’ll wake up better energized than you would from a regular nap.”
She smiled weakly, wishing it was that easy. If she tried it, she’d be a jittery mess by the time she woke up and would quite likely have a complete anxiety attack a few hours later. Doctors who could tolerate caffeine didn’t know how good they had it. “Where’d you learn that trick?”
“I can’t remember who told me now, but there’ve been a couple studies on it.”
Considering all the trouble he’d given her for vague citations, she had to laugh. A little bit of hurt and worry wrapped around her heart let go with it, the worst of the awkwardness of the moment gone. “Now you’re starting to sound like me. How can you be sure if it’s only been a couple?”
He smiled at her teasing. “Because I’ve carried out hundreds of experiments with it on myself over the years.”
“Hundreds? Everybody told me it got easier after you were an attending.”
“It is. I just push myself a little harder than everybody else.”
“Why?”
“How else could I be the best?”
That couldn’t possibly be all there was to it. She’d been around too many doctors in her life and seen how competitive they could be. Nearly all of them wanted to be the best. Most of them still had lives. None of them, as near as she’d seen, pushed themselves with the same fervor as Jackson did.
What was he trying to make up for?
Chapter Eleven
The tapping of Dr. Elizabeth McGaffey’s cane announced her presence in the hall before Jackson actually saw her. She was in her late sixties and despite multiple knee surgeries and the fact that she’d never run for an operating room again in her life, she remained one of the best trauma surgeons he had ever known.
She drew up alongside him, then gestured for him to walk with her. Jackson grabbed his morning coffee.
“How are things working out with Morales?”
Memories of Darla in his lap and the taste of her lips under his instantly overcame any other thought. Damn, it was pathetic how badly he wanted her. Dangerous, too. The only thing that came near to eclipsing his interest was the rising tide of guilt he was sure would drown him. “Fine.” His voice was tight as he struggled to maintain a properly professional tone. “She’s going to be a good surgeon.”
McGaffey raised one sparse white eyebrow with a wry little smile. “You don’t sound like it’s fine.”
“There’s a little personal conflict with her. It’s nothing big.”
“The two of you don’t get along?”
Relief washed over him like a cool rain on a hot night. Her assumption wasn’t entirely off the mark, considering some of the bickering between them, but a thousand arguments couldn’t compare to the threat of one kiss from Darla. “Yeah, that’s it. We’re not compatible at all.”
“Really? I thought the two of you had a lot in common. That was part of why I recommended she seek you out.”
He nearly choked on his sip of coffee. “What do you think we have in common?”
“You’re very driven, have long-term goals, occasionally lack some necessary introspection…”
He frowned at that. “What? Are you serious?”
McGaffey clucked her tongue, grinning. “If you were more introspective, you’d have figured it out already. You focus more on other people and fixing things for them than you do on yourself.”
“I’m a surgeon. Getting my ego out of it is part of what makes me so good at it.”
“What an incredibly humble thing to say,” she deadpanned. “You’re one of the most egotistical men I’ve ever met—”
He held up a hand to object, but she cut him off. “Easy there, Jackson. I wouldn’t have you any other way.”
He had to laugh at that, then gave McGaffey a warm look. The older woman’s acerbic moods and sarcastic sense of humor had made her infamous during his own residency, but he loved her the way she was, like the snarky grandmother he’d never had. It was a relief to see the years hadn’t mellowed her. “How can I be egotistical and fixated on other people?”
“Because you think you’re the only one who can solve their problems. And then you don’t have to worry about your own problems.”
Some of his good humor cooled. “I don’t have any problems.”
McGaffey only looked amused by his denial. “Of course not. You’re just perfect.”
He drained the rest of his coffee in a long swallow, winced at the burn of it, and tossed the disposable cup in a trash can as they walked past it. “That’s not what I said. I’ve never said that. Why the hell does everybody think that?”
“Because actions speak louder than words, and you don’t let yourself be flawed.”
“I’ve messed up plenty of times.”
She stopped walking and leaned heavily on her cane, her face wrinkled with concern. “A few mistakes over a lifetime, but you dwell on them like capital crimes.”
“What hell else should I do? Pretend it never happened?”
Instead of answering right away, McGaffey just drilled him with the kind of stare most interns did their damnedest to avoid. The silence stretched uncomfortably until she spoke again. “You mean Amy.”
Just her name still had the power to knock the wind out of him, and he wished she could have stayed silent. There was no denying it, though, and he nodded. “Nobody will let me forget it and…and I shouldn’t. All that’s left of her is a memory.”
“It’s not your fault, Jackson.” She was using her bedside manner voice now. Soft, reassuring, and he hated it.
“How do you know? We don’t know how things would have happened if I never got involved with her.”
/> “I know because I’ve seen a lot of people die over the years. A lot of things can kill a person, but being loved was never one of them.”
“Maybe they were being loved by the right people.”
“You’re one of the right people.”
He scoffed. “Funny how that didn’t keep her safe.”
“I’m not saying you can save everyone, but you can offer them love and support. You probably—”
“Can we stop talking about me?” He hated to interrupt her, but wherever that sentence was going he couldn’t handle hearing it. “Let’s get back to Morales.”
McGaffey paused, thin lips pursed in a frown, then she nodded. “Well, a lot of what I said applies to her too. You have things in common, remember?”
It took him a moment to pick up the thread. What had they been talking about before McGaffey mentioned Amy? Ah, yes. His ego. “Oh for God’s sake. She’s the last person in the world to think she’s perfect.”
A startled look passed over McGaffey’s face, her eyes focused over his shoulder. “What makes you say that?”
He hesitated. It would have been smarter to not say anything at all. He couldn’t explain how he’d been thinking about Darla far too much and trying to puzzle her apart like an especially challenging surgical approach. Talking about seeking out extra patients just to help boost Darla’s confidence or watching her come to life like a sunrise when she succeeded at something sounded too revealing of his own feelings. Describing how she finally seemed to recognize her own beauty the night before would definitely be too much. He didn’t dare try to explain that he thought her ego was too small mainly because he thought she was amazing. He grasped for something else to say instead. “She’s insecure. It’s probably her biggest weakness.”
McGaffey finally looked him in the eyes again, though it wasn’t him she was speaking to. “Hello Morales.”
His stomach dropped into his feet and he spun to face Darla. God, he was an idiot. Of all the explanations he could have given, he picked one that sounded horrible to overhear.