by Lexi Lewis
She had the next day off from work, which worked out fine since it meant that she would be able to spend time with Devin and run some errands she had needed to do for the last little while. The apartment was practically empty of food at this point, and the weekend was approaching fast.
Having things to do and being away from the hospital would be enough to keep her mind off of things, she hoped, and by the time she came back, she would have her head on straight.
That was all there was to it.
Forcing herself to focus, she completed her shift quickly and then headed home, tired and on edge. It was three in the morning, and she wanted nothing more than to fall into her bed and maybe use the empty apartment to her advantage. Whenever Devin spent the night with the Santiagos or some of his other friends, she cleaned and took some time for herself, putting her trusty rabbit vibrator to good use.
This would definitely have been the occasion to do that since few things relaxed her like a good orgasm, but she was pretty sure that it would just make the problem worse since getting off was what had started this whole damned thing in the first place.
She let herself into the apartment with a low sigh and then headed for the bathroom, deciding that a long soak in the tub would be just the thing to help her calm down from the nerves and agitation that were jangling around in her.
The hot steam helped to clear her head, and she dumped in some bubble bath that she’d been given as a gift last Christmas and had yet to use. It smelled sweetly of vanilla and cocoa butter, and she liked that, so when she finally stripped out of her clothes and underwear and eased into the bathtub, she was feeling better.
All she had to do was clear her mind and let herself drift, and it would all be fine. At least, that’s what she told herself.
The water felt good lapping over her skin, and she let out a low sound of pleasure as her tense muscles were eased by the heat. She still felt slick between her legs from when she had come in Reese’s lap, and as soon as she let that thought form, she was thinking about it again.
“No,” she groaned, but it was too late. Her body was reacting to the water and the memory of his touch. How long had it been since someone else had gotten her off? Probably since before her mother had died, and that was a very long time to go without having any other’s touch but her own. It explained why her body was reacting so strongly to this.
Eve resisted for as long as she could, but then she slid her hand down her torso and under the foamy water, sliding her fingers over her clit and shivering at the sensation it produced.
It felt good. Not as good as having Reese pressing his own crotch against hers, but with the memory in her head, it was close enough.
Her other hand came up to caress her breasts, pinching and twisting her nipples in turn while she worked fingers into herself, spreading her legs wider in the water.
“Oh,” she breathed, pushing her fingers in deeper, pretending that they were something thicker and hotter. That she was astride Reese’s lap, him in his bed and both of them barely clothed. She thought about sinking down onto what had felt like a very impressive cock, and having it deep inside of her.
She thought about the look on his face as she rode him, how he would touch her hips and her chest and tease her nipples. He had both hands to work with in her fantasy, and god, did it add to the sensation.
Her soft cry of pleasure echoed in the otherwise silent bathroom, and the water sloshed against the side of the tub as she fucked herself on her fingers faster, her other hand coming down from her chest to tease her clit.
When she came, it was with a shuddering gasp and his name on the tip of her tongue, and she knew, she just knew that she was screwed beyond all belief.
CHAPTER 9: A PLOT AFOOT
“I have some news, and I’m pretty sure you’re not going to like it.”
Reese groaned. After the day he’d had, the last thing he wanted to hear was bad news. He hadn’t seen Eve since the night they had kissed, and he assumed that she’d had the day off since she hadn’t come in at all. At least, he hoped that she was just off and that she hadn’t requested not to have him on her rounds anymore. There were still things he wanted to say to her; mainly he wanted to find out what the hell had happened that night, and why she had suddenly run off. Was it because he was a bad kisser? Did he not make her feel as good as she made him feel? He hoped that wasn’t the case either, but he’d spent the whole day worrying about it and couldn’t bring himself to ask one of the other nurses who’d come in to check on him what the deal was.
So he’d gone a whole day without seeing her, and now it was early in the morning, and he was waiting with bated breath to see if she’d come in today or if he would never see her again.
How had she worked herself into his head so thoroughly? It hadn’t even been that long since he’d met her and now he was feeling like he was missing something if he went more than a day without seeing her.
Maybe he was losing his mind. It would make sense.
“Reese,” Paul said, snapping his fingers. “Are you with me, man? Because I really need you to pay attention here.”
“Yeah. Yeah, I’m listening,” Reese said, shaking his head to clear it. It was probably best to just listen to whatever crappy news Paul was going to tell him. “Let me guess. I’m being dropped by sponsors already.”
Paul shook his head. “No, no. Word of exactly what’s going on with you hasn’t been released yet. You’re still fine on that count. You might have to do an interview next month or something, or release a statement telling people you’re taking some time off for your health. If you reassure them that you’ll be back full force eventually, it should be fine.”
“Eventually,” Reese snorted. “Right. Six to seven months in a cast and then another who knows how long for physical therapy to get my leg back in working order. It’s going to be like another year before I’m at the top of my game again.”
“I know it seems pretty bad, but don’t give up on me,” Paul said. “You’re not done yet.”
Reese sighed. He felt done. But whatever. He could mope about that later. “Yeah, I guess. So what’s the terrible news, then?”
Paul pulled his tablet out of his bag and flipped the cover open, tapping a few things on the screen. “I asked for the footage from your fall at the competition,” he said. “I knew you’d want to see it so you could see where you might have gone wrong with the trick.”
It was one of Reese’s habits to watch the footage of his performance in competitions so he could critique his form and his tricks from an outside point of view. This, though, he wasn’t sure if he wanted to relive.
“And you want me to watch it now?” he asked, making a face.
“It’s kind of really important that you do,” Paul remarked, holding the tablet out to him.
On the screen was the frozen image of Reese in all his gear, somewhere before he had started the trick that had gone wrong. He didn’t know what Paul was expecting him to see, so he sighed and tapped play, watching as he headed towards the jump.
He watched himself launch into the air and then start going through the movements, each one fluid and precise. As he looked, his brow furrowed.
Reese had assumed that he’d done something wrong. That he’d come at a trick from the wrong angle or with too much spin or something, but that wasn’t the case from what he was looking at. It looked like he had done everything right. All of the moves looked like they were supposed to, and that didn’t make any sense.
He watched as his board went off balance, sending him crashing down to the snow in a fall that made him wince to relive. Reese pressed pause before he had to watch himself roll down the slope. His arm and ribs twinged with pain just thinking about it.
“I don’t get it,” he said. “I thought that I’d done something wrong, but all of this looks so solid. What happened?”
Paul knew something; Reese could tell.
He leaned over and swiped his fingers over the screen, rewinding the
video and then zooming in closer. “Watch it now,” he said. “And pay attention to the area around your board right before you start to fall.”
Reese frowned but obeyed, watching it again.
What the…
There. Right before his board went out of his control, something dark and roundish seemed to smack into the bottom of it, hitting the bottom and the side and putting him off kilter. It wasn’t big, but it was apparently enough to have him losing the thread of the trick and plummeting down into the snow.
“What was that?” he asked, looking up at Paul.
“I’m not sure. It’s too hard to see when it’s zoomed in that much, but it looks like… Well. It looks like a rock or something. Like someone threw it or shot it or something and hit the bottom of your board to throw you off.”
Reese stared. Sabotage. It was the one thing he hadn’t considered. Reese was always more inclined to blame himself when things went wrong in his runs, and he hadn’t even thought about someone else being at fault. About someone else trying purposefully to hurt him or put him out of the game. He had competitors, sure, rivals and people who he raced and went up against in competitions, but that was the nature of the sport. Of every sport, really. Someone had to lose and someone had to win.
“How could someone throw something at just the right time like that?” he asked.
“I don’t know that either. There are a few different ways it could have happened, but unless a stone or something just magically happened to be right there at that exact moment, we’re looking at someone who did this to you.”
There was a mixture of relief and horror coursing through Reese that made his stomach hurt. On the one hand, this wasn’t his fault. He wasn’t a failure. If there hadn’t been action from someone else, he probably would have finished that run perfectly and not had any problems. It was like a weight had been lifted from his shoulders all of a sudden, and he wanted to smile.
Of course, the fact that there was someone out there who either disliked him or wanted him to fail enough to make him get hurt like he had was enough to put that weight right back on his shoulders.
“How do we find out who did this?” Reese wanted to know.
“I’m working on a few things. Once I saw the footage, I called the people in charge of the competition, and they’re going to do some investigating. There were trees all along either side of that run. Anyone could have been hiding in there trying to cause trouble.”
“Right.” It was going to be hard, then. “Do you think…do you thing they wanted to hurt me? Or just get me out of the competition?”
Paul shrugged. “Hard to say. No matter what they wanted, you did get hurt, and it could have been much worse. I hate to say it, but it seems like someone who would know exactly where to aim on your board to make you mess up would also have to know a thing or two about the sport. So it’s probably someone who wanted someone else to win.”
“Which means either one of the other competitors was in on it, or they had some ridiculously overzealous fans.”
“Right. It’s gonna be hard to pin down which one we’re dealing with here. I was going to head over to the mountain and do some digging of my own. There hasn’t been any fresh snow since your accident, so if there are foot prints or any other evidence out there, it should still be untouched. Unless they’ve gone back and tried to cover it up.”
Reese sighed and dragged his hand through his hair. “Let’s hope they haven’t. This is…” he shook his head. “I kinda can’t believe someone would do this.”
“It’s not that uncommon, you know,” Paul pointed out. “And it’s been all over the media about how that competition could have boosted your popularity and gotten you more notice from the sponsors and pros. It was the perfect time to try and get you out of the picture.”
“Never mind if I got killed or something in the process,” Reese muttered, scowling down at the tablet in his lap.
“Let’s not jump to that just yet. We don’t know if murder is in the cards or if they were banking on your being okay in the end. I called up to the equipment room to see if they’ve got security tapes or something and if they know who all was authorized to be around the boards before things got started. Didn’t you say you felt your strap give out?”
Reese nodded. He’d forgotten all about that. “Yeah, right before I fell. I remember thinking that I could have finished if it was just the strap, not like I haven’t done runs with one strap before. But then the rock or whatever hit, and I was down.”
“Huh. Yeah, we’re definitely looking at someone who wanted to mess you up. They probably wanted to make sure that you were going to end up on the ground one way or another, and I bet only having one strap made it harder for you when your board got hit.”
“Makes sense,” Reese replied. “Awesome. So there’s someone gunning for me. That’s just great.”
“Don’t get yourself all worked up about it yet,” Paul advised, taking his tablet back and swiping his fingers over the screen a few times. “There are still a few more things I’ve got to look into. In the meantime, you work on getting better. The sooner you’re out of the public eye, the better, and no one’s going to be stupid enough to bother you at your parents’ house. No one’s even gonna know you’re there.”
“Right. Okay.”
Reese trusted Paul. He trusted him to take care of this so that it wouldn’t happen again. And he had a good point. None of the people who might have been behind this would know that he was staying with his parents, so hopefully he would be safe.
Paul stayed for a while longer, talking about his plans and asking about Reese’s health and possible discharge days, and when he finally left to go head up to the mountain and do his poking around, Reese sighed and flopped back against the pillows before reaching back and pulling one over his face.
If whoever was responsible for this had wanted him out of the picture for a while, then they’d damn well gotten what they wanted. It would be months before he’d be able to compete again in any sport, and by that time whoever they wanted to be at the top could be in his spot already.
In his head, he ran down a list of people who he had beaten at various things who might have a grudge against him. Most of the time the competitions and tournaments were friendly enough, the athletes focusing more on being at the top of their game than on trying to make others lose. It was worth more if you beat someone with your own skill, yours against theirs, than if you sabotaged the game, but apparently this person didn’t care about that.
He cast his mind back over the last few competitions he’d been in, trying to remember if anyone had stood out as particularly hostile.
There was Matt Carpenter, who always managed come in at second or third whenever Reese got first. But then there was also Jesse Donahue, who seemed to be stuck at fifth most of the time. There were rumors that if his performance didn’t improve, he was going to be dropped by his sponsors pretty quickly.
Reese grabbed his phone and texted Paul to email him the leaderboard from the competition so he’d know who had placed. He’d so far avoided looking at it because he didn’t want to see how far he’d fallen, but now he pretty much needed to know.
He was interrupted from his thoughts by the door being pushed open and Eve stepping inside. Her presence hit him like a ton of bricks because for a moment he had been more occupied with thinking about his latest problem than with thinking about her and whether or not she was going to come back.
But there she was, dressed in her purple scrubs, with her hair pulled back with a headband. There was something resigned in the set of her mouth, and Reese made a face.
“Hey,” he said, giving her a little wave. “Long time, no see.”
She smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “Not really. I was only gone for a day. Let’s see if you managed to keep yourself in one piece while I was gone.”
Something like that would have usually been delivered in a joking tone, colored with warmth, and Eve would have been smiling
crookedly. Now, her voice was just mildly pleasant, and he recognized the generic ‘kind nurse’ bedside manner that he got from most of the other nurses. That wasn’t what he wanted. There had been something different besides the normal nurse/patient dynamic between them since the very first day, and he didn’t want to let go of that.
He watched as she checked the machines and then went to look at his chart as per usual, trying to think of something to say that wasn’t rude or accusatory. He still had no idea what had happened to make her run from him that night, and he didn’t want to push too hard if there was something sensitive there or something in her past that made it hard for her to be intimate with others. That would just be counterproductive.
“So…you left quickly the other night.” There. That was neutral enough, right?
Eve stiffened, keeping her eyes on the chart. “I had to finish my rounds,” she said. “There were other patients who needed me.”
“Probably not in the same way,” Reese joked weakly.
Her eyes darted up to his and then back down. “I…” She seemed to be struggling with what to say, and if she didn’t have the chart in her hands, Reese was willing to bet that she would be wringing them together.
“What happened?” he asked finally. Apparently beating around the bush was going to get them nowhere. “We were fine and having a very good time if the noises and end result can be believed, and then you just…were gone.”