"Hey, some kids get sick."
"Hmmm...."
I couldn't help but smile as she grumbled. She was cute when she was mad. Cuter when she was bent over but this would have to do me for now.
"I reckon you made all that up just so you could come back and see me. I bet you begged the hospital to let you pull a double shift."
"Pfff..... Don't flatter yourself."
She ripped off the cuff and scribbled in my chart.
"At least your blood pressure's down. That's a good thing."
"Love must be good for my heart," I said and reached for her thigh again, this time softly.
"Who said anything about love?"
Outside, the girls were still watching, still whispering. Miranda mumbled under her breath and dropped my chart back into the slot at the end of the bed. Then she moved over to the window.
"Quit your yappin'!" she called out to the girls and waved a hand as though she was trying to scare away a flock of pigeons. "Get back to work!"
She yanked the curtains closed and sighed.
"That'll give them something to talk about."
She sauntered back to the bed and this time, when my hand reached for her, she didn't pull away. Instead, she took my hand in hers and slid it up beneath her dress.
She was wet already, or still wet from earlier.
I pushed two fingers up inside her and she leaned over the bed railing, grinding against my hand.
"Ah, fuck. Yeah, like that. Just like that!"
"Shhh... They'll hear you."
She bit her lip and grunted.
"Fuck..."
She was growing wetter and wetter, my fingers slipping out of her while I wished it was something else deep inside her. Riding my hand, she pulled back the bedsheets and grabbed my cock, cursing and grunting as she stroked it. It was hard to imagine this was the same woman who'd I'd shared a mocha with an hour ago.
Now her face was a picture of pure ecstasy, her lips turned up almost into a sneer as she cried out.
"That's it, baby. I need you harder."
Just hearing her made me wanna blow and I tried to hold back, tried to control myself but I couldn't and just when I thought the feelings couldn't get any more intense, she leaned forward and took me in her mouth. Sucking me as hard as she could, I felt the heat of the back of her throat and the thick spit that came from deep within her.
She cupped my balls and it was over. I came hard into her mouth.
She reeled back coughing but with a huge smile on her face. Wiping her mouth with her hand, she laughed and threw a paper towel at me before venturing over to the basin in the corner. Washing her face in strong disinfectant soap, she patted her cheeks dry and looked at her reflection in the small mirror above the sink.
The demure, shy look had returned to her eyes and the sexual beast she was only seconds ago had vanished.
"I need to go," she said.
"Wait, no. Stay a minute."
She wiped her hands down the front of her dress and blushed. After what I'd just seen her do she now blushed.
"What?" she asked.
"Nothing."
"You're laughing at me."
"I'm not laughing at you. I'm just happy."
She smiled and bit her lip.
There was a strand of hair coming loose from her bun, trailing down the side of her face like ivy. I would have loved to see her with her hair down. I bet she looked like a Mediterranean queen.
"I have to go," she repeated.
"Just a minute."
She lingered at the side of the bed.
"I shouldn't have done that."
Balling up the paper towel, I threw it toward the bin. It bounced off the wall and fell onto the floor.
"Yes, you should have."
"What if people heard?"
I shrugged.
"What if they did?"
The color dissipated from her cheeks as she resumed her professional mode.
"Don't leave just yet. One last kiss."
"They'll have noticed how long I've been in here."
"Who cares? Just kiss me."
I pulled her over the railing and she squealed as she fell onto me. Kissing her hard before she could make an escape, I held her tigther, then tigther until her ribs were pressing against my forearm.
She let out a groan as my tongue brushed hers and moved over to straddle me. I could feel the heat from between her legs.
Reaching for my cock, I let it out. It was ready again and rock hard.
"Fuck me," I begged and she lifted up her dress.
She kissed me one last time then screamed as a loud bang shattered the moment. The door had burst open and standing in the doorway was a tall, black suit. There was the smell of sweat and expensive cologne in the air.
"Berger, what the fuck? Get up. I need you."
Miranda jumped off the bed and yanked her dress down over her ass. She scampered from the room like a frigthened mouse without so much as looking over her shoulder.
"Miranda!"
Lincoln closed the door and began rummaging through my drawers. Pulling out my old clothes, he threw them at me.
"Forget about her. Get dressed."
"What?"
"Just get dressed. We've got about thirty seconds before they're here."
"Who?"
"Just get fucking dressed!"
Chapter Four
LINCOLN
Sirens wailed in the distance. Sirens were always surrounding the hospital but there was something different about the way they travelled through the cold night. They were wailing just for me.
"Gonna tell me what's going on?" asked Berger, pulling his coat around him tight.
The bloodied bandage around his head was coming loose in the rain, the dried blood soaking deeper and deeper into the gauze until it began to look like some kind of perverted rose stuck on a band around his head.
He ripped it off and for the first time I saw the stitches that lined the bald patch on his head. But I didn't have time to look too long because we had other things to worry about.
My car was parked out in the ambulance bay, the engine still running with the door open. Any second now, the engine would die out but for the mean time, it was rumbling alone in the night as ambulances began to surround it. Friday nights were always the busiest.
"Where are you going?" asked Berger as I walked away from my car.
Blue and red lights were flashing on the edge of the parking lot. Now we had seconds, not minutes.
"That's your car, right?"
"Not anymore. Come on."
I slapped his back and pushed my way into the underground parking lot.
"Where the hell areyou going now?"
Berger was catching up behind me, quickly growing breathless as he struggled to keep up.
"Bosworth!"
A light ahead began to flicker on and off, making me feel dizzy and disorientated but I pressed on, putting one foot in front of the other although I felt as though I could collapse. In my pocket, lay the ring box, I clapped a hand to it as I ran, feeling comfort in knowing what I planned to do with it.
"Bosworth!"
Lincoln gripped my shoulder and pulled me to him.
"Are you going to tell me what's going on or am I just going to have to guess?"
I leaned into the exit that led out to the taxi rank.
"We're going to the station," I said and nodded to the nearest cab.
"Like hell we are!"
"Just come with me."
I bundled him into the back of the taxi, the driver talking to us through the reflection in the rearview mirror. I swear I saw dollar signs flash in his eyes as he saw my face.
"Well, I'll be damned. Lincoln Bosworth. I saw you on that crappy celebrity channel my wife always watches. That nurse of yours is real beautiful. Total Cinderella story, right?The billionaire and the nurse. Sounds like a romance novel my wife would read."
I didn't have time for pleasantries. The sirens were appr
oaching, the red and blue lights bouncing off the side of the hospital. Pulling out a bundle of cash from my pocket, I handed him what I thought would be at least a month's wages.
He gasped when he saw it and took it from my hand before I could change my mind. His fingers were visibly trembling, his bottom lip quivering as though he was on the cusp of bursting into tears. I handed him another thousand.
"Can you do something for me?" I asked, leaning forward to talk to him through the gap in the front seat.
He scratched at his week old stubble and nodded, his mouth hanging open so wide I could see a gold tooth all the way at the back near his tonsils.
"Do something?"
"Yeah. But we gotta be quick. Drive me to the police station.”
"Sure," he nodded.
"But that's not all. You have one very important job to do after that."
He crumpled the notes in his hand and stuffed them into his inside pocket.
"Anything."
"Be quiet."
"Be quiet?"
"Promise me that as soon as we leave this car you won't remember a thing."
He released the handbrake and grinned.
"I'll be the best case of amnesia you've ever seen."
"Good man," I said and slapped his shoulder. "Now go. Now."
He sped out past the flashing lights, past the cop cars that were looking for me. Berger and I slumped low in our seats so that our faces were shrouded by the shadows.
Dumb sons of bitches, I thought. Not a single cop thought to look in our direction. They were too busy running into the hospital.
"Now are you going to tell me what's happening?"
Berger was buttoning up his shirt as he looked out the window at the ensuing chaos. In his haste to get dressed, he'd not had the chance to tie his shoes or buckle up his belt. I looked down and noticed he'd not even put socks on.
"I'll tell you when we get there."
"No, Bosworth. If you're gonna tear me away from the best fuck of my life, you're at least telling me why."
I thought back to the nurse in his bed, her ass facing toward me ready to be taken.
"Habits die hard, eh, Berger?"
"It's not like that," he said as he fastened his top button and pulled his tie around his collar.
"Really?"
I raised an eyebrow.
"Yeah really. Now enough about Miranda..."
"Ooh, Miranda. So this one at least has a name."
The driver's ears pricked up as he listened. He glanced in the mirror and I scowled at him, hoping he'd take the hint to mind his own business. He looked back at the road and hit the gas.
"Bosworth, I swear to fuck. If there's ever been a time when I wanted to slap you..."
I laughed. I wasn't sure why but in the moment, I was overcome by how absurd everything was. My mind was falling apart. I had no idea what was right or wrong, what was going to happen from one minute to the next. All I knew was that I had this very second and all I could do was use it to find Etta.
"I'll tell you everything once we get there," I said.
He shook his head and rubbed at his eyes.
"Crazy bastard."
Chapter Five
ETTA
A stomach growled in the room. It could have been either of us. Mom was still leaning against the radiator but she'd stopped shivering. That was a dangerous sign. If she stopped shivering then she wasn't moving. She'd given up.
"Mom..."
I reached a foot out and kicked her. Slowly, she raised her head and her eyes met mine. They were dark and hollow.
"Where is he?" she croaked.
"In the bathroom."
"How long has been there?"
"I don't know..."
It could have been a few minutes or an hour. Time was suspended in the darkness. There was nothing to even signal life took place outside of the house except for the occasional passing car. I wondered if anyone drove past and even thought to look over at the house. Could they guess that this could be going on?
There was the creak of a floorboard in the hall and we both fell silent, holding our breaths until we knew what direction he was moving in.
When we heard him walk off down the hall toward the stairs, we exhaled and carried on.
"How long have you been here, Etta?"
I didn't know. Judging by the dryness of my mouth, the headache and the growing weakness, I guessed I hadn't had water in a day and hadn't eaten in at least three.
"Etta?"
"Sorry, I was just trying to... I don't know."
She hung her head again. There was a faint tapping, the sound of her tears falling on the floorboards.
"Is that the... same Craig?" she asked.
"No," I replied. "He's not the same."
She pulled at her restraints then fell limp. There was no use in trying. At her age, she wasn't strong enough to do very much let alone escape from something like this. And I was powerless to help her. Cold, starved, disoriented and trembling, I could barely even take in a full lungful of breath or raise my arm let alone rescue her.
Although it was all I thought about. I'd had so much time to think, so much time to stare up at the ceiling and just imagine that I could do all the things my body wouldn't let me. In these moments, when I lost myself in the waking dreams of my fantasies, I could crush Craig with one hand, I could kill him with a single finger, I could overpower him with just my breath.
But that's all they were, fantasies.
On the mattress, now naked and emaciated, I felt something wet beneath me. It was hot and spreading across the backs of my thighs. I realized I was wetting myself. Lying in my own stinking piss.
I couldn't even cry. It could have been because I was too numb, or it could have simply been because my body had not a single drop of moisture left.
The footsteps came back across the landing before getting louder and louder. Before long, they were at the end of the bed. I could feel his eyes on me before I saw them.
"I heard a noise," he said. "You two were talking."
Looking away, I focused on a single sliver of moonlight that was casting a rectangle on the ceiling. In this dank and deadly house, it was the only light, the only ray of hope.
"And I smell something too," he continued and sniffed the air around him. "You filthy bitch."
Crouching down, he knelt on the mattress and touched his hand to the soiled fabric before smelling his fingertips.
"Filthy, filthy bitch. I leave you alone for two minutes and you're pissing yourself like a puppy."
He stood back up and kicked the mattress.
"Dirty..." he said. "And don't think I didn't hear the two of you in here, whispering, plotting, planning what you wanted to do to me the second my back is turned."
He pulled the knife from his belt and waved it at us. Like frightened animals, we cowered beneath it, flinching every time it pointed in our direction.
"Don't hurt us!" mom cried.
"Don't hurt us!" Craig repeated, mocking her in a high pitched voice, screwing up his face like a petulant teenager. "Urgh... bitches."
In all the time we were together I'd never heard him use the word, ever. Now it felt as though it was all I heard him say.
"Craig," I said, the word struggling to escape my shriveled up throat.
He turned to me, his face showing nothing but darkness.
"Water..." I said.
"Water..."
"I need water. Please!"
He sighed and walked up to the top of the mattress. Placing the back of his hand to my forehead, he suddenly looked worried and reeled back.
"Shit, you've got a fever."
Fever?I thought. I don't have a fever. I'm so cold. So, so cold.
It felt as though my very bones had frozen and the only warmth I felt from my own urine had now vanished so that now I was lying in nothing but cold liquid. When I thought I couldn't get any colder, a frigid draught blew in through the broken window.
"Water, please," I s
aid.
There was no denying that I needed help. Even someone as crazy and deluded as Craig could see that.
"She needs food and water," said mom. "And she needs to warm up."
"Nobody's talking to you!"
She didn't move, didn't panic at his raised voice. She kept a firm gaze on him and reached out her only free hand. As she gripped his pants leg, he tried to shake her off but she clung on.
"What will you do if she dies?" she cried. "What will you do! If you can't have her now, you definitely can't have her when she's dead."
A look of understanding swept over his face then he looked back down at me.
"I suppose I could give you a bath," he said. "You used to love it when I did that, didn't you?"
There was a shine to his eyes. Somehow, he'd managed to twist my plea for life saving warmth and sustenance into something romantic.
"A bath it is," he said and with a swipe of his knife, he's cut my restraints and I was free.
Or as free as I could be while feeling so weak. As I lowered my arms and felt the blood rush into my fingers, they ached with their newfound freedom. I hadn't even realized how pained they were until now.
"Come on, get up," he said.
With unsteady legs, I put one foot down on the floor, then another. My head was spinning, my vision blurring at the sides. As I tried to stand, I was suddenly aware of how thin I was. Like a newborn calf, I staggered and stumbled toward the door, Craig laughing at me as I struggled to regain my balance.
"Well someone's a little drunk," he joked.
He placed his hands under my armpits to steady me and as though I was nothing more than a puppet, he walked me out toward the bathroom. As soon as I saw the sink, I felt onto it and ran the faucet, holding my mouth below the stream of water until I was gulping down so much water I began to choke.
The dryness in my throat was almost gone, the headache quickly dissipating as the cells in my body became hydrated.
Beside me, Craig was turning on the hot water. Steam filled the room and I could feel it warm me already. I watched it dance around the cold, tiled room like a mysterious fog until I could barely see his face any longer.
He looked me up and down with a smile and for a disorientating second, I was sure I was seeing Lincoln's face. But then he waved a hand to clear the air. The steam moved away and Craig's face returned.
Jewels and Panties (Book, Ten): Hot Pursuit Page 2