I closed my eyes, feeling a calmness flow through me. If all this turned out to be was hot, forbidden sex, then I’d still take it. I hadn’t ever had anything like this and I’d take it for as long as he’d give it to me.
But I had to pray that someday it would either blossom or burn out completely. Either way, I knew I’d end up losing something—be it my job, or this man who managed to push all the right buttons on my body—I would lose something.
“Do you think it feels this way just because we aren’t supposed to be doing it?” I had to ask him. It didn’t feel right keeping it all to myself.
“I don’t know.” At least he was being honest.
“If I quit and went to work somewhere else, do you think we’d still see each other like this?” I had to know what he thought about that. Because the fact was that if he and I got into a real relationship, one of us would likely have to find another job, and I knew I’d have a better chance of finding one than he did.
He pulled me up to look at him. “Lila, don’t even think about quitting WOLF.” His blue eyes searched mine, as if trying to read my thoughts to see if that’s really what I was thinking.
I wasn’t, it was just a question. “I’m not thinking about that. I’m just wondering if you and I would still have this heat between us if we didn’t have this rule hanging over our heads.”
“That shouldn’t even matter.” He furrowed his dark brow. “Don’t try to analyze this. Just live it. Just take it for what it is right now. Not what it might become, or devolve into. Just be here now, with me, like this.”
Nodding my head, I laid it back down on his shoulder. He was right. I had to stop analyzing things so much. It was what it was, nothing more or less than that.
When we stopped at the bed and breakfast I now called home, we got out and headed up to my room. We heard voices coming from one of the living areas and saw a group of people in there watching television. A few of them waved at us as we passed by.
“So, you guys all hang out together?” Duke asked.
“I haven’t hung out with anyone yet. But it does look like some of the long-term residents do hang out together. I think I’ll like it here, once I get settled in.” We went up the staircase and I led him to my room.
It hardly compared to his spacious apartment, and it felt cramped with both of us inside the small room. “Cozy,” he said as he looked around.
“Yes, it is.” I picked out some clean clothes from the closet and laid them on the bed. “So, I guess I’ll go first.”
He laughed as he shook his head. “We’re going together.”
I opened the door and showed him the claw-footed tub. “Think we can both fit into that?”
He wiggled his brows. “If you get on top of me, we can.”
“In the tub?” I asked. I’d never done anything like that before. I wasn’t sure how it would work.
But Duke was up for the challenge of showing me how, and in no time at all, we were right back at it. And that time was just as amazing as all the others.
I had no idea how long this would last, but I was going to listen to what Duke had said. No analyzing it, just living in the moment. Because the moments with him were better than any of the moments without him.
Chapter Eighteen
Duke
The meeting with Artimus and Mrs. Baker was about putting Lila and me to the test of working together, and the next day we were sent on our first trial run. We had to cover the opening of a burn unit at one of the local hospitals.
The staff of the new unit was gathered at the nurses’ station where Lila and I took turns asking them questions. “And how many patients can you take care of at this new facility, Dr. Stevens?” Lila asked the head surgeon.
“Fifteen. The rooms are all state-of-the-art. We wanted to keep it small enough to be able to give each patient our devoted attention. There are two nurses for each patient, to make sure they’re always taken care of,” he told her.
Lila looked at me, letting me know it was my turn to ask a question. Her cute expression made me want to kiss her, but of course I couldn’t do that. I had tons of willpower; I knew I’d find what I needed to stay professional while working with her.
But I couldn’t stop my mind from wandering back to the events of last night, of how her boobs had jiggled as she rode my cock. I had to come back to reality and leave last night behind me, for now.
“Dr. Stevens, are there any special requirements for admittance?” I asked him.
“Of course,” he said as he nodded. “They’ll have to be in critical condition to be accepted here. Once they’re out of the woods and well into their recovery, then they’ll be moved to the main hospital for the rest of their stay.”
We finished out the report, and the crew headed back to the station to edit the video as Lila and I headed to go eat some lunch. In public, we also had to conduct ourselves professionally, which I found more challenging.
She took the seat across from me at the table for two in the small café we’d decided to try out. I wanted to reach across the table and hold her hand, but didn’t. “Being with you and not touching you is proving to be harder than I thought it would be.”
She nodded. “Yeah, for me too.”
The waitress came to take our orders. “Hey, guys, I’m Tracy, and I’ll be your waitress today. What can I start you two off with?”
“I’ll have a Pepsi,” Lila said. “We saw the special written on the board when we came in, and I’ll have that. Turkey and dressing sound good to me today.”
“Me too. I’ll have what she’s having.” There we were, thinking alike again.
After the waitress left us, Lila asked, “Do you think Artimus will like what we’re sending him?”
I nodded. “I do. I think we covered that well and showed that we work well as a team. I have high hopes about this.”
“If we do get it, then I think we might have to curtail the sex. Not that I don’t enjoy it immensely, but it might make it hard to work together.” She drummed her red fingernails on the table. “No pun intended.” She gave a little smile, though it was sad.
I watched those nails as they clicked against the Formica tabletop and wondered how in the hell she thought we could curtail what we were doing. “You think that’s going to be any easier?”
“Not if we don’t get a hold of ourselves. Do you know that I almost took your hand as we were leaving the unit? We can’t have things like that happening. All this sex we’re having makes me feel too comfortable touching you. I can’t do that at work or even in public, as we talked about on the way over here. We’re about to be faces that everyone will recognize. If we’re seen together in a romantic way, then this will all blow up for us, and that would not end well for us.”
Even though what she said was true, I suppose I just didn’t want to hear it. “So what, are you saying you don’t want to see each other anymore?”
“We’re not really seeing each other, remember? I know it’s more than just messing around; we’ve gone over that before. But come on, it’s just sex. It can’t ever be anything more than that.” She shrugged like it was no big deal to her. “It’s only been a few days since we started doing that anyway. It shouldn’t be that hard to stop and get back to being what we really are to each other.”
I wasn’t about to just let it go at that. “And that is what, exactly?”
“Coworkers.” She looked at me with those gorgeous blue eyes, thick dark lashes blinking slowly at me.
The waitress brought our orders, placing them in front of us. “Here ya go. Will there be anything else?”
I shook my head as Lila said, “No thank you.”
We ate in silence—an awkward silence that didn’t feel good at all. Could we stop having sex, just like that? Was that all we had?
I had to admit to myself that there couldn’t be much more than sex between us right now—she was right on that—regardless of what we wanted. And how fair was that to Lila, a young woman who deser
ved to be taken out on dates, to have her hand held while strolling through the park, to be kissed in public?
And I was selling myself short too. I wanted to be able to hold her hand, to run my arm around her or kiss her whenever I wanted without fear of losing my damn job.
Did that mean I had true feelings for her?
“What if we went to Artimus and came clean?” I asked her.
She eyed me as she took a drink of her Pepsi before saying, “Here’s what I think would happen if we did that. We’d both lose our jobs before they even really started. I’d have to go live with my parents, and this would end anyway.”
“Well, that’s pretty cut and dry, isn’t it?” I went back to eating the food, hardly tasting a thing. But I wasn’t the kind of person who wasted anything, so I finished it.
But I did notice that for all the tough words that were coming out of Lila’s mouth, she pushed the food around her plate without eating much at all. “This doesn’t taste as great as I thought it would.”
“Perhaps the topic of conversation has more to do with that than the actual food.” I wiped my mouth with the napkin before putting it on my empty plate.
“You didn’t seem to have any problem finishing your meal.” She put her fork down, not even trying to eat anymore.
“I have a strict rule about not wasting anything. Mom instilled that in me from a young age.” I sat back, looking at her.
Would I be able to look at that face nearly every day and not want her?
If it were just sex, then maybe this need I felt for her would fade away soon. It had only been a few days, after all. Not enough time to get addicted to her.
Right?
Lila looked at the floor, zoning out. “I guess we shouldn’t have acted on things so quickly. We didn’t think this through. We’ve just been like a couple of horny teenagers, acting on the attraction and not thinking about what would happen if we actually had to work together on a daily basis. Not thinking about how we’d be able to hide what we’re doing from everyone.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. I didn’t want to stop what we were doing, but I did realize that carrying on the way we’d been would only make it more difficult to keep our hands off one another.
But what if we could rein that in?
All it would take was determination, and I had tons of that. “I don’t want this to end, and I don’t think you do either. Not really. We knew we’d have to hide it—we knew we’d have to get some self-control.”
Her eyes slowly moved from staring at the floor to looking at me. “But it’s so much harder than I thought. I don’t know how else to get myself under control, other than breaking things off. Even now, all I want to do is crawl into your lap and let you hold me. Like some kind of addict, I crave your touch. It’s not healthy, you know?”
“It would be if we didn’t have to hide this.” My fingers moved across the table, barely touching hers as her hand lay on the table. “Let me talk to Artimus.”
“No. I don’t want either of us to lose our jobs.” She shook her head adamantly.
“I don’t want to lose you.” My eyes held hers, hoping against hope that we could find a way to keep seeing each other. “I can keep my hands to myself. I’ve proven that already. Hell, I wanted to put my hands on you the moment I met you, and I was able to hold myself back when I had to. I can keep it all together while we’re working and while we’re in public. I can.”
“But can I?” She looked away.
“You said it yourself—we’ve only been together for a few days. We just have to make some adjustments, that’s all. We’ll get used to it. There’s no reason to stop doing what we’re doing.” I put my hands into my pockets to keep them from straying to her the way they wanted to do.
“I don’t want to stop what we’ve started, but it’s only sex, Duke. It’s only that, and it will always only be that. I’ve lied to myself, thinking it could blossom into something more, something real.” She let out a long sigh, looking forlorn and sad.
“I don’t see why you keep saying it’s just sex. I care about you, Lila. Do you care about me at all?” I asked her.
“Of course I do.” She rubbed her forehead as if the conversation was giving her a headache.
“Then stop talking the way you are. Let things progress. We can do this. I know we can. And stop saying this is just sex, because we both know it’s more than that.” I got up to leave, hoping she’d follow. I had the feeling she needed to be held for a while. “Let’s go to my place. Not to have sex, either. To watch a movie together, share some popcorn, and maybe a couple of beers too. Then I’ll take you home and we’ll kiss goodnight, but nothing more than that. I want to show you that I think more of you than what you clearly assume I do.”
“A secret date?” she asked as she looked up at me.
I pulled out her chair. “Can we just call it a date and leave the secret out of it?”
“I suppose so. Can we really just hang out together without doing the horizontal mambo?” She seemed skeptical.
I nodded. “I’m going to show you that we can do more together than just bump uglies.”
The cab ride to my place didn’t take long, and I saw a smile fill her face once we got inside my apartment and I didn’t press her up against the door immediately. That seemed to be our usual routine every time we were alone—up against the wall, our mouths fused together within seconds.
Pointing to the sofa, I said, “You turn on the television and pick out a movie. I’ll grab us a couple of beers. Take your shoes off and relax. I’ll be right back.”
Going to the kitchen, I stood there for a moment to ground myself.
No sex, just show the girl a nice time. Show her that you care and that this is worth saving.
Chapter Nineteen
Lila
Duke was true to his word. We cuddled on the sofa, watching an action movie and sipping on a couple of beers while munching on popcorn. He took me home, kissing me at the front door of the bed and breakfast. It did feel like a real date, and it gave us the chance to get to know one another a little better.
I learned that he was the oldest of three children. He had a younger brother named Jake, and the baby of their family was a girl named Jana. His parents had been married since college, and they lived in a small town in Louisiana called Denim Springs. He’d gone to LSU, majoring in journalism, though football had always been his top priority.
Duke had had only one goal in college, and that was to get on a professional football team. He’d achieved that goal, being drafted as soon as he graduated.
He’d been in New York since he was my age, 22. Ten years, he’d been in this city, and he had no intentions of leaving it anytime soon. Though he did say that he’d like to get a house someday, with a yard, in a nice neighborhood, and stop living the apartment life.
He’d like to have backyard barbeques, and he’d get a dog too, he said. He’d had one when he was growing up. Spike had been the only dog their family had ever owned, but he’d lived to be fifteen years old—pretty old for a dog, according to Duke. The mutt had been a great protector, and Duke missed him a lot at times.
I let Duke in on some of my life too. Told him about my family and how my parents had been married young, just out of high school. Dad went to college while Mom went to work as a secretary for her father’s firm. When they were 25, they had Lonnie, my brother. A few years later they had twins, me and my sister, Lilly.
Duke asked me if we were identical twins, and when I told him we were, he asked if we looked exactly alike now. To which I also said yes, and he seemed much too intrigued by that. I gave him a jealous little pout and he laughed at me for being worried about that.
Even though the night was great, it didn’t fix a damn thing. We still had to hide things from everyone.
Nina and I had met up to eat lunch the day after our “first date,” as Duke called it. I was bouncing some things off her to see where they landed. “If you worked in a place that d
idn’t have this strict no-dating policy, do you think it would okay to have a relationship with someone you work with?” I asked her.
Chewing on her slice of pepperoni pizza, she pondered the question before answering. “I’ve actually been thinking about that lately, and no. I don’t think it’s okay to date someone you work with. Not for any moral or ethical reasons, but because the eventual breakup would make things difficult in the end. Or even think about the occasional arguments that all couples have—those are definitely not a thing I’d want to force my coworkers to deal with.”
I hadn’t really thought about those things. If Duke and I were in a relationship and had an argument about something, we probably wouldn’t be able to do a very good job as co-anchors. And what about if we ever did break up? That would make it incredibly hard to sit next to him every day.
“Yeah, you’re right,” I agreed as I dipped one of my fries in some ketchup.
Nina’s eyes went into a dreamy state. “But it is hard not to notice your coworkers sometimes. How handsome they are. How nice they are. How perfect for you they’d be if you didn’t work at the same place.”
“Hmm, sounds like you’re speaking from experience. Are you?” I asked.
She nodded. “I had a job when I was in high school. A fast food place with a hot manager who had the hots for me, too. It was cool for a while. I’d do my job, he’d do his. And every so often, after closing, of course, we’d get naked and nasty in his office, on his little desk.”
“Was he a lot older than you, Nina?” I had to ask because he was her manager, after all, and she’d said she’d been in high school.
“Only by a year. Fast food places almost always have kids who are fresh out of high school in managerial positions. The pay sucks, and not many grown adults can make a living doing it.” She sighed, and I imagined she must be picturing the guy in her head. “I thought we were in love, Paul and me. But one day Paul hired Martha Stone. Martha had bigger tits than I did, and she had a bit of a slutty side to her that Paul liked. One day I found them in the walk-in cooler together, making out.”
“Crap.” I thought about how I’d react right now if I saw Duke kissing another woman. I’d probably have a meltdown.
Dirty News (Dirty Network Book 1) Page 11