by Penny Wylder
Fuck. It’s enough to distract me all over again, even now. I try not to think about how cute he still looked without a shirt, how his muscles haven’t faded with time. If anything, he looks in even better shape now. The man must have a serious workout routine. Then again, working in surgery here has got to be grueling, not to mention all the overtime I know Russ pulls.
He, unlike my dad, is an idealist. He believes he can save every single person who walks through the OR doors, regardless of how hopeless others might pronounce the case. It’s always mystified me that he and my dad could get along so well, but I guess opposites can be friends sometimes.
“Good luck,” I think I hear Russ murmur behind me, just before I pull the door shut after myself.
Behind the desk, Dad clears his throat and reshuffles a stack of folders at his elbow. “So. I gave you one very simple instruction this morning.”
“And I followed it,” I reply, before he can get his rant going.
“You didn’t visit those three patients first.”
“What, do you have people tailing me?” I ask, crossing my arms.
“Don’t be ridiculous.” He points to his left, to a pair of large monitors on the side wall. Of course. He had the security cameras patched through to the spare monitors he has attached to his desktop.
I roll my eyes. “Good to know you trust me to do my job, Dad.”
“I was merely interested to see how you would do, following our chat this morning.”
“You mean following your half hour long lecture,” I mumble.
“You should have gone to the priority patients’ rooms first. You should always treat the priority patients first. We are a private hospital, Maggie. How do you think we stay funded? How do you think we’re able to treat anyone? Because we play the game, we treat the people who keep us funded and supplied very, very well.”
I cross my arms. “That’s hardly ethical.”
“It’s how business works. And until you understand that, I don’t know that I can continue to give you your own rounds. Or at least not as many as you’ve had before now.” He places his palms flat on his desk. “I’ve told your supervisor to switch you off the rest of your patients. The three priority patients will be your only three patients now.”
My eyes widen. I had so many other people to check up on today. “But who will cover the rest?”
“Heather and Lionel will step in, along with Martha.”
Martha. The old woman who forgets where she put her own glasses half the time, let alone what medicine her stacks of patients need. “Will they have enough time?” I ask, panic rising in my gut. “There are so many people checked in today, and they all have their own patients to look in on already…”
“Something you should have kept in mind before you made it necessary for me to pass all of this extra work along to them.” My father turns back to his computer, clearly a dismissal.
“You are unbelievable sometimes, you know that?” I growl. But I can tell any more talking isn’t going to get through to him. And even if I try to continue working my rounds like I should, he’ll probably spy on me over the computers, report me to my supervisor—or make my supervisor squeal on me for ignoring his orders. Either way, I’m screwed.
Why did he even pay for me to go to school if he was just going to treat me like an incompetent child the second I graduated?
I storm out of his office and slam the door behind me, hard enough for it to echo all the way down the hallway. I’m stomping off down said hallway, when a familiar head pops out of a neighboring room.
“That went well, I take it?” Russ again. I glare in response, which only makes him chuckle. “Sorry. I heard the slam and just guessed.”
With a sigh, I lean against the wall beside the exam room Russ was just talking to a patient in. I wait for him to finish up and draw the door shut before I speak again. “Was he always like this?”
“If you mean completely oblivious to the needs or desires of most everyone around him?” Russ grins, and I press my lips together, nodding. “Yeah, a little bit. He’s got a good heart deep down, he just tends to focus on the really big picture. When he’s in that mood, he forgets about how all the cogs in that big picture are human beings with feelings of their own.”
I sigh and push off the wall to walk beside Russ as he strides down the long hallway, presumably back toward the surgery wing where he spends his time when he’s not following up on patients in recovery. “Sorry for being grumpy. I know I shouldn’t take my frustrations with him out on you.”
“Don’t worry, I can take it.” Russ’s eyes sparkle when they catch mine, and not for the first time since it happened, I think about the way he startled when he saw me in Dad’s office, the way his gaze dripped over me. I can’t remember the last time I saw him—maybe about a month ago when I first started here?
Has something changed since then? Or maybe just today?
I side-eye Russ as we stroll, not bothering to disguise the fact that I’m checking him out. “I’ll bet you can,” I say, before I can think better of it.
He laughs softly, just once, and it’s enough to draw my gaze back to his face. When I look up, I find his eyes boring into mine. Curious, searching. “When did you get so grown up, Maggie?”
“A while ago.” I smirk, lifting my chin high, holding his gaze steady. “Just took you a minute to notice, I guess.”
“Oh, you don’t know what I noticed,” he murmurs, and the sudden, low heat in his voice does all kinds of crazy things to my body. My toes curl inside my standard-issue work shoes, and my belly tenses. It feels like I swallowed a whole fireplace, there’s so much heat in my core, spreading out to tingle along the tips of my fingers.
“Why don’t you tell me?” I raise an eyebrow and take a step closer to him. I expect him to back off, or tell me this is a bad idea. But he surprises me. He holds his ground, his smile only widening.
“You sure you want to play this game with me, Mags?” He says the last word in a whisper, and it only stokes the flames that have been building further.
Mags. It’s what he’s always called me, since as long as I can remember. When I was a teenager, going through my hormonal phase, I can’t deny, I fantasized about hearing him call me that in totally different situations. Russ might be twice my age, this whole thing might be totally inappropriate, but I don’t care.
In fact, at the moment, if anything, that makes it even better. I think about the expression on Dad’s face, if he caught me flirting with his best friend, and it only makes me bolder. “I’ve always been good at games. Or don’t you remember how often I kicked your ass at poker nights?”
He chuckles softly. “You realize I was going easy on you, right?”
I arch an eyebrow. “Well, then you’d better stop. Because that’s exactly what I don’t want.”
Russ pauses. He runs a hand through his hair, a motion that makes the corner of his scrubs top inch up, just far enough to reveal a slice of his stomach, cut abs above a happy trail that my hands itch to trace. Then it falls back into place, as he casts a quick glance around us in either direction, as if he’s trying to decide whether he should continue with this. There is a cluster of nurses passing, clipboards in hand. One of them glances our way, and then the rest do, all of them trading glances between them.
In response, I reach up to place my fingertips on Russ’s arm, just above his watch. A barely-there touch, yet his skin feels heated under my fingertips. Boiling almost. But I keep my hand there, keep smiling, the grin turning mischievous as the nurses’ eyes widen, and they start to whisper amongst each other.
I want them to talk about this. I want them to report it to Dad. I want him to know what happens when he pisses me off. Dad thinks he can control every single aspect of my life, but he can’t. There are some decisions only I can make, some areas where I’m still the one in control.
And who I flirt with is very much one of those areas.
To judge by the look on Russ’s face, as he
glances from my hand on his arm, to my eyes and back again, he knows this is a bad idea. A dangerous one.
But when his eyes find mine again, all fire and heat, I realize that he’s come to the same conclusion I have. If this is a dangerous game, that only makes it more interesting.
“Really, Maggie Owens.” Russ takes a step toward me. Another. His chest almost touches me, we’re standing so close. At this distance, I catch his scent. He smells like musk and smoke, all heat and fire. It reminds me of the scotch he and Dad always drink at our get-togethers, while Mom and her friends are mixing up margaritas instead. Or maybe the cigars Russ smokes afterward, out on our patio. He let me have a puff off of one once, when I was still in high school, and I came out for just ten minutes to wave hello to the party before I had to head back upstairs to bury myself in books again.
I still remember that night. The way he drew a puff before he passed the cigar to me, still wet from his mouth. The way I wrapped my lips around it and followed his instructions, breathed in a faint puff of smoke before I exhaled it, slow, through my nose so I could taste it right. It tasted incredible. But not as good as I imagined his mouth would taste, based on the tiny glimpse I got.
It made me shiver, that night, when he put the cigar back into his mouth, and I knew his lips were clamped right where mine had been a second earlier, my cherry flavored lip gloss still tinting the butt of the cigar.
“So tell me what you do want, then,” he murmurs, so close to me I can practically feel the words vibrate in his chest. He raises an eyebrow. “You like it hard?”
“Hard. Rough.” I pause to flick my tongue across my lips, and I’m gratified to see the way his gaze drops to follow its tracks. “Anything but safe.”
“Well.” His grin curls around the edges. “You certainly picked an interesting way to announce it, I’ll give you that. An interesting place to bring it up, too.” His gaze drifts back to the halls around us, following the tracks of the nurses. They’re almost at the far corner now, I can hear the squeak of their sneakers from here. They don’t work in the same wing as me, so I don’t know any of their names, but I recognize a few of them from around. And I’m sure all of them know who I am, at least.
Word gets around fast when the director of the hospital’s daughter signs up to the nursing staff. No matter how much I might have wished to remain just another anonymous face in the staff room, it was never going to happen. Not with Owens splashed across my name tag.
Or with my father in his office, sending down edicts like some kind of creepy overlord, obsessed with making sure I do every single thing he orders me to.
But he never ordered me to do this. He would kill me if he saw it, in fact. A thought that makes the edges of my grin curl.
“See, that’s what I’m worried about.” Russ arches an eyebrow, clearly watching me watch the nurses. “I understand why you’re angry right now, Mags, I really do. But I don’t want you getting in over your head.”
“Believe me, I know exactly what I’m doing.” I whip back around to lock eyes with him again. This time when I reach up to touch his arm, I don’t stop there. I let my hand trail all the way up his bicep, until it curls around the back of his neck. He’s a good half a head taller than me, but that doesn’t stop me from flirting. Besides, the nurses are gone now, out of sight. His objections hopefully went with them. “All I want is to feel in control of one thing, Russ. To feel like I can make one decision for myself.” I study his eyes. Dark, brown like his hair. But there are flecks in them, slightly lighter patches that I never noticed before.
He studies me right back, and to judge by the heat in those intense eyes, he’s close to giving in. “I can’t say I’ve never thought about it.” His gaze drops, slowly. Over my lips, my chest, my curves. I suppress a shiver that threatens to break out, at the way his eyes linger. Like he’s memorizing me, drinking me in. “You are a fucking sexy as hell woman, Mags. But I think you know that by now.”
I smirk. “Some people might have mentioned it.”
“Boys, I’d bet.” He raises an eyebrow. “You can’t have had a real man appreciate you.”
The words curl in my belly. “No,” I breathe. “Never anyone like you.” I trail my fingers back down his arm, and this time, he finally, finally responds in kind. His hands trace slowly along my arms, up to my shoulders. Then they slide down my sides, tracing the edges of my curves. He passes over my waist, then out wider again to grip my hips.
Without warning, he pulls me against him, my soft body crushed against the hard steel of his muscles. I can feel myself bend into him, molding against him, my legs trembling, my body already getting eager with want. I wore thin panties beneath my scrubs this morning, and they’re in danger of getting wet at this rate, if they aren’t already. Still, Russ’s hands keep moving, keep tracing along me, up to my waist again, back down.
“Maggie… I’ve thought about this moment. So many times before. Alone in the shower, late at night, after long shifts when I had to watch you strutting around on the far side of the hospital, too far away to ever touch…”
My breath catches in my throat. He fantasized about me too? I swallow hard, my throat suddenly tight, my nerves alight with anticipation. “I… I thought about you. All the time. After those family parties, I used to wish you’d sneak out of the guest room and into mine.” I summon my courage and meet his gaze again, savor the heat and the intensity there. “I’ve wanted you for so long. I used to touch myself, thinking about you.”
He lets out a low, guttural sound, almost a growl. “Christ, Maggie, you can’t tell me this unless you want me to pull you into an empty room right here and now.”
I raise a single eyebrow, my smile spreading. “What’s stopping you?”
He lets out a sharp, slow breath. Then he, too, starts to smile, slowly. “Don’t you have rounds?”
I tilt my head, affect my best innocent girl expression, and bat my eyelashes a few times. “Alas, my father took those away from me. He said I should concentrate on the hospital’s few, elite guests instead… Since my schedule is so freed up now, I’m sure he wouldn’t begrudge me taking a little time off.”
“Or rather, you’d enjoy making him furious wondering where you are,” Russ points out, with a smirk. His gaze sweeps over my face again, my body. “Not half as furious as he’d be if he learns what you were doing instead.”
“I won’t tell him,” I whisper, because I’m worried about this hesitation I’m seeing. “It’ll be our little secret, I swear. I don’t want to get you into trouble, or fired or anything—”
To my surprise, though, Russ just barks out a laugh. “Maggie. If your father wants to fire me, he’s welcomed to try. I have about a hundred job offers at competing hospitals coming in every year, which I always turn down from loyalty to him. But I’d be fine.” He tilts his head, his gaze going serious for just a moment. “It’s you I’d be worried about.”
“Don’t be. I can take care of myself.” I grin. Let my hands trace down his chest, to the abs I can feel even through the fabric of his scrub shirt. “Though, I’d prefer to let you take care of me right now.”
At those words, the fire flips back on in Russ’s gaze, and before I can react, he’s pushing open the fire escape door beside us, his hands tightening around my waist as he drags me through it. “Oh, believe me, that I can do,” he murmurs.
3
Russ backs me against the wall of the fire escape stairs. It’s dark in here, the only light the faint red glow from the Emergency Exit sign over the door we just came through. Almost nobody uses these back stairs, because they claim to be alarmed. There are signs all over the front saying the alarm will sound if the door opens. Russ is one of the few people, besides my father and me and a handful of other administrators, who knows that the door alarms haven’t been functional for years.
It’s a good spot. A secret one to abscond to. I’ve used it more than once before, on bad days. Days when we lose people, or when the stress of keeping up with al
l of my patients at once threatens to overwhelm me.
I’ve never used the stairwell like this, though. For something so much better than just a quick distraction, a spot to sneak off to be alone for a little while. Russ pins me against the wall and then his lips find my temple, my cheek. He kisses his way down my jawline, all while his hands continue to trace along my hips, down and around to grip my ass hard.
I gasp a little, my own hands sliding up to drape over his shoulders so I can brace myself against him.
He draws back, grinning at the sound I make, and his eyes flash where they meet mine. “You are fucking sexy as hell, you know that?”
“Speak for yourself,” I murmur, breathless, and grin when he finally, finally leans in to kiss me. His lips on mine are fire, explosions. He kisses me hard and deep, his tongue slipping between my lips to dance with mine, to claim me. To mark me as his own.
I’ve never been kissed like this. Boys my age tend to grope and peck, or else come in way too aggressively with the tongue. Russ knows what the hell he’s doing, though. He knows when to kiss me harder, when to deepen it, and when to ease back again, teasing, nipping at my lower lip before he pulls away to kiss along my jawline, his lips warm, the stubble of his beard scratching along my cheek.
“God, you taste incredible.” He nips at my neck, before kissing the same spot again, and I gasp once more, unable to help myself, my hands tracing along his back, up to his shoulders.
His hands slip back up to my waistline, and his fingers toy with the band of my scrubs.
“You know, you even manage to make these look sexy. That takes some doing.” He smirks, as his hand slips beneath the waistband, tracing down the flat plane of my belly, his surgeon’s hand rough and calloused against my smooth, soft skin. His fingertips reach my panties, and he toys with them slipping a thumb under the edge before he draws it out again, tracing along the fabric. “Tell me what you fantasized about.” He meets my gaze. Lifts an eyebrow. “You told me you fantasized about me, so let’s hear it.”