“You got sick, so I held you over the toilet. Your clothes are probably dry by now.” He moved up beside me and lifted up on his elbow, which caused the sheet to slide from his chest and leave his upper body on display.
Desire shot through me, and I reached out, rubbing my hand up his arm to his shoulder. “Thank you. I’m so sorry. I think I danced with Parks. I was so drunk.”
“Shh, it’s okay. It was my fault.” He leaned over and brushed his lips against mine tentatively.
Gratefulness that he was willing to care for me after what I’d done drove me to press into the kiss. I pulled at his neck, and he moved to rest on top of me, the sheet getting stuck between us.
“Take it easy, Elizabeth. I’ve been watching you all night, and it’s not going to take much to have me starving for your touch.” He pressed his nose to the side of my neck and breathed in deeply.
“Oh God.” I arched my back and tugged at the covers. “Get under here. I need to feel you against me so fucking bad.”
He moved the covers, giving me a glimpse of his rock-hard erection. I reached down and stroked it as he growled softly at me.
“Woman. I’m serious. Take it easy. I know you’re not feeling well.” He settled down on top of me, and I closed my eyes as tears burned my vision. It felt like heaven to have him against me.
Fear wrapped around me so tightly that I couldn’t breathe. I would have him for an hour or two, and then he would belong to the world he lived in and not me anymore. I would be a burden, a hindrance, until it was time to make love again.
“I can’t do this,” I whispered as a sob bubbled up inside of me.
He stroked my hair back and placed soft kisses all over my face before brushing his nose along mine. I opened my eyes to find his deep blue eyes filled with tears too.
“I can’t either. Let’s not do this anymore.” He kissed me softly, and I expected him to move, but instead, he pressed into me as I gripped the sheets and let out a cry from the pleasure that swelled in my stomach. “Let’s not pretend that we’re not in love with each other, Elizabeth. Let’s let down our guard and fall so far that we can’t imagine breathing if something were to happen to the other.”
I cried out as he pressed in farther. His hands tightened around my face, and he licked at my mouth before kissing me a few times and starting to pump in and out of me. I reached up and gripped him as if I might lose him.
“I want to be on top,” I whispered, and he rolled us over, never losing contact.
I sat up and pressed back to take him fully inside me, and it was his turn to cry out. I pressed my hands to his strong chest and rocked against him as I whimpered due to his size.
He reached up and palmed my breasts, squeezing and massaging them as his eyes bored into mine.
“I love you. I’ve fallen so far in love with you that it scares me. Tell me that I’m not alone. I don’t want to be alone anymore. Tell me that you feel the same.” His hand brushed my cheek, and he pulled me down to lay flush against him as his other hand squeezed my ass tightly. “Tell me.”
I nodded and wrapped my arms around his neck as we continued to give and take from one another. “I love you too. So much that it hurts sometimes.”
He nodded and closed his eyes, lifting his hips and working me from underneath as he groaned in pleasure with each thrust.
His words opened up a part of me that I didn’t realize existed. I wanted forever with him, and even though it had started out as something so far from good and wholesome, it was turning into all those things now. My pain would dissipate the more I began to believe his desires were true.
“Hold on, baby. I’m going to get up and put on a condom.” He kissed me once more and rolled us back over, working me for a few more minutes before getting up and walking to his nightstand.
“Aiden. What about tomorrow when we’re back at work? Will you still love me then?” I knew I sounded needy and maybe a little pathetic, but I didn’t care. I needed to know. If he was only willing to love me behind closed doors, then I needed to gather my things and leave. My heart couldn’t handle us not truly being together. It was wrecking the parts of my life that mattered most.
“Yes. Forever.” He rolled the condom on and walked back toward me as I let my eyes run along him. A soft moan left my lips as he pushed at my shoulder and curled in behind me, spooning me tightly. “I’m not telling you that it’s going to be easy, but I don’t care. If one of us has to leave the hospital, then I’ll go.”
He gripped my hip and impaled me with a loud groan. I reached up and grabbed the headboard, far too out of breath to tell him that I would go. He’d been there for the last ten years. I would take one for the team and do my residency elsewhere.
“I need to release all of this shit I’ve been building up inside of me for the last three weeks. Tell me you can take it.” He shifted a little and half laid on top of me, forcing me more onto my stomach as he pressed in so deeply that it almost hurt.
“I want it.” I gripped the bed tightly as he thanked me and started to fuck me fast and hard, his body opening mine up as if it were his to command. I came so hard that tears filled my eyes, and he followed me quickly, rocking himself against me until he collapsed and wrapped me in a tight hold.
“I love you so much, Elizabeth. Tell Parks and every other man in the world to fuck off. You’re mine. We don’t need to figure out what that means, but we do need to work through the details.”
I nodded and wiped at my tears. “I love you too. I need to get into the hospital soon. My boss has been a dick lately, and I don’t want to upset him.”
He chuckled low in his chest. “Your boss says that you’re at work already. Today’s going to be a test in longevity. You up for it?”
I smirked and pushed him back before crawling out of the bed and grabbing the rest of the condoms. I tossed them at him and pulled my hair up before cracking my neck and walking back to the bed.
“Get another one of those on. I’ve always wanted to try reverse cowgirl.” I crawled onto the bed as his eyes widened slightly.
“You play mentor then. Just promise to make me your mentee.” He reached for me, pulling me down and wrapping his arms and legs around me as we rolled to a comfortable spot on the bed. “Forgive me for all of this. I wanted your heart, not your body or your time. That all would have come along with it if I hadn’t twisted your offer. I’m sorry.”
I brushed my hand down his face and took a deep breath. “There’s nothing to be sorry about. I offered you me. My heart wasn’t part of the deal, but like most cocky doctors, you just assumed it was all yours.”
He laughed and squeezed my ass before tucking his face against my neck. “And I want it all, but can we start with the reverse cowgirl stuff first?”
I laughed and swatted at him. “Anything you want.”
“There’s my girl. Get up here, and remind me why I’m going to shower you in everything I have for the rest of our lives.” He gripped my hips tightly as I moved up to straddle him.
“Because my ass is cute?” I glanced over my shoulder to watch him put on a new condom.
“Because you’re everything I want and far more than I deserve.” He pulled me back to take him in. “I’ll always be right here behind you, supporting you, loving you, needing you.”
“And fucking me?” I rocked my hips as he sat up and moved his fingers to play between my thighs as the world lit on fire.
“Always fucking you. Every time you let me.” He kissed my neck as I closed my eyes and lost myself in the feeling of his touch.
There wouldn’t be an every time, but an any time. I was his, and he could have anything he wanted. Whenever he wanted it. Wherever he wanted it.
He was my future, and I was fully invested.
34
Aiden
Elizabeth’s knee was bouncing rapidly as she sat in the passenger seat of my Mercedes while we pulled through a Starbucks drive thru.
I reached over and put a hand on her
knee. “Relax. Everything is going to work out, all right? I’ll handle the tricky shit and talk to Peter.”
She pressed her lips together. Even though her knee had stopped bouncing, she still seemed terribly stressed. “I know. I’m just scared.”
“Of what?”
She shrugged. “People are going to think things.”
“People always think things.”
She nodded and looked down at her lap. “Yes, but they’re going to think things about me. Things that I can’t control.”
“Like what?”
She bit her bottom lip. “That I’m a slut.”
I frowned. “Nobody is going to think that.”
“I’m sleeping with my mentor, who just so happens to have been dropping lump sums of cash into my bank account.” She sighed and looked out the window as we crept forward to the pickup window by another car length. “They’ll think I’m a whore.”
“Stop saying that shit. Nobody will think that.”
“They won’t take me seriously as a doctor.”
“Elizabeth,” I said firmly.
She turned her head back toward me. Her eyes were wide, her cheeks flushed, and her brow furrowed. I wished I could spare her all of this anxiety.
I squeezed her knee. “You and I made choices. We put ourselves here. And I know it’s not ideal. But I have your back. And you have mine. We have friends in high places. This is all going to work out. The only people who think negatively about you are people who would likely only try to tear you down further down the road. Think of it like a blessing.”
“A blessing?”
“You get to spot the shitty people sooner rather than later. I wish I’d been able to earlier in my career. It would have saved me a lot of headaches.”
Her knee started bouncing again.
I chuckled and grabbed it, giving her kneecap a reassuring squeeze. “Nobody will care. Besides, I’m the one who will take most of the heat, not you.”
“That doesn’t make me feel better.”
“We’re not going to say anything about the money. Just that we love each other. No more bullshit. No more secrets.”
“No more bullshit,” she muttered.
I stopped at the pickup window to pay for our order and collect our coffees. I passed Elizabeth her cup before pulling away and heading to the hospital. “I promise this will be okay.”
She gazed out the window. “I trust you.”
“I trust you too.”
There was no sense in telling her how nervous I was. It wouldn’t help calm her nerves, and it wouldn’t serve me either. I knew one way or another, we would make this work. Sure, we’d broken some rules, and sure, this wasn’t exactly the sort of shit the hospital would be keen to discover was happening under their noses, but it wasn’t like our relationship had impacted our jobs.
In fact, I would argue it had helped me with mine. For the first time in my career, I was taking steps toward a better work-life balance, and my mental health was reaping the benefits of it. I had someone to share myself with who wasn’t a dying patient. I had someone to bare my soul to on the hard days and celebrate the good days with.
I wasn’t going to lose that.
I parked the Mercedes in the staff lot, and Elizabeth and I crossed the parking lot sipping our coffees. I opened the door for her, and we ducked inside, plunging into the familiar sterile scent and the hallways full of hospital beds and nurses and visitors and food trays.
“Where are you going first?” Elizabeth asked.
“I’m going to go to my office and call Peter. I’d like to talk to him first. He was looking into the hospital rules for me anyway.”
“All right. I’m going to change, and then can I meet you there? I’d like to talk to him too and hear what he has to say.”
“Of course.” I gave her ass a little pat after checking that the coast was clear. “I’ll see you in there.”
She nodded, gave me a tight-lipped smile, and veered off our present path to head to the women’s locker room.
I proceeded forward, moving down the hall with purpose as I sipped my coffee and nodded at doctors and nurses I passed by.
It was just before eleven o’clock in the morning when I stepped into my office. I left the door open a crack, went to my desk, and called Peter immediately.
“Aiden, what’s up?”
“Do you have a minute to spare?”
“For my favorite doctor? Absolutely. Give me fifteen minutes. Where should I meet you?”
“My office.”
“See you shortly.”
He hung up, leaving me in peace to sip my coffee and think about how much in my life was about to change. Sure, things with Elizabeth had already been a big shift for me, but that shift was about to become a hell of a lot more intense. With people in the hospital knowing I was in a relationship, everything was going to change.
There were people I’d have some explaining to do to.
Like Parks.
I scratched the back of my head as I kicked my heels up on my desk and lifted my coffee to my lips.
He’d been pretty upset outside the club last night. And he had every reason to be. I’d been dishonest with him from the very beginning. Even when I knew he wanted something for himself with Elizabeth. The fact that she would never return his interest didn’t matter. As his friend, I should have handled things better and protected his heart by being honest with him.
I had a lot of making up to do.
Once I handled things with Peter and the hospital, I would move on to repairing the damage I’d done to Parks. Maybe Elizabeth would have a couple of suggestions on where I could start. She was compassionate and good at those kinds of things.
My door creaked open. Expecting Peter, I left my feet up on the desk and lifted my gaze to the door.
Unfortunately, it was not Peter.
Sarah Vant stood in front of my slightly ajar door. She had a smile playing on her magenta-painted lips, and her hair was immaculately curled, hanging in soft ringlets around her face. She wore a skin-tight black dress and had a bottle of water in one hand. “Good morning, Aiden.”
I didn’t answer her.
She moved farther into my office. “I wanted to thank you for the advice you gave me the other day. I’ve decided to go through with the patient’s surgery. You made him very happy.”
“I can’t imagine why,” I said dryly. Agreeing to at least try to save someone’s life seemed an obvious way to make them happy.
She smiled sweetly. I saw menace playing in the corners of those pink lips of hers. “You’re a good man, Aiden. He has hope because of you. I was hoping I could make it up to you somehow.”
“Nothing to make up for. It was just a professional courtesy. And Sarah, for the record, my advice was for his benefit, not yours.”
“I understand. That’s what makes it even better.”
I sighed and rubbed at my temple. “Are we ever going to reach a point where you stop trying to play this little game of yours?”
“Game?” She cocked her head to the side. Her smile never left.
I got to my feet. “You and I both know exactly what this is. And I’m never going to be interested. Plain and simple.”
“Oh Aiden, I know you’re lonely. I know you crave a woman in your bed.” She walked languidly to my desk. “I can be that woman. We can lock your door right now, and I can show you what it’s like to have a real woman on her knees for you. Just give me—”
“Dr. Vant,” a cold, female voice said, pulling my attention from Sarah to the door.
Elizabeth stood there looking hot as hell in her purple scrubs. She’d slicked her hair back into a high, neat bun on top of her head. Her eyes bored holes into Sarah’s back.
Sarah’s eyes widened momentarily before she turned to Elizabeth. “Oh, hello, Elizabeth.” Her voice dripped with false sweetness. “Didn’t see you there.”
Elizabeth came into my office. She walked purposefully to come stand behind my desk wit
h me. Then she crossed her arms over her chest. “You do realize you’re sexually harassing a coworker, right?”
Sarah blinked. “Aiden and I are just having a bit of fun. Aren’t we, Aiden?”
I shook my head. “None of this fits my definition of fun.”
Sarah looked unnerved for the first time. She licked her lips. “I just know how lonely it is working in this field. I didn’t want you to be—”
“He’s not lonely,” Elizabeth said sharply.
Sarah giggled. “What do you know of loneliness, resident? You’ve only been here a couple of months. Aiden and I go way back. We have history. You just have a little girl crush, and you don’t like me taking up his time.”
Elizabeth laughed. “You have no idea how desperate you are, Sarah. I feel bad for you.”
Sarah reeled under the insult. “I beg your pardon?”
“I feel sorry for you.” Elizabeth leaned forward and annunciated each word.
I stepped in before the two women spiraled. “Sarah. Get out. Don’t bother me with anything that isn’t work related ever again. Do you understand?”
Her lips peeled off her teeth in a snarl. “You’re going to let your resident get away with speaking to me like that?”
I straightened. “She’s not just my resident.”
“What the hell does that mean?” Sarah barked.
I suddenly had clarity. This was my chance to put my foot down and choose something that I wanted. This was my moment.
So I turned to Elizabeth, grabbed her by the side of her shirt, and pulled her into me to press a kiss to her lips. She stood stone still for a moment before she melted against me and pressed her hands flat to my chest.
I wasn’t sure how long the kiss lasted before I pulled away and set my stare on Sarah. “Does that clarify things for you, Dr. Vant?”
Her mouth worked, but no words came out.
Then she turned on her heel and marched out.
Elizabeth had two shaking fingers pressed to her lips. “We are so screwed.”
I shook my head. “No. We’re not. She’ll get what’s coming to her. Now come here. I’m not done with you.”
Between The Sheets Page 20