by Ray, Marika
She rattled off her number and I texted her. A soft ping came from between us. She grabbed her phone out of her front pocket and held it up in the air with a little shake.
“Got it.”
I smiled full out, looking forward to an actual date instead of a hookup for once. I’d have to examine my head later, but for now I was going with it since it felt good.
“Ooh, wait until I tell Grandma!” Lenora sashayed her way between Lucy and me, another red cup in her hand. “She’s been wanting to set you two up since Bain moved here.”
Lucy gasped and I grunted. Lenora took that as a signal to leave, probably spreading the gossip to the first person she saw. By tomorrow, everyone in Hell would know I’d gotten Lucille Eureka’s phone number. Lord help me.
I gestured up and down her body, needing at least one thing answered tonight. “So what’s with the new clothes?”
She looked down at herself, giving me an excuse to take in the breasts straining to get out of the tank top, the tiny shorts, and the red checkered Vans that hinted at a playful side.
“You don’t like them?”
I realized with a start her gaze was back on me, hurt in her silver eyes.
“No,” I quickly said. “I love the clothes, but I also like the old clothes.”
She scrunched up her face. “You liked my turtlenecks and long skirts?”
“Fuck yeah, I did.” I tilted my head left and right, uncomfortable sharing, but going out on a limb and doing it anyway. “I may have had a fantasy or two about bending you over my desk, so yeah, I’d say the clothes were working for you.”
Her cheeks went pink and she bit that lower lip, trying to keep the smile from taking over. A gust of wind blew her hair in her face. I reached forward to brush it away before she got a hand up to do it herself.
“Something tells me you like me, Bain Sutter,” she said in that soft voice that did things to my insides.
Truer words were never spoken.
16
Lucille
Seemed like this would be my new routine. Get in late to work due to oversleeping because I couldn’t fall asleep the night before with thoughts of Bain running through my brain. Compensate by drinking too much caffeine, which made my hands shake and my thoughts more scattered than acceptable when dealing with sperm samples all day long. I’d get lost thinking about something Bain said, the way he’d said it, and how he’d look while he said it, and then I’d mislabel a specimen cup, which wasn’t a good thing. Have you ever looked at a sperm sample? Pretty much unrecognizable from the one right next to it.
I smoothed over the third label in a row onto a specimen cup, this time finally getting the owner name and sample number correct, and groaned about my predicament. The hottest man I’d ever had the misfortune to meet had asked me on a date. I knew what most people would be thinking. Oh yeah, poor Lucille, attracting a handsome man. What a rough life.
But the thing is, I was stuck in a quagmire of indecision. I knew what my body wanted to do, based on the low ache in my belly every time I thought of Bain. Or the full-body flush that would steal over my skin whenever he was near. What I was feeling was desire on a magnified scale. Once I ruled out menopause with that blood test I gave myself a few days ago—ah, the beauty of being a nurse practitioner in your own lab—I realized it could only be desire.
My mind, on the other hand, had a laundry list of reasons why moving forward with a date or anything physical with Bain was a very bad decision indeed. For one, he was insufferable. Between not taking my issue with his visiting inmates seriously and his huge ego, he irritated me. Mightily. For two, I had a firm belief that men were more trouble than they were worth. To quote that hilarious movie I’d watched last winter when I came down with the flu, men were the devil, Bobby Boucher! I added my own twist there by calling men the devil, not women, but you got my point. For three, what the hell was a man like Bain, who considered himself God’s gift to women, doing with a woman like me?
I could keep going with my laundry list, but that was the gist of it. The most important reasons for this little date of ours to never happen.
I put the correctly labeled specimen cup in the fridge before I did something stupid and had to call the guy back in for another sample. Most men didn’t appreciate that. Not sure if it was because of the awkwardness of giving the sample, or because they felt their sperm was gold and should never have gone to waste the first time around.
Something caught my eye. A blank space where a specimen cup should have been on the far-right side of the refrigerator, two spots back.
“What the hell?”
I picked up the sample cups around it, making sure they were in their proper place and indeed they were. Slamming the door shut, I grabbed the printout off the front of the door that we kept in a plastic protective sleeve. Splatter happened at spank banks. It was good to be proactive.
Specimen #132 should have been in that slot.
I spun around and raced out of the room to find Keva. Maybe she had it for some reason or knew why it was missing. As far as I knew, it wasn’t to be sent for outside testing or used in a procedure, so it should have still been in that refrigerator. Then again, I was amassing a large number of sperm samples in my little clinic, so perhaps I misunderstood.
Ethel the cat walked right in front of me down the hallway as I charged out of the sample room. I tripped and nearly fell.
“Jesus, Ethel!”
She gave me a yellow-eyed stare that seemed to include choice curse words. A spank bank was no place for a cat, but I couldn’t get her to stay outdoors where the birds were. I could take her back to the National Cat Protection Society, but I felt bad for only needing her for twenty-four hours. Yedda had enough cats on her hands as it was.
I kept my eyes peeled for birds, cats, or any other animal that decided to terrorize me in my own clinic and made my way to the front, where Keva entered an appointment into our paper calendar. When she hung up the phone, I questioned her about the sample.
“No, I haven’t done anything with that sample.”
A line formed between her eyebrows and I wanted to tell her to relax before that sucker took root and became a permanent wrinkle. I would know.
Heartburn kicked in and made me wish, not for the first time, that I’d laid off the coffee today. We had a huge potential problem on our hands.
“Okay, let’s review yesterday’s appointments. Were any of the clients back there alone at any time?”
As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I realized how stupid they sounded. Of course the clients were alone at some point during the appointment. Was Keva supposed to stand by and watch them buff the banana? Oh no, that’s right, that’s what I did.
Keva gave me a wide side-eye, but thankfully didn’t call me out on my inane question.
I rubbed the ache forming on my forehead. “Let’s try this again. Do you recall any women being back there alone?”
Keva tapped her lip before she straightened up and jabbed her finger in the air.
“Nikki Quinnly! She was the only woman in here yesterday and went back there with her husband when I took them to the treatment room. She told me she had to use the restroom, so I stayed with her husband and explained the procedure while she went.” Keva gasped and stood up from her rolling chair.
I stared at her. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
She stared back. “That Nikki, out of the goodness of her heart, let a woman in the back door to steal that sample because she was so desperate to get pregnant?”
I reared my head back. “No! That Nikki is a no-good, stealing, Jizz Whizz thief!”
Keva gasped again, slapped a hand to her head, and sat down, needing a moment to process the horror of stolen sperm. What this could mean for my clinic. What it could mean for Nikki and her husband. What it could mean to our town to know we harbored hardened criminals.
A truck I didn’t recognize pulled up at the curb outside our clinic, idling loudly.
Wait, no. Just the thing about Nikki and the case of the stolen sperm.
“Damn diesel engines. They’ll kill our eardrums and then the environment,” I grumbled.
I pulled out my cell phone to call Chief Waldo, but took a minute to think about what I’d say. It’s not every day that you have to call in a missing person’s report on a cup of sperm. I mean, it was just the sperm, so it was kind of half a person. Could you issue a BOLO for half a person? Or a whole cup’s worth of half persons. Unless of course, the sample had a sperm count issue and then there’d be less. I needed to get my story just right for Chief Waldo not to laugh me off the phone.
It was as I contemplated this ridiculous turn of events that I noticed the guy sitting in the driver’s side of the truck still idling twenty feet from my door. He was shifting constantly like he had ants in his pants. And he never looked over at my clinic, but kept glancing in his rearview mirror. Which would mean he was staring at the prison.
A red flag went up in my head, stirring up the unease that already resided there. I narrowed my eyes and ignored the continued gasps from Keva. They were coming at odd intervals now, just a whiff of air intake as she processed all the possible outcomes of the Nikki problem.
Instead of calling the chief, I texted Bain.
Lucille: There’s a suspicious male idling outside my clinic.
After a few seconds, I got a message back.
Bain: I promise it’s not me.
Lucille: No, you dumbass, I know that. It’s some shifty guy staring at the prison. I think we have a problem brewing.
Bain: I’ve had a problem brewing in my pants ever since I saw you try to stare down a seagull.
Lucille: Seriously? Is everything about sex?
Bain: Says the woman surrounded by cumshots.
I rolled my eyes again. I had no idea what a cumshot was, but I could guess based on Bain’s one-track mind. Fine, if he wouldn’t believe me, I’d call the chief and kill two birds with one stone. I’d ask him to come over so I could report the theft, and while he was here, he could convince Mr. Shifty to move along.
My phone pinged again before I could scroll to find the chief’s number.
Bain: I just looked. We aren’t releasing any inmates today.
Lucille: I have to call Chief Waldo anyway for another matter. I’m sure he’ll believe me.
With that last lob of guilt, I found the chief’s number and waited for it to ring through.
“Keva, will you go into the sample room and make sure we didn’t misplace it?”
She hopped up and hustled out of the room. I had a feeling she didn’t want to get messed up in the accusation I was about to make. If it wasn’t stolen like we thought, we’d owe poor Nikki quite the apology.
“Y’ello!” The chief’s voice rang out so loud I almost dropped my phone.
“Hey, Chief. This is Lucille Eureka over at Coastal Fertility.”
“Hey there, Lucille. What can I do for you?”
“Well, I seem to have a situation on my hands. Would you be able to come by?” I paced the lobby, still a little shell-shocked someone had stolen from my clinic. You heard about sperm thieves, but you never thought they’d happen to you.
“Sure thing. I got one house visit to make and then I’ll be over. That work for you?”
I nodded, then realized he couldn’t see me. “It sure does. Thank you, Chief.”
The phone was almost back in the pocket of my slacks when the front door behind me clanked open like someone was racing for the last croissant at Coffee. I twirled around and my heart stopped.
Listen, it’s not every day you go from being flirted with by God’s gift to jawlines, had sperm stolen from you, and then had the scary end of a gun pointed directly at your face all within twenty-four hours. My nervous system simply couldn’t handle the overload. So I chose the door number three they don’t tell you about in these situations. I didn’t choose fight or flight. I chose freeze.
Two men rushed in, the one staying in front of me with the gun now pressed to the very spot on my forehead that had ached a minute ago. The other grabbed my arms and held them behind me in a grasp that meant business.
“We don’t want to hurt you. Just give us all the money you have,” the guy behind me demanded.
In my panicked state, his voice brooked no argument. I wasn’t thinking of saving the day or trying to talk my way out of anything. He could have every goddamn cent I had. I just wanted to live past this terrifying moment and see more Cock.
“I-I have m-money in the desk.” Black spots threatened my vision, but I blinked hard to stay alert. Keva was in the sample room. I had to give these guys what they wanted so they’d be gone by the time she came out.
The one behind me shoved me toward the desk. The gun no longer pressed against my forehead, but I knew he’d keep it trained on me regardless. The gun served no purpose here. My limbs were wobbling too badly to try any funny business.
I pulled open each drawer, my shaking hands making a mess of the neat stacks of things, trying to find any and all money we kept stashed away. The bottom drawer held our cash box. I took the key out of the top drawer to open it, but couldn’t seem to get the key in the hole.
“Give me that,” the guy with the gun snarled. He grabbed the keys and jammed them in the lock box on the first try. He snatched the money with his free hand and nodded to the guy behind me.
“Where’s your purse?” he growled in my ear.
Oh, shit. Back in my office, which meant we’d have to walk right by the sample room.
“M-my office?”
“Lead the way.” He shoved me forward, which wrenched on my arms, causing a shooting pain to light up the front of my shoulders. I whimpered but started walking, knowing the sooner I gave them everything, the sooner they’d leave.
We marched down the hall together, an odd threesome bound by one very bad decision that brought us together. I stared a hole into the door to the sample room, willing it to stay shut with Keva safely inside. When we got to the end of the hall and turned left toward my office, I let out the tiniest breath of relief.
In my office, the guy followed behind me right to my purse, which I’d left under my desk. I handed them my whole wallet, the other man putting his gun down long enough to rifle through the compartments of the wallet and grab the cash. I looked down at his gun, wondering if it was worth trying to get free while he didn’t have it in his grip. The hands on my forearms squeezed tighter, nails biting into my skin. I’d never be able to overpower the guy holding me.
A flicker of something dark caught my attention and had me looking up from the gun on my desk. I could have sworn I saw something.
A second later, the door crashed against the wall and a shot rang out. In all my thirty-six years, I’d never heard a gunshot at close range without earplugs in. To say I wasn’t ready for the deafening noise was an understatement. I squeezed my eyes shut, the image of Bain entering the room, a steely-eyed gaze washed of all emotion but rage, caught forever on the back of my eyelids. Everything happened in slow motion like in the movies.
I blinked again, some sense of self-preservation kicking in. I couldn’t just be the damsel in distress. This wasn’t Hollywood; I needed to help save my own damn self.
The guy with the gun slumped to the floor, an angry bellow telling me he wasn’t dead, just impaired from a bullet hole somewhere. The guy behind me reacted by squeezing my arms tighter. I winced but put the pain aside. There’d be time later to feel the effects, but for now, I was running on adrenaline and caffeine, the perfect combo for doing some stupid shit.
I was known for having a thing for the family jewels and, as much as their continued health kept me in a job, I had no qualms exploiting them when absolutely necessary. My foot swung up behind me like I was trying to kick my own ass. Instead, my high heel
connected with something decidedly squishy. The yelp in my ear told me I’d hit pay dirt. The guy’s hands released me in order to cup his aching privates. To add insult to dick injury, I reared my head back sharply, cracking him in what I hoped was his nose. The hit jarred my own head, but based on the yelp and the crunch, I figured it hurt him more than it hurt me.
I scrambled forward, intent on getting out of that damn room like my life depended on it, which was funny because it sort of did. Before I got more than a step or two in that direction, Bain snagged my sore arm and pulled me behind him, his gun and attention still trained on the two moaning men. My own attention was split. Half of me was so high on adrenaline and fear I couldn’t feel a damn thing. The other half noticed every single one of Bain’s muscles pressed up tight against me as I clung to him. I couldn’t even see what was going on out there his back was so broad, which was fine by me. I’d seen enough of those two men to last me a lifetime. I would just spend the rest of mine staring intently at Bain’s ass in these pants.
Boots echoed somewhere in the recesses of my brain. Another figure entered the room and I barely spared the chief a glance. Was Bain flexing right now? Or were those muscles that pert just relaxed? I remained oddly fascinated and entranced.
“Quit grabbing my ass, Lucy,” Bain whispered, his face twisted around to try to see behind him.
I snatched my hand back from where it had been testing the flex theory. Heat surged forward to melt the ice in my gut and flood my cheeks. I peeked around Bain and saw the chief and another police officer handcuffing my two assailants. When they carted them out of my office and down the hall, Bain clicked something on his gun and put it back in the holster at his waist. Still I clung to his back, my fingers not wanting to let go of his uniform shirt quite yet.
“Lucy, honey, let go,” Bain urged me.
He reached back and covered one of my hands with his, loosening my fingers and peeling me off of him, only to pull me back into his body. This time, his broad chest crushed me to him, his arms banded around me like they might not ever let go. My face sandwiched between his two pec muscles, the smell of him—cologne and man sweat—soaking into my senses and welcoming me home. His heartbeat thundered in his chest and I relished in the sound. He was alive. I was alive.