Off-Limits Box Set

by Ella James

  “How am I?” he asks with a crooked grin.

  “That was a stiff, hard case you had there, but I think you’ll live.”

  “Thanks, Doc.” He rubs a hand over my hair. I have to smooth it down as we step out into the hallway—thank God, empty.

  I feel like we should part ways to walk downstairs, but realize if we hadn’t just done what we just did, no one would think one thing of it. As we step into the stairwell, I brush his hand with mine, and Landon’s fingers squeeze mine for a moment.

  “Do you have a car here?” he asks.

  “Actually, I don’t this time.”

  He nods, and we walk in silence through the lobby, to the parking deck, and to—what else—a Ford Focus, just a little newer than my old one.

  “What do you need most,” he asks me as we buckle, “sleep or food?”

  “Mmmm, food, I think. I’m starving.”

  Landon takes me to another parking deck a few blocks down, and to a nondescript door on a busy city street, with just a simple, green and white striped awning over it.

  “Back entrance,” he explains as we step into a cozy, candlelit Italian place. I inhale the delicious scent of buttered noodles, and he grins, as if to say, Yeah—right? “I got takeout from here the other day.”

  We claim a booth near the back of the dining area. A server comes. I notice that our table has a curtain, and, with a small smile, I pull it shut. How strange that as we browse the menu and place our orders, I can flirt with him, my feet rubbing his legs under the table.

  As the waiter leaves to place our orders, I slip my foot from my shoe and find the spot between his legs, and Landon hisses. “Evie—fuck.” He leans over the table. “You want me to come in here?”

  I giggle; it sounds more like a cackle. “Just checking on your eggplant.”

  He grins, and the feeling I get in my chest is sharp. Last time we knew each other, Landon almost never smiled this big. Our waiter brings bread and oil, and I watch as he pulls a piece of bread off the loaf…the way his fingers move…the way his throat looks as he swallows, those keen eyes on me.

  How different he seems now, and how the same. What has he been through in the time we’ve been apart? What kind of person is he now?

  He must be wondering the same, because he tilts his head; his lips curve up. “Do you still eat asparagus barely cooked?” he asks.

  “You know it.”

  “And plain avocados?”

  “They’re not plain with salt and pepper.” I stick out my tongue between stuffing my face. “Do you still read the paper?”

  “Did you doubt it?”

  “Nope, I guess not. I do too, now—if I want to be depressed.” I smirk, and Landon rests his forearms on the table. “Tell me, Evie, everything about you.”

  My stomach bottoms out. I feel ill at the depth of my deceit—but how can I tell him? I just…can’t. Not yet. I need him in this moment…even if it’s wrong.

  “What kinds of things?” I hedge.

  “No less than ten,” he says. “One for every year we’ve been away.”

  I find it curious the way he phrases it, as if we both just took vacations.

  He leans forward slightly, his expression darkening. “What happened when I left, Evie?” He clasps his hands and watches my face with those eagle eyes, and I feel like I might be sick. “You said you didn’t get my letters? None of them?”

  His face looks pained. I have to lie. I nod, because were I to tell the truth, my story wouldn’t add up. And if my story doesn’t add up, this is over.

  He shakes his head. “Tell me everything.”

  Seven

  Landon

  I listen as Evie talks. I watch the way her fingers start to pick at her bread. When our food comes, she delays her first few bites until I prod her. Then she goes on, telling me of how her parents hid my letters from her. How they told her if she went to Cambridge and stayed with her aunt and got her head screwed on straight, she could come home and reach out to me again.

  “I guess they thought I was obsessed with you or something. I don’t know. They thought I needed time away.”

  I search my memory for impressions of her parents. This makes sense. They weren’t unfair. I was never given the impression that they hated me or that they thought she shouldn’t see me again.

  “They were worried, you know? I guess to them…it seemed excessive.”

  Her soft words make my throat ache so much I have to swallow. “Was that what it was?”

  “Of course,” she says. She smiles and shakes her head. “That’s the only way.”

  She tells me about going to Harvard, how she missed me the two times I was on campus there, the way she freaked out after she saw my name in the program for an organic chemistry keynote. My mentor, Dr. Ryn, from UNC, where I did undergrad, was speaking, so of course I’d gone with him in hopes of glimpsing her.

  “When I realized that you might have been there at the keynote, but I missed you, I really lost it,” she says. She takes a small bite and chews. My gaze holds her face the way I want to hold her body up against me. “I had a hard time not finding out what happened to you. When you ran away…” her eyes tear up. “I felt so helpless.”

  Guilt thickens my throat. I open up my mouth to inhale, feeling my chest tighten like it does from time to time.

  “I didn’t want to leave,” I manage. All I really wanted was to be near Evie, but… “I couldn’t stay there. That place was hell, Ev.” I struggle to find words, to say enough but not too much. “I wouldn’t have survived it. Not on top of missing you.”

  She doesn’t know what I mean, and that’s okay. The bastard didn’t get to me—I fought him off that night I left—so why tell her? Not now. If she ever hears me dream about it, maybe then.

  “I hitchhiked, out of state, because I thought I would be safer that way. I wound up in Knoxville, with a bunch of college students. Stayed there long enough to read the papers—” I wiggle my eyebrows, smirking— “and see that the group home I was at got shut down. Then I came back to North Carolina to apply for college, for the scholarships. They’re pretty generous with foster kids, at least if you have the right kind of grades.”

  “You went to UNC.”

  I nod, hesitating a moment before I make my next confession. “I looked you up, Evie. I followed you. I liked to know what you were doing, so I saw you didn’t graduate from Creekside.”

  “I stayed up in Cambridge,” she whispers. Her eyes are full of regret.

  “Did you like it there?”

  She laughs, and it’s a small, sad sound. “I don’t know,” she hedges. “Did you enjoy UNC?”

  “I fucking hated it.”

  “You did?” I see her sadness on her face, and want to take back what I said. I shrug, trying to play it off. “That was dramatic. It wasn’t that bad. I worked and studied. It was fine. I finished in three years.”

  “You did? Then how are we…” She means how are we in the same class now.

  “I did a year of research between undergrad and med school, saving money. Did an internship at Pfizer in New York. The science side.”

  “Oh wow, that’s cool. Did you like it?”

  “Hated it.” I grin. “Too tedious.”

  “So you wanted something medical, but not research. How did you get from there to surgery?”

  “At Hopkins they were pretty good at guiding us. My adviser took one look at me and knew, I think.” I laugh. “Hungry little asshole, loved competing, nice chip on the shoulder. Surgeon—right?”

  She smiles. “You’re not a stereotype, Landon Jones. You won’t fool me.”

  I press my lips together. “No. I guess I won’t. Anyway…” I have a bite of my eggplant parm, “it didn’t take much for me to realize—surgery.”

  “You always did cut like a surgeon.”

  I laugh at that memory. “I remember how you used to say that.”

  She shrugged. “I could spot one.”

  Could she, though? Wha
t did Evie think became of me? I’m almost scared to ask, but I do. “Did you know what I was doing…before now?”

  She shuts her eyes, then blinks down at her lap. “I don’t know the right answer,” she confesses. “No, I never cared to look…or yes, I knew, but didn’t reach out.”

  “Yes, you knew.” I swallow, looking into her eyes. Fuck, they’re sad.

  “I knew. One time my sister thought she saw you jogging near the house in Asheville around Thanksgiving time. I rode around for hours looking for you. Couldn’t find a Maryland plate.” She gives a sad smile. “It was you, though, wasn’t it?”

  “How do you know?”

  “She saw you in a Hopkins T-shirt. I don’t think she knew then that you went to school there.”

  I nod once.

  “It was?”

  I nod.

  “What were you doing down in Asheville?”

  “What do you think, Evie?”

  Her face softens.

  “I thought about going by to see you.” Instead I told myself she wouldn’t want to hear from me, and focused on the other purpose of my trip south: to try to find some information on my birth mother.

  “Why didn’t you,” she breathes.

  I shrug.

  “Too chicken?”

  “Yeah.” I look down at my lap. I’d saved up what little money I had, and hired a PI to find my Ash Ville. I thought if I found her, maybe then I’d go to Evie. As if knowing my birth mother’s name would make me braver. I didn’t, and it probably wouldn’t have. “I was worried it would do more harm than good.”

  “Seeing me,” she whispers.

  “Yeah.”

  Her foot moves over mine, and after that, she gets into the booth beside me, her cheek resting on my shoulder. “Tell me more,” she says.

  I tell her everything I can afford to: all about my schooling, undergrad and med school. About all my jobs, my roommates, how I came to Denver. “I applied here because of you, and because the program is so involved. When I got accepted, it was one of three.”

  She gapes. “Three?”

  “I took this one the first day.”

  She grins, and I feel like my lungs have finally returned to max capacity. Ten years after I left her, I can breathe again.

  We finish dinner and go back outside. We walk back to my car, and Evie holds my hand as I steer back onto the road.

  “I want to talk all night,” she says.

  “But you should sleep.”

  “I can’t. Landon…”

  “’Fraid you’ll miss me?” I wink.

  “Yes.” Her eyes glitter with tears, and I bring her hand to my mouth and kiss the back of it. “Ah, Evie. Don’t worry. We’re both on tomorrow, right?”

  She nods.

  “We’ll find a second here and there… I want to touch you.” Not her pussy—though I want that, too—but just…her hand or cheek or neck or hair. Now that I’ve found her, I can’t get enough of Evie.

  “Is this okay?” I hear myself ask as I head toward her place.

  “What?” she whispers.

  “This.” I inhale deeply, blow the breath out. “If this bothers you, Evie, I hope you’d tell me.”

  “This, as in hanging out again?” she asks.

  I nod. The word choice “hanging out” makes me feel slightly ill—as if we’re just acquaintances.

  “Landon, of course not. Don’t you know me?” She brings my hand to her mouth and kisses it. “I’m proud of this hand.” She smiles broadly. “I hear people talk about you sometimes, saying that you’re really great.”

  “I’m only kind of great.” I smirk, and Evie leans to rest her forehead on my shoulder.

  “Can we see each other again?” she asks me softly.

  For a long moment, I can’t even answer her. I nod, then find my voice. “Of course we can.”

  Eight

  Evie

  Even against the frenzied backdrop of a neurosurgery residency, what I have with Landon feels intense. We leave work in separate cars the next four nights, then go to Landon’s place and fall into his bed.

  The first three nights, I go home after, under the guise of needing to get clothes for the next day. All three times, I would have stayed if not for my awful lie.

  While I’m in his personal space, I learn things that make me love Landon even more…like he was a Big Brother with Big Brothers Big Sisters of America throughout both undergrad and med school. His brother, a cute kid named Reece, is scheduled to visit over Thanksgiving.

  I learn things I could have guessed, like he subscribes to three different newspapers and has a huge bookshelf. His place is bare bones, not much frill, but tasteful in a basic sort of way. In the years he’s lived alone, he’s learned how to cook. He makes omelets one night before I go, and smoothies the next. I find a cabinet stocked with vitamins—it screams doctor—and in his bathroom, a stack of magazines, including one about triathlons, one about paragliding, and several trade journals and research mags. He keeps his TV on the science or history channel, programmed AFarewellToLeisureTime as his WiFi password, uses his second bedroom as an at-home gym, and, in contrast to the “typical” doctor, doesn’t have a wall devoted to his scholarships and awards—of which I know there are many.

  I ask him one night if he feels different than he did when we were younger. “More secure, you know?”

  “Because of this job?” he asks, his eyebrows narrowed.

  I nod.

  He stretches out with his arms behind his head and gives a shake of his head. “No. Of course not. Think of all the debt.”

  “Yeah, okay, but I’m saying like…do you feel…more?”

  “More what? Important?”

  I shrug. “Accomplished? Proud?”

  “Because of how I started out?”

  I’m starting to feel like an ass for asking the question when he smiles slightly and pulls my body up against his. “No, Evie. I barely made it here, and a lot of it was luck. I didn’t earn my brain, or my mentors, or the fact that I was born here and not Aleppo. I’m never going to feel important because I’m a surgeon. It’s an interesting job, maybe even an important one, but that’s it.”

  I shimmy closer to him, shut my eyes.

  “What about you? Does it make you feel important?” he asks, running his hand along my bare back. “Do you feel like you’ve arrived or something?”

  “Kind of,” I admit. I kiss his pec as I struggle to explain it. “I guess I feel like it gives me credibility. Like, okay, I can’t parallel park to save your life or your cat’s, but I’m a brain surgeon.” I giggle.

  He chuckles and kisses my hair. “You should learn to park, Evie. You live in Denver.”

  The third night, as we cuddle on the couch, I tell him everything I’ve learned of Colorado in the years I’ve been here: all about the funky weather, my favorite aspens-season mountain train, my favorite ski spots, the national parks, and all the hacks that go along with being single, unattached, and in med school in Denver.

  When I finish, he grins.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “What?” I swat him.

  He grins, which turns into a laugh. “You’re grown up, Evie.”

  “What?” I shove him. “That sounds patronizing.”

  “No—I love it. I love seeing you in your element. How’d you end up out in Denver anyway? Did you always like the mountains? I think you did…”

  I would have stayed that night, had he not asked that question. Had I not lied again. I wonder what is wrong with me, but I know, don’t I? I need Landon. I can’t bear to end this yet. Every day, I tell myself just one more day.

  The fourth night, I’m back at his place, and in the darkness, I hear Landon murmur awful things, and when he wakes up and I ask him, he tells me without reserve. I find out why he left the group home, and it makes me so damn sad. I feel helpless as I stroke his spine and he falls back asleep. So helpless, I have to wander out onto his balcony and just be mad a bit
before I join him back in bed.

  When I wake up, at 3:30 a.m., for work, it’s with his tongue between my legs. I come, but I want him, so we make love—in missionary position, with Landon’s cheek against mine—before I shower. I emerge to fresh coffee and orange cinnamon rolls—a favorite of mine, which he must have bought between the first night we came back here and last night.

  He helps me with my bracelet clasp and holds the door for me as we both step into the hallway with our briefcases. On the elevator down, my chest feels tight. In the car, as Landon tells me all about his plans to learn to paraglide, I develop Landon’s old problem: feeling like I can’t breathe. Every moment I’m with him, my secret strangles me.

  Still, I stay with him a fifth night, going home the sixth because it’s my night off but not his, and then returning to his apartment for a seventh night. Despite my growing guilt, I can’t get enough of him: his smile, his jokes, his thoughts, and of course, the way our bodies come together.

  The next morning, as I get out of my car at work and walk toward Landon, who parked a row away, I try to tell myself to calm down. Whoever said I have to tell him right away? When things are meant to be, they work themselves out, I think as we walk into the hospital lobby.

  In the stairwell, Landon throws me over his shoulder at floor two, poking his head into the hall to check for bystanders before he spirits me into our favorite storage room. He makes me come, and then, as I go at his pants, he bends me over the stretcher, pulls my pants back down, and pushes the tip of his cock between my legs. I spread my thighs, and he drags his long cock in between my slick lips.

  I swallow back a groan, and Landon chuckles. Then he grabs my hips, aligns the two of us, and thrusts. I grunt as he fills me, and I can feel him shudder.

  “Ev… fuck…you feel so fucking good.” His words are low—emotional.

  I love nothing more than Landon in my pussy, his hard, fast thrusts making my legs quiver, his arm reaching around my hip so that his fingers stroke my swollen clit. I come so hard I cry out. Landon clamps his hand over my mouth, and when we finish, we’re both laughing.