After Hours (7 page)

I flexed my left shoulder and it swore in protest. “Pretty dinged up. Can’t say I’ll
be sad when your days of throwing me around are over.”

He faked a jab to his ego and gave me a wounded look, but there was mischief in his
eyes. He hadn’t missed the double entendre I’d accidentally lobbed his way. “Be grateful
there were gym mats.”

“And witnesses,” I cut back, and yeah, it sounded pretty bad—like we were agreeing
things would’ve evolved into something scandalous, had the setting been different.
Damn it.

“And Audra, barking corrections,” Kelly added.

“Yeah. That’d be a mood killer.” Oh fuck, why had I said
that
? His resulting smile was as dangerous as ever, a shot of pure, liquid stupid plunged
straight into my bloodstream.

He answered my flirtation with another assessing look. It wasn’t terribly professional,
but I was grateful for that. I’d spent my first two shifts feeling like a newbie,
a jailer, a waitress, and a wuss. Felt good to feel like a plain old woman, something
enticing enough to bring a little heat to Kelly’s cool gaze. The wine suddenly tasted
very expensive, and I decided it was everyone else’s loss, not taking the opportunity
to dress up a bit, not my folly.

A small group of people came by and we made room for them to get drinks. I wandered
toward the middle of the party with Kelly, praying no one could see the comical lust
lines vibrating from my body toward his.

He’d worked at Larkhaven for years so he knew everyone, and as long as I stuck by
him, I was never at a loss for conversation. It seemed perhaps he did shed that cold
façade alongside his gray uniform, and tonight he was as warm as I’d yet seen him.
He introduced me and goaded our colleagues into recounting old war stories—funny ones,
not scary ones. I was even invited to join Larkhaven’s softball team, though judging
by the way my coworkers put away the boxed wine, recreational drinking was the institution’s
official sport.

After an hour’s mingling I felt relaxed, even a little charming. I also felt dangerously
attracted to the man on my left. But I wouldn’t ever act on it, so what was the harm?
It’d been more than a year since I’d made out with a guy or had a date or even a crush,
and I’d forgotten how fun infatuation was. Like being continuously buzzed on champagne.
You just have to know when you’ve had enough.

By ten I was yawning uncontrollably, and as nice as it was to feel cheerful for the
first time since arriving here, it couldn’t top the promise of bed. I got to sleep
in a bit the next morning before restraints, and I could use all catch-up rest I had
coming to me.

“You want a refill?” Kelly asked me, nodding at my empty cup.

“No, I better get to bed. It’s been a long couple days.”
Walk me up,
I wanted to say. Walk me to my door, and give me a look that said he wanted to kiss
me, but not actually do it.
Send me to bed with no thoughts of attacks or paperwork or antipsychotic dosages.

But he didn’t. He drained his own cup and took mine, tossing both in a nearby garbage
can. “You’re taking all the glamour away.” He said it like I ought to feel guilty,
and gave me a final assessing glance.

“You’ll cope.” I smiled wearily and offered a wave before heading for the stairs.
I wanted so badly to turn, to see if he was watching me go. But if he wasn’t, I’d
be disappointed. And if he was, he’d know I cared.

Upstairs, I changed into pajama pants and a tee shirt and checked a voicemail from
my sister—no crisis brewing thank God, just “Happy Birthday” sung into the phone,
with Jack shrieking gleefully in the background. I hung up, smiling.

A knock at my door interrupted my search for a washcloth. Nervous, I peered through
the peephole.

Kelly, of all people.

Every ounce of my hard-earned self-possession vanished in a breath.

I swung the door in. “Um, hello.”

He took up the entire threshold, and he was holding a vase of white lilies.

Fucking hell, he was here to woo me. And I would go so,
so
easily.

I wished I hadn’t just gone from heels and a dress to bare feet and an oversized Red
Wings tee shirt.

“Happy birthday.” He held out the flowers and I accepted them.

“How did you know that?”

“Saw it on the roster this morning—the participants list for the restraints course.”
His chameleon eyes looked blue again, the pale robin’s egg shade of my walls.

“Oh. Well, thanks.” He was being so uncharacteristically sweet, I offered a dopey
smile and admitted, “I wish you’d said something earlier. I was feeling sorry for
myself all day, thinking no one knew.”

“That’s a shame. Want me to sing to you?” This was a strange hybrid version of Kelly,
a mix of the cool, civil man I passed on the ward, and the more mischievous one who’d
proclaimed himself a controlling hothead in the neon intimacy of the bar.

“That’s all right.” I put the flowers on my dresser, disreputable bits of me still
clinging to the hope that he was here to seduce me. Getting trounced by a gigantic
orderly seemed a great way to kick off my twenty-ninth year. Except for . . . well,
he was my coworker, for one. And nearly a stranger, and a bit of a chauvinist.
But only a bit,
my pussy pointed out.
And he brought me flowers.
Valid points.

I cleared my throat and nodded to the vase. “They’re lovely, thanks.”

“They’re secondhand. I nabbed them from the party.”

Aaannnd
 . . . seduction ruined. “You stole someone’s going-away flowers?”

“With permission. She had plenty more where those came from.”

Okay, so he hadn’t driven into town and back to get me a gift, but what in the fuck
did I expect? Who did I think this guy was to me?

“It’s the thought that counts,” he pointed out.

“You’re right.” I wandered to my bed and took a seat, weariness redoubled. Kelly must
have sensed it, as he said, “Excited to spend your first morning off practicing choke
holds?”

“Oh yes, thrilled. Though I’d rather do it with you than a patient.”

He crossed his arms and leaned against the door frame.

“You can come in, if you want.” I pointed to a chair that didn’t match its desk, all
the furniture secondhand, castoffs like my flowers. Like every stitch of clothing
I’d owned growing up, even the shirt I wore now, inherited from some ex-boyfriend
whose face I could barely conjure.

Kelly’s gaze flicked around the room, but after a pause he shut the door behind him
and pulled out the chair. My room was small to begin with, but stick Kelly Robak in
the middle and it seemed all at once tight and hot. My womanhood suddenly felt much
the same.

I cleared my throat.

“Seems like you’re finding your feet,” he said. I thought I could smell him, behind
the lilies, but it was probably a delusion.

“I’m starting to get the routine. I know where stuff is, know some people’s names.
Thanks, for letting me tail you at the party. It’s the least square-peggish I’ve felt
so far. Overdressed or not.”

His eyes darted around again, and not in a sexy,
Which wall shall I nail her to?
kind of way.

“Is my room creeping you out?”

“Nah, not quite. It’s just weird. It’s so much like one of the rooms from the locked
ward, but a different color and without the bars, and with like, stuff on the walls.
I keep thinking, ‘
slashing hazard,
’” he pointed to a framed photograph that’d been there when I moved in. “
Suicide risk
.” He nodded to a belt of mine, draped around a bedpost, then to a bottle of perfume
on my dresser. “
Accelerant. Search the room for matches
.”

I smirked. “You haven’t clocked out yet.”

“After four years, I never really do. Not ’til I’m through those gates and halfway
to Darren.”

What a grim thought. Happy frigging birthday.

Kelly stood and strolled around my cell, taking stock of what little there was to
note. He stopped before my bed, staring out my window with his hands clasped behind
his back. “Nice view,” he said, gaze on the dark woods.

“Even better when the sun’s out,” I said dryly.

He looked down at me and smiled—the first real smile I’d seen from him all day, even
during the party. It heated me just as it had at the bar, filled me with bad ideas.

“What?”

He took a seat beside me, dipping the mattress. “We got a little something between
us, don’t we?”

Caught off guard, I deflected. “How little?”

Another smile, a deeper one with a flash of teeth. “Cute. But I’m not imagining it,
am I? There’s something here,” he said, wiggling his fingers between our chests. He
stared pointedly at the Red Wings logo on my shirt. “Plus you clearly dressed to seduce
me.”

“If you say so.”

He winced like I’d just tried to knee him in the balls. “Okay, we can be like that.”

Behind whatever blank expression I’d managed to slap on my face, my common sense and
my libido were rolling around, pulling each other’s hair, slapping and spitting and
fighting to come out on top. Or to come out underneath Kelly Robak, in the case of
my libido. Luckily it ended in a draw.

“No, there might be something,” I admitted. “But not the kind of something I want
to do anything about with a colleague. Not my first week at a new job.” My pussy had
added the caveat, opportunist that it was.

Kelly’s expression went cool, more calm acceptance than bruised ego, I hoped. He nodded.
“Understood.”

And with that, what could have been quite a memorable twenty-eighth birthday present
rose and headed for the exit, bouncing the mattress beneath my butt.

“Enjoy your flowers.”

I followed, frowning. “Wait. Did you really come here thinking you’d get laid? Off
some stolen lilies and thirty seconds’ smooth-talking?”

Another smile. “Haven’t known you long enough to have expectations. Maybe I’ll try
back again with roses sometime. I’ll be sure to bring a receipt.”

“Oh, fuck you,” I said through a laugh. The fucking nerve. But I was only half-insulted,
the rest a mixture of flattered and amused.

He opened the door and I held it. With the possibility of witnesses strolling past
in the hall, we both shrugged into semblances of friendly professionalism.

“Happy birthday.”

“Yeah, thanks.”

He gripped the door frame and leaned in real, real close, close enough to kiss. But
his lips offered nothing but a smarmy-ass grin. “This is your room, so I’m letting
you get your way—”

“
Letting
me?”

“Come by my place some weekend and maybe I’ll show you mine.”

“Your way doesn’t sound like it takes
no
for an answer.”

“You’re welcome to find out.”

“Good night, Kelly.”

He straightened. “See you beneath me on the gym floor tomorrow.”

Eyes narrowed, I watched him disappear around the corner, listening until the sound
of his boots clomping down the steps faded to the thrum of my thumping pulse.

I shut the door, opening and closing my fists to quell a faint shaking.

He’d just said all that, hadn’t he? Not those cocky parting quips—that there was
something between us
. Something he wasn’t opposed to acting on.

Was I opposed?
Yes. Definitely. Probably.

I didn’t know. I wasn’t even sure what Larkhaven’s policy was, on office romance or
whatever. Ward romance. Not that Kelly Robak seemed the type to let institutional
mandates dictate whom he may or may not deign to make his conquest.

And he
so
was the conquesty sort.

That settled it—I would
not
be acting on anything with Kelly. No contact beyond the bounds of restraint training.
From what he’d told me at the bar and just now by the door, he probably treated women
like gas stations, in and out and on his way, thanks for the lube job. I glared at
the flowers he’d left behind, annoyed that he’d taken me for someone whose professional
dignity could be bought for a secondhand bouquet.

“Nice try, Robak,” I told the flowers.

I went down the hall to scrub my face and brush my teeth, deciding it had been one
of my lousier birthdays. And if I went to sleep imagining Kelly restraining me with
his shirt off, it was entirely by accident.

Chapter Four

I slept. Didn’t feel like it, but I must have, since I’d shut my eyes and when I opened
them again it was light outside my window. Every joint creaked as I left my warm bed,
and when I stripped for my shower I discovered a garden of ugly blossoms smudged all
over my arms, a bruise for every color of the rainbow. I covered them with a long-sleeved
shirt and hiked yoga pants up my achy legs, chugged cold coffee left behind in the
machine in the common kitchen, and headed out to earn myself some fresh war wounds.

I didn’t see Kelly when I entered the gym, and prayed maybe, just maybe, he wouldn’t
show. I needed a day with no booze, no Kelly, no intoxication of any kind. Clarity.

“Good morning, Erin!” Audra must have been the only senior staffer who hadn’t gotten
plastered at the party, as she seemed her usual boisterous self, her booming greeting
ricocheting around my skull like a dodge ball.

“Morning.”

“You’re early. Want to help me out and spread these mats?”

“Sure.” The mere effort of dragging the first one from a pile by the wall had me sweating
and flushed. The other attendees arrived shortly, and I straightened from squaring
up the final mat just as Kelly appeared, blocking all the sunlight coming in from
the hall with his big, ridiculous body.

Don’t even look at him,
I told myself.
Not his face or his snarky-ass smile or those stupid arms.

Of course that was a promise that couldn’t be kept. Within a half hour we were paired
up, and I acknowledged him with a weary wave.

“Morning,” he said, oh-so casual.

“Yeah, morning.”

“Sleep well?”

“Very well. And all by myself, just how I like.”

He nearly grinned. I could see his lips straining to hold it in.

Audra told everyone to improvise techniques for single-man restraints, stalling would-be
attackers as best we could while we waited for theoretical backup. After a sloppy,
slow-motion struggle, I wound up straddling Kelly’s ribs, pushing down on his arms
with all my might. He smiled up at me. “You’ve done this before.”

“Oh sure,” I panted. “All the time.”

“Not last night.”

I shot him a withering look. “I reserve my man-pinning skills for deserving parties.
Not just whoever turns up with some old lady’s stolen lilies.”

“Ooh, you go right for the groin, don’t you?”

“In your dreams.”

My wrist hurt and I shifted my weight. Kelly took the opportunity to grab my arms
and flip us over, him suddenly pinning me, though surely not in the way he’d prefer.
I tried using the arm-hold-escape trick, but it was useless in this position. In an
instant I felt angry and helpless, my face burning, sinuses welling.

Kelly must have seen the tears glossing my eyes. He let me go and I sat up, rubbing
my arms where he’d grasped them. I eyed Kelly’s biceps, at the unmistakable finger
marks there and a faint, shiny scar. Would my arms look like his after a few years
here? I didn’t know how I’d ever make it that long. Not as a nurse. Maybe as a patient,
if I kept up this exhausting pace and gave myself a nervous breakdown. I felt real
tears brewing and stood, dusting myself off and praying Kelly hadn’t noticed. He was
the last person I needed catching me crying, twice in my first week.

“That’s why prone’s always better than face-up,” he said mildly, getting to his feet.

“Clearly.”

“You okay?”

“I’m fine.”

He leaned close, poised to impart some wisdom.

“I’m
fine,”
I repeated, stepping back when he went to touch my shoulder. Just a minute ago we’d
been borderline flirting, now I was a panicky mess again. Big men made me feel weak
and unsure, and with Kelly the sensation seemed to fluctuate wildly between distress
and . . . well, some kind of perverse attraction. The man gave me mood swings. Clinical
strength.

Audra began explaining the next drill, the perfect excuse to ignore him.

“Rotate!” Audra called, and I made my escape.

* * *

To his credit, Kelly behaved after that. Leave it to female tears to accomplish what
a perfectly articulate rebuffing hadn’t. The next day at training he didn’t toss a
single provocative murmur my way, not even when he had me on my knees in a headlock.

I spent the afternoon at my sister’s, playing on the floor with Jack, enjoying more
than my share of belated birthday cupcakes, and hearing all about how Amber’s ex was
late with his child support payment and apparently “banging some total skank from
the lake who must be, like, seventeen.”

That’s what you got, chasing after meatheads with big arms. I pictured Kelly’s big
arms, and told myself I was completely over the temporary insanity known as lust.

If Kelly had been suffering from a similar lapse in good judgment, it seemed he was
over it as well. We were both back at work on Friday, and though he didn’t ignore
me, if felt like we’d never met before. Certainly not like we’d ever flirted, or like
he’d ever shown up at my apartment, hoping to get laid.

The infatuation had been fun while it lasted, but this was better. Wiser. Safer.

In the late afternoon, Don had some kind of incident, Jenny told me, and I didn’t
see Kelly for the rest of our shift. By the time I was signing out, I’d started to
wonder if maybe I’d dreamed all that sexual tension. Dreamed that he’d smiled at me
at the bar, sat on my bed and informed me there was something brewing between us,
and that I’d once been fool enough to agree with him. Whether it was a dream or not,
I was awake now. Wide fucking awake, and steering way clear of Kelly lest I ever lose
my mind again. My sister and mom were welcome to his type, and all the pleasurable
mistakes those men offered. As for me, no thank you. All set.
If you want me, I’ll be at the coffee shop, looking for a nice boy of manageable proportions
with no scars and a basic grasp of feminism.

And if you’d asked me at eight o’clock that evening if I still had the hots for Kelly
Robak, I’d have told you with perfect conviction that no, I did not.

I was rereading a book from one of my certification courses, cramming for an imaginary
quiz on the various disorders of Starling’s patients.
My
patients
.
I wasn’t learning anything new, but going through the motions of preparation soothed
me. Kelly was the furthest thing from my mind, until a curt knock jerked my head up
from the page.

I yanked on a cardigan over my tee to hide the fact that I wasn’t wearing a bra. I
opened the door, and there he was. All tall and huge and with a dark, fresh gash on
one temple.

“Hi,” I said.

“Hey.”

How regular a thing was this going to be, his turning up at my door unannounced? I
probably needed to invest in a less-dumpy sleep wardrobe.

I stepped aside and he stalked past me, moving in a way that told me his brain was
still firmly clocked in. “You okay? What happened?”

“Don,” he said.

“Jenny said there was an incident.” I stepped closer, examining his cut and counting
six stitches. “He attacked you, huh?”

He nodded. “Got ahold of a letter opener from someplace.”

I shut the door behind him. “Shit.” Don was his favorite patient; everyone knew that.
But why was Kelly
here
? “Is he stable now?”

“They tranqed him—asleep before I even got sewn up.”

I glanced again at his wound, black with blood. “Jesus. Thank goodness he didn’t get
you in the eye.”
What can I do for you?
I wanted to ask, but it felt like I already knew the answer, and the answer was,
he didn’t know any better than I did why he was here.

We got a little something between us, don’t we?
The words trickled cool foreboding down my back, chased by a dangerous warmth. All
that lust I thought I’d gotten over . . . It’d gone dormant, that was all. Now it
was wide-awake, hungrier than ever.

I asked a different question. “Would you like to go out for a beer?” It was what he’d
done for me when I’d been upset, and it wasn’t terribly late. We needed to go somewhere—anyplace
that wasn’t my bedroom.

“Nah.”

“You look like you could use a drink. I wish I had something exciting to offer,” I
said, and he took a step closer. “But I’ve only got iced-tea mix . . .” I trailed
off, took a step back as he took another forward. My gaze dropped from his eyes to
his mouth.

His big, warm hand touched my side beneath my cardigan, and I made a soft noise, the
sound of sense being knocked from my skull, a tiny
ooah
. As we took another step together, his palm slid around my ribs to my back, fingers
strong and bossy, just as I’d known they’d feel.

Push him away,
my brain coached. Then,
Oh shit, my breath must be awful.
My libido elbowed it aside, reaching for the wheel.

I mumbled his name, having no clue if it was the sound of a protest or a swoon. Like
a nineteen-sixties secretary fielding a pass from her boss, fingering her pearls,
breathless.
Mr. Robak, we really mustn’t.

The back of my knee hit the mattress, but his hold kept me from falling. He put his
other hand to my arm, that intense gaze watching as he pushed the sweater from my
shoulder.

My heart stopped. He’d peel me like a banana if I let him. I couldn’t remember a man
ever looking at me like that, like there was a Very Important Message printed on the
bare skin under my clothes, and that reading it was a matter of life and death. Then
Kelly’s gaze hopped to my face and I got frozen in those cold eyes. He touched my
collarbone, my throat, my cheek and ear; then he cupped the back of my head, fingers
tangling in my hair.

He’s going to kiss you. Better decide if you want that or not.

I’d pretty much told him after the party that I didn’t want it—or didn’t want to act
on it—and the fact that he was here, coming on to me this hard, should have been enough
to piss me off.

But my sex drive had clubbed my better judgment unconscious and locked it in a trunk,
and all that came back was,
Jesus, he’s got big hands,
coupled with an irrational urge to suck on his fingers.

His pale irises had grown as dark as his intentions, lids heavy. I felt my lips part
in invitation, but the look he gave wasn’t one that sought permission. More a warning
than a request, and I remembered again what he’d told me, about how controlling he
was.
I want what I want, the way I want it,
my memory echoed, and my brain translated.

I fuck who I want, where and when and exactly how I want to.

As he lowered his mouth to mine, gravity dissolved. My heart dropped to my feet and
the room seemed to float, then the only force of nature left to obey was Kelly’s lips.

A soft kiss for only a moment, firmer as his grip in my hair tightened.

I shivered, wondering if this was how my sister had felt, all those times she kissed
one of her terrible boyfriends, made one of her awful mistakes. If her mistakes felt
half as good as Kelly’s mouth, I forgave her. Soft lips making callous suggestions.
Three orderlies couldn’t have held me back.

He released my head, pulled at my hips with both hands, drawing me close so our thighs
touched. I had to crane my neck to keep kissing him, and it made me feel small. It
made him seem
huge.
His tongue was firm, slick, his fingers rough and restless. My pussy tightened, hot
with impatience, squeezing every last scrap of rational thought from my head. I held
his biceps, grabbed on to that thick, locked muscle like my life depended on it.

I was tilting, somehow, my weight in his arms. My head was on the pillow, back on
the covers, Kelly’s thigh between mine, and his mouth plundering. I held his face,
stroked his neck as we kissed—as he kissed me, more accurately. The bristle of his
buzzed hair was soft, interrupted here and there by smooth furrows of scar tissue.
I wanted to memorize every cut and bruise and hard swell of his body, to possess that
knowledge with the accuracy of a map and pore over it in my memory on lonely nights.

His other knee moved, joining its twin between my legs. I should have been offended,
but all I wanted was for him to lower his body and let me feel what I might have stirred
between his thighs. Or what taking advantage of me might have stirred—that was how
it felt, everything smacking more of coercion than seduction.

It felt like something I’d lament come morning, an impulsively downed shot that offered
reckless exhilaration chased by hours of regret. It stirred the curiosity gnawing
at me. I stroked his shoulders, the muscle pinched to hard crests from how he was
braced above me. My touch was telling him I was okay with this. My body was telling
us both that, a million invisible hands reaching for him, wanting him, welcoming him.
Instincts warred in my gut, the urge to fuck trading parries with the urge to protect
my heart.

No, not my heart. No.

My pride, only. I was in danger of getting my ego bruised, not my heart broken. My
pride wasn’t such a guarded commodity, and the chance to explore this man’s body was
a tempting trade. My pride had been fine for ages, but I hadn’t felt desire like this
in years—I’d thought my capacity for it had faded with the rest of puberty’s insanity.
Kelly’s touch made me feel young and dumb again, excited and awake. Wanted, no matter
how fleeting or selfish his needs might prove.

He kissed me slower, deeper, filthy as fucking, and lowered his hips to mine. Unbidden,
my hand tugged at his shirt. He let me peel it up and over his head, then stripped
my sweater away, tossing it to the floor. Dark sounds rumbled from his throat as he
claimed my mouth, moans and grunts brewing. My fingers curled against his bare back.

He’ll fuck like an animal.
I’d never been with a guy who was like that. I’d always picked safe guys, generous
but civilized in bed. And I’d always looked forward to their final sprints toward
release, for those frantic, impolite moments of driving flesh and fevered groans.
Maybe he wouldn’t be generous, but I bet fucking Kelly would be nothing
but
frantic, driving flesh and beastly sounds. Maybe he’d give me memories worth pleasuring
myself to for the next six months. Or maybe not.