Hot Bodies Boxed Set: The Complete Vital Signs Erotic Romance Trilogy (12 page)

This surprised Joanna. “You mean you weren’t proud of that before?”

Harlan sighed again. “Joanna, to be quite honest, I originally became a doctor principally to make money. I didn’t exactly grow up poor, but in a family with four kids living on a college professor’s salary we weren’t exactly well-to-do, either. Then when my parents died and I was on my own—I knew that in order to continue my education, I would have to take out loans—and then I would have to find some kind of job that would allow me to pay the loans back and still have enough money left over to live some kind of comfortable life. The Army helped with some of the bills, but not all of them. I saw medicine as a means to make a comfortable living, and I also found that I was good at it. Sure, I took the Hippocratic Oath, swore to “do no harm” and all that, but until I went to the Sudan, I was in the profession for the money, not necessarily to help serve humanity.”

“If that’s really how you felt, then why did you go to the Sudan in the first place? You could have made more money by staying home.”

Harlan laughed. “Well, that’s kind of a funny story.”

“So tell it.”

“The colleague who urged me to go with her to the Sudan was the woman who eventually became my wife. I agreed to go because I had a crush on her. I figured that spending time with her in a remote, dangerous place would help me seduce her more easily. And that’s exactly what happened.”

Joanna’s eyes flew wide. Still, given what had just transpired between to two of them, she wasn’t exactly surprised. “You went all the way to the Sudan just so you could have sex with a woman?”

“Precisely.”

“So, where is this woman now?” Joanna asked. She’d noticed days ago that Harlan wore no wedding ring.

Harlan stiffened. “She’s dead.”

“I see,” Joanna said in a small voice. “What happened to her?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“But—“

Harlan pulled away. “I already said I don’t want to discuss it.”

“I’m sorry,” Joanna said in a small voice.

Harlan did not answer. Instead he gathered up his clothes from the car’s floorboards and got dressed. “We should probably get going,” he said. “We don’t want to risk getting picked up half-naked by the highway patrol.”

Suddenly, Joanna understood the deep look of pain she’d detected in Harlan’s eyes from their first meeting. She understood now why a part of him always deemed dangerous just below the surface—even why he’d earned the nickname “Darth Vader” among the Covington Hospital nurses. He’d lost the woman he loved—probably violently. Joanna guessed that his wife must have died on one of their Doctors Without Borders trips, perhaps in the Sudan, perhaps somewhere else.

But where? And how?

As she got dressed, a hundred possible scenarios ran through Joanna’s mind. Had Harlan’s wife died in a war’s crossfire, or perhaps from stepping on a land mine? Had she died of a horrible tropical disease? Kidnapped by bandits? Or worse? Joanna shuddered. She couldn’t think of anything worse than having someone you love die young and violently in a foreign land. But it had to be true. There was no other explanation for Harlan’s dark side—not as far as she could tell, anyway.

Joanna decided not to broach the subject with him again. She would show him patience, kindness, and understanding—not to mention physical passion. And then, once he trusted her completely, perhaps Harlan could share his demons with her, maybe even come to terms with them.

After another hour or so of highway driving, Joanna and Harlan were approaching the outskirts of Statesville. They’d be home in a few minutes, and Joanna’s crotch buzzed at the prospect of persuading Harlan to join her in her queen-sized bed. After their conversation turned sour following their roadside tryst, Joanna wasn’t sure she’d get the privilege of bedding Harlan again anytime soon. But she could still test the waters. She gently placed her hand on Harlan’s knee as he drove. He didn’t look down or acknowledge her gesture in any way, but he didn’t rebuff her, either. A good sign.

As Harlan pulled the car off the freeway and onto the Statesville exit ramp the anticipation building in her nether parts as she counted down the landmarks between the freeway and her home was too much for her to bear. She needed a quick fix, and she couldn’t wait even the five minutes it would take to drive home and get inside her condo.

“Harlan, pull over please.”

He glanced at her sideways. “But we’re almost to your house.”

“Pull over.”

Harlan looked for a suitable spot, and selected the empty parking lot of a donut shop that had closed for the evening. The donut shop was only two blocks from her condo, but Joanna’s need for some more sensual satisfaction was too urgent even to wait that long. Harlan parked the car and switched off the engine. “Now Joanna, I really think it won’t hurt if we wait just a few minutes more—“

She cut him off by way of unbuttoning his crotch. His huge cock pointed skyward by the third button, just like before. It was obvious he was as ready to go as she was. “At least let me give you a sneak preview,” she cooed.
She closed her mouth around Harlan’s cock, relishing the salty-smoky taste of the happy juice that had already formed on its tip. At first Harlan writhed in shock at the sudden wetness of her mouth on his most sensitive organ, but he soon settled right into it, bucking his hips with each stroke she made with her mouth and tongue. She alternated between long, slow deep-throat strokes that took in almost his whole shaft and short, nibbling strokes that focused on his sensitive glans. She worked his foreskin back and forth with her tongue in small circular motions, making him groan in ecstasy.

“Mmmmmmm,” he groaned, relishing every move Joanna’s mouth and tongue made. “This is so, so good, Joanna. But I think I know how to make it even better.”

Joanna looked up, stopping her mouth on his cock mid-stroke and pulling away. “What exactly did you have in mind?” she asked, licking his salty taste from her lips with the tip of her tongue.

“Watch,” he replied. Then he keyed the ignition. “Go back to what you were doing, Joanna.”

She stared back at him, wide-eyed. “You want me to do this while you—drive?”

He nodded. And as he did so his cock did the same, beckoning her.

She went down on him as soon as his foot hit the gas.

Joanna sucked him hard, her head bobbing up and down in front of the steering wheel as he drove. She was thankful that it was dark and the streets deserted, because any passing driver or pedestrian could have seen the unladylike obscenity happening right in her own vehicle. Harlan’s breathing became more and more labored as he drove into her condo building’s well-lit parking lot. He slid the car into a parking space directly opposite Joanna’s front door, and settled back into the front seat while Joanna brought him to orgasm. Harlan exploded his seed into her mouth with such force that she would have choked had she not already been fully prepared to swallow.

Joanna had only gone down on her ex-husband Bob once or twice at the beginning of her marriage, and she’d certainly never swallowed before. But sucking off and swallowing Harlan came as naturally to her as breathing. It seemed as if she’d spent her whole life sucking dicks—and that was just fine by her. A whole new world of sensual freedom had just opened itself up to her.

But it seemed that new world wasn’t going to last very long.

The moment was interrupted by a loud banging against the car’s roof. Joanna looked up from Harlan’s crotch and out the driver’s side window. She was shocked by what she saw there.

Joanna’s ex-husband Bob was standing in front of the car, pounding his fists against the Honda’s rusty roof. He’d obviously watched the whole thing.

And Bob did not look happy.

Harlan barely had enough time to stuff his equipment back into his pants before Bob started trying to break into the Honda. Joanna leaped out of the car and put herself between it and her ex-husband, who had picked up a tree branch from the side of the parking lot and looked about two seconds away from ramming it through the windshield. Joanna remembered a snippet of her Army self-defense training and managed to get the thing out of his hands before any damage was done. But Harlan was right behind her, ready to throw a punch with his good hand if need be.

“Bob!” Joanna shouted once she’d gotten control of the situation. “What in God’s name are you doing here?”

“Well, I’m not here to get a blowjob,” he hissed. “Unlike your lucky friend here.”

This didn’t sit well with Harlan. He rolled up his sleeves and looked seconds away from sucker-punching Bob. “Now see here—“

Joanna held up her hand, calling him off. “It’s all right, Harlan. I can handle this just fine on my own. Stand back and give us some room, please.” He obeyed, but was none too happy about it.

Bob had always had a lousy sense of timing, and today was no exception. “I’ve been trying to reach you all day,” he snapped, taking no notice of Harlan and thrusting himself right into Joanna’s face. “I called you at the hospital, and they said you weren’t there. I called you at home, and you weren’t there. I called your cell, but got a recording that the number was out of service.”

Joanna had changed her cell phone number three weeks earlier solely to keep Bob from bothering her. “Bob, please leave. I don’t want you here.” Joanna tried to walk past him to her front door, but Bob blocked her path.

“I won’t leave,” Bob shot back, grabbing Joanna by the shoulder. “You and I have some unfinished business to take care of.”

“No, we don’t,” Joanna hissed, wrestling away from him. “Bob, we’re divorced. Our marriage is over. Accept it. I have.” And to illustrate her point, she grabbed Harlan’s arm and pulled him close to her.

“I’m not here to try to win you back, Joanna,” Bob retorted. “But I am here to talk to you about our finances—“

“
Your
finances,” Joanna quipped. She could already tell where this was going. “When we got divorced, your money problems became yours alone. Remember? The judge even said so himself.”

Undeterred, Bob clenched his fists and inched in closer. “Joanna, I came here to ask you for a loan. And after what you put me through in our marriage, you owe me.”

At this, Joanna actually laughed. “Ha! Get real, Bob. Our marriage was a total joke and you know it. We didn’t even have sex for the last two years we were living under the same roof, for God’s sake. And I’m up to my eyeballs in debt because of you as it is. I’ll be paying off my share of the marital debt for the next six years. Or have you forgotten? And now you actually have the balls to show up here and ask me for
more
money?”

Bob’s face fell. “Joanna, this isn’t like all the other times. This is different.”

Joanna scoffed. “Bob, even if I
did
want to loan you more money—which I don’t—I don’t have anything left to give. I’m flat broke. Between your out-of-control spending habits and your desire to invest in every pyramid scheme ever invented, I’m lucky I still have a roof over my head.”

Bob flinched at this, but then strengthened his resolve. He glanced from Joanna to Harlan, and back to Joanna again. “Joanna, that’s not true. I happen to know that as long as you’re bonking Dr. Moneybags here, you have access to as much cash as you want. How much is he paying you to fuck him like that, anyway?”

Joanna’s jaw dropped. “Excuse me?”

Harlan clenched his uninjured fist. “I’m warning you, buddy—“

Bob didn’t back down. “No, I’m warning
you
,” he yelled, wagging his finger in Harlan’s face. “I know a lot about you already, Dr. Wilkinson. Yeah, that’s right, I know your name. My attorney’s been looking into your background, and it seems to me you and my ex-wife are into some kind of sleazy business together. And I don’t mean between the sheets, either.”

Harlan clenched his teeth. “I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean.”

Bob grinned. “Don’t give me that crap. I know all about what happened to you back in Boston. And I know what kind of financial arrangements you have set up with Covington Community Hospital, too. Looks to me you’re hot-n-heavy with my ex-wife here just so you can create a distraction for what’s really going on over at the hospital.”

Joanna gasped. She glanced from her heaving ex-husband to an increasingly red-faced and nervous Harlan, and back again. It was obvious that her ex had touched a nerve with him—and a deep one at that. What did Bob know that she didn’t?

“I’d watch your back if I were you, Doctor,” Bob went on. “My ex-wife is a cold, conniving bitch who’s probably only interested in your money. God knows she needs some. And so do I. Joanna, my attorney will be in touch.”

“I don’t know what for, Bob,” she sputtered. “We’re divorced. We don’t have anything to do with each other anymore.”

“Not if I can help it,” he shot back. “My attorney will explain everything to you tomorrow.”

With that, Bob turned on his heel, got into his battered Geo Metro, and drove away.

As soon as Bob was out of sight, Joanna spun around and faced Harlan, who by now had gone almost purple with rage. “What was Bob insinuating, Harlan?” she demanded. “He obviously knows something about you. And I know Bob well enough to know that he understands how to sniff out money—especially
dirty
money. He’s made a whole career out of trying to rip people off.”

Harlan didn’t answer. He just huffed and puffed and kicked at the dust on the asphalt.

That didn’t sit well with Joanna. “Harlan, I know we’re not exactly the romance of the century right now. We’re fuckbuddies. I can accept that. But if you’re really using me to cover up something unsavory at work, I think I’m entitled to know. My career is on the line, after all.”

Harlan took a deep breath and blew it out. “I’m not using you, Joanna. Please trust me when I tell you that what your husband is insinuating is totally false.”

“
Ex
-husband,” she corrected. “If that’s so, why does your head look like it’s about to explode?”

Harland didn’t answer. He just stared at the ground.

Joanna felt her crotch go cold. “Harlan, if you can’t be honest with me about this, I think it’s time you went home.”

He gave her a single nod. “I’ll call myself a cab,” he said.

That’s it?
Joanna thought.
He’s not even going to argue?

That probably meant Bob was telling the truth.

Joanna’s heart sank as she watched Harlan walk away from her and go stand on the corner. He called a cab with his cell phone, and five minutes later, he was gone.