Hot Bodies Boxed Set: The Complete Vital Signs Erotic Romance Trilogy (38 page)

He sure as hell hoped so. Because he couldn’t stand another minute of this shit. If he didn’t blow his load soon, he’d probably drop dead of a heart attack.

He watched Starla as she reached inside her locker and pulled out the small plastic bucket that contained her shower gear. She was naked as the day she was born—and breathtakingly beautiful. Not beautiful in a Greek-goddess kind of way, just a solid, serviceable kind of way. Starla was hot in the same way that Mary Ann on
Gilligan’s Island
was hot. She was the girl next door, except with the face and eyes of a Hollywood starlet. She might not be Helen of Troy, but she would do.

Oh, she would do, all right. Hell, she’d more than do. She was perfect.

He took a deep breath, inhaled the scent of her even from fifteen feet away. There was the light, soft mix of perfume and Dove soap that he remembered from this morning, along with the chemical smell of the OR and the earthy, musky scent of a woman who was just as ready for sex as he was—even if she didn’t know it yet.

Starla thrust the shower curtain aside, and a tiny little gasp escaped from her lips when she saw Billy standing there, naked and waiting, his thick, throbbing cock pointing straight to the ceiling. “Hello, Starla,” he said. “Hope you don’t mind, but I thought I might find you in here.”

Starla clapped a hand over her mouth and giggled. “Oh, Billy. I don’t mind at all.”

She stepped inside the shower stall, pulled the curtain shut behind her, and turned on the taps. As the scalding water hit them both, she knelt down on the hard porcelain tile and took him into her mouth.
All
of him. And boy howdy, did he taste good.

Billy bucked his hips in time to the rhythm of her lips and tongue sliding over his cock, up and down, up and down, around and around. The slick, hot feel of her mouth was like wet silk against his skin. Heaven. Pure heaven.

If there was something that Starla Berring really knew how to do, it was suck cock. She’d been sucking cock for years. She’d started young, while still in high school, and she’d perfected her technique as an oversexed sorority girl in college. There was nothing Starla loved more than sucking cock. If she could make a career out of it, she would. It would beat the hell out of nursing.

She sucked him harder and harder, faster and faster, until her lips pulled themselves back around the edges of her teeth. Her tongue was a roving steamroller, her throat a dark, steamy paradise. Billy fucked her mouth like he had never fucked anything before. God, he needed this. He
really
needed this. Why on earth had he waited so long?

When it came to sucking cock, Starla Berring was truly gifted. Billy was already seconds away from coming. And he wanted nothing more than to blow his more than six months’ worth of load deep into Starla’s luscious throat. But Starla wasn’t having it. No, she wasn’t about to be done with Billy Hartzell. They were just getting started.

In one swift motion, Starla pulled her mouth off Billy’s ready-to-explode machinery and squeezed hard on the base of his cock, then pushed harder against his balls. Billy felt himself pulled back from the edge. One minute, he’d been about to let go of six months’ worth of pent-up frustration. The next, he was right back where he started. He didn’t know whether to be upset—or thrilled.

Starla stood up slowly, then pressed her palm against his chest. He tipped backward, falling off-balance until he collided with the cold, hard porcelain tile wall. Starla sidled up to him, adjusted the shower taps until the water was at its hottest. The feel of the scalding water was like sharp knives against their skin—it was the perfect love-slap, just the thing to get them both in the mood for something even hotter.

Starla glanced to her left and saw a stack of condoms waiting in the soapdish. “I see you came prepared,” she murmured. “Were you ever a Boy Scout by any chance?”

“Hell yeah, babe. I made it to Eagle Scout.”

She took a condom from the stack and handed it to him. “Well, Eagle Scout, I guess you won’t need me to show you what to do with this, now will you?”

Billy grinned. With a wink he tore the foil wrapper open with his teeth, and slid the condom over his waiting cock with a flick of his wrist. No sooner was it safely on did Starla lift up her right leg, plant her foot up against the tile wall, and implant herself on him.

She rode him fast and hard, doing almost all the work for him. Boy howdy, did this girl know how to fuck. Billy was overwhelmed. He’d only been with two women in his life, and both of them had been virgins their first time out with him. He’d never shared himself with a woman who really knew what she was doing in the bedroom—or in a steamy locker-room shower, as the case may be. But Starla was in her element. There was nothing in the world she liked better than fucking—except maybe sucking cock. And she did both like a professional.

Starla rode him even harder, until Billy squeezed his eyes shut and began to grunt and groan involuntarily. Those grunts and groans turned into yelps. And then those yelps turned into words.

“Oh, fuck yeah, baby,” Billy heard himself say. “Fuck, fuck, fuck me hard. Fuck ME!”

Billy couldn’t believe his ears. He’d never said something that obscene in his entire life. Then again, he’d never
done
anything this obscene in his entire life, either.

Suddenly, he understood why his frat brothers had done all those wild drunken one-night stands every weekend. Fucking for the sake of fucking was fun, damn it. It was even more fun when you did it in places where you had no business fucking. The knowledge that they both could get caught—and get fired—at any moment just made the sex even hotter.

He could get used to this. And now that he’d discovered just how good random sex in the workplace could be, he wondered what the hell had taken him so long?

Starla didn’t need any convincing. She’d loved casual sex for years. And she never passed up a chance to get another convert. Let alone one as hot as Billy Hartzell. If she had her way, they’d be fucking in the shower for a long time to come.

Billy suddenly got his second wind. He reached around, grabbed a handful of each of Starla’s firm, fleshy buttocks, and rammed home. He penetrated her harder and deeper than he’d ever done any woman. The inside of her seemed to go on forever. He rammed her again and again, harder and deeper each time—and yet he never seemed to find the end of her. Her cunt was infinity itself.

The fucked for what seemed like hours, the scalding-hot water barely singeing their skin before it rose off their pumping bodies in little clouds of steam. Billy picked up speed, willing his body to come, to come soon, to come hard. Starla followed his lead, matching him stroke for stroke until the sound of their wet bodies slapping together in that tiled echo chamber became a postmodern symphony. And then all at once, they both came in a resounding explosion, swearing and moaning and calling each others’ names.

It wasn’t pretty. It wasn’t romantic. It was just a good fuck. And it was beautiful.

They collapsed into each other, both breathing hard. “Thank you, honey,” Starla cooed into Billy’s ear. “That was
so
good.”

“It sure was,” Billy whispered back. “It sure was.”

“Mmmmm. Let’s do it again sometime.” With that, Starla gave him a peck on the cheek, switched off the taps, and stepped out of the shower. She picked up her towel from the floor and started to dry off. She wrapped the damp towel around herself, sauntered over to her locker to dress. Every shred of her sex-kitten persona was gone now, replaced with the nonchalant, businesslike attitude of a bored hospital staffer.

Billy stared at her, dumbfounded. “So you’re just gonna leave now? Aren’t we gonna—you know—snuggle?”

Starla chuckled. “Aw hon,” she said, her Carolina drawl thicker than tar. “You know we can’t snuggle in a
shower stall.
Plus we both gotta get back to work.”

Billy fiddled with his hands. This was new territory for him. He could sure get used to how good casual sex felt during the actual sex. But he wasn’t sure he was ready to deal with the aftermath. He didn’t know what to think. He didn’t know what to do. He wasn’t ready to get dressed and go back to work just yet. He wasn’t ready to do
anything
just yet.

So much had happened so fast. He hadn’t had time to process any of it. It had certainly felt good at the time. But now that it was over, Billy wasn’t sure if fucking Starla Berring up against a shower-stall wall had been such a good idea.

Starla finished tying her nursing shoes and shut her locker door. She glanced at Billy’s wet, naked body and frowned. “You should really get dressed, Billy. You don’t want to get caught in here like that. You’ll get us both in trouble.”

Billy bit his lip. Well, this was awkward. Maybe he wasn’t set out for the whole casual-sex thing after all. Maybe—

Starla rolled her eyes. “Billy, stop standing there like an idiot and
get dressed!
One of the other nurses could walk in here any minute.” She crossed her arms across her bosom and narrowed her gaze. “And if by chance that should happen, you and I never met.”

She turned on her heel and stomped out of the locker room, the squeak of her Nurse Mates against the floor amplified by the porcelain wall tile.

Billy shivered. Suddenly he felt very cold. And not from being naked, either.

He dried off and dressed in silence. Things were supposed to be simpler in small towns, weren’t they? Or so he’d heard, anyway.

Apparently, he’d heard wrong.

Three

Joanna dragged herself out of bed around two in the afternoon. She was due back at the hospital by three-thirty. She’d hardly slept at all—she’d spent the entire day tossing and turning in bed, trying in vain to fall asleep while she fought against the bright Carolina daylight stinging her eyelids. Not to mention the racing thoughts cluttering her mind.

She was working fourteen-hour days, not sleeping, eating junk if she ate at all, and the only times she ever saw her husband, she fought with him. Married life sure wasn’t what it was cracked up to be. She’d already escaped one bad marriage—and now it seemed she’d jumped right from the frying pan into the fire. She’d truly loved Harlan Wilkinson when she married him—or at least she thought she did. Their marriage had been happy at first, but the wedded bliss had only lasted a few weeks. Now that they were immersed in the grind of working opposite schedules at the tiny, short-staffed rural hospital where they’d met, the honeymoon was over.
Way
over. Her day-to-day life had become torture.

The life of a newlywed wasn’t supposed to be torture, that was for damn sure. Maybe she’d just made the biggest mistake of her life. Maybe Joanna just wasn’t cut out for this whole marriage business in the first place.

Joanna sighed and rubbed her temples. Goddamn it, she didn’t need this right now. Thinking about how bad she felt would only make her feel even worse. She needed to escape. But how? She had to be at work in less than an hour. Escape was a luxury she just couldn’t afford. Not now. Maybe not ever.

She dragged herself across her palatial bedroom to the master bath suite. Harlan’s money had afforded them the finest house in all of Statesville—five bedrooms, four bathrooms, plenty of marble tile and Brazilian cherry wood floors, the finest furniture and décor that money could buy. But what good was a beautiful house when you had no time to enjoy it? Her entire life was nothing but work and sleep, sleep and work—with a few fifteen-minute drop-down, drag-out fights between her and her husband sprinkled in between. She might as well be living in hell.

Joanna stepped into the marble shower stall and switched on the super-high-end all-over body jets and steam-shower option. Harlan had spent a fortune to have all the latest in high-tech plumbing gear installed in the master suite right after they closed on the house. There were seventeen water jets in all, which pummeled the body with their luxurious spray from all angles. The two Shiatsu-massage jets Harlan had insisted on for his troubled back had to be special-ordered from Japan. All told, he’d probably spent close to twenty grand on that damn shower stall—and yet, he hardly ever used it. Most days, he showered in the hospital locker room, only coming home to shout at Joanna and then collapse into bed. On the few days that he did shower and shave at home, he didn’t bother to switch on all the jets; he just used the regular showerhead.

What a waste
, Joanna mused as she turned on the taps and then one by one, switched on all the body jets. Well, even if Harlan wasn’t going to enjoy his ridiculously overpriced bathroom, it didn’t mean
she
couldn’t. Her daily shower—that five minutes of water-soaked luxury as the water jets massaged every inch of her body—was the only respite she had these days. It was the closest thing she had to a real escape.

So why not make it into a real escape?

Joanna closed her eyes as the scalding hot water exploded out of the jets, pummeling her body hard. She lost herself in the sensations, felt her troubled thoughts start to slip away. Her whole body started to heat up—and not from the water or the steam.

Joanna couldn’t remember the last time she and Harlan had made love. It had been weeks, maybe even months. Everything had become such a blur. Her life was one long, neverending sequence of one stressful event after another. Her body was a tightly wound live wire crackling with electricity. She desperately needed a release. An escape.

An orgasm.

Her right hand slid into the hot spot between her legs. Her fingers probed her folds, and she split herself open like the slowly blooming petals of a flower. She found her nub in an instant, started rubbing it with gusto. It responded right away, filling up with pulsing blood, getting hotter and hotter with every stroke. She felt all the pent-up tension from these last stressful weeks coming to a head like a buildup of rushing water behind a dam, gaining in power until it was about to burst through in one rushing river.

She was close, oh so close. But her body just wouldn’t go over the edge. She needed to up the ante.

She grabbed her loofah from the glass shelf mounted on the shower wall. She held it under the shower spray until it was soaked through, then added some shower gel to help soften it. It was expensive Rainbath shower gel; its heady tropical scent overwhelmed her nostrils and set her senses even more on edge.

She pulled her folds open wider with one hand, then set the loofah to work with the other. The feeling of its rough, pocked surface against her most tender parts was exactly the kick she needed—it rubbed her hard, and in all the right places. It was pleasure, it was pain, it was bliss.

She came hard, throwing her head back and called Harlan’s name, once, twice, three times. She said his name involuntarily, against her will. It seemed to come from another time and place—a time and place not so long ago, when Joanna and Harlan were together all the time and very much in love.

The world went wavy, then black. Joanna almost passed out from sheer ecstasy. She toppled backward, knocked the back of her skull hard against the marble tile. That was enough to bring her back to earth. Partially, anyway. Because Joanna was still pretty off-balance. Why had she called Harlan’s name when she came? He was nowhere to be found in her marriage these days. Whenever he was around, he acted like an ass. Frankly, she wasn’t even sure that she loved him anymore.

But if what her body had just done was any example, she
did
still love him. Or her body did, at least. Her body was obviously trying to tell her something—that she needed Harlan, needed him badly.

And that maybe, just maybe, her soul needed him, too.

****

Harlan stood at the scrub trough, rubbing his hands and forearms hard with PhisoDerm. He rubbed hard enough to leave marks, hard enough to make his skin raw and chapped. He felt an intense desire to inflict pain on himself—partially because he was struggling to stay awake, and partially because he was just trying to feel
something.
Harlan didn’t feel much of anything these days. Except angry. And exhausted.

He scrubbed harder. He was long past the point of being ready for the OR, but he just couldn’t bring himself to rinse off all the suds yet. He needed to sort out his thoughts. Hell, he needed to sort out his
marriage.

Things just couldn’t go on the way the way they were. He couldn’t keep blowing up at Joanna every time he saw her. And they couldn’t keep working these crazy opposite shifts.

Harlan had never been very good at managing his temper. Like most surgeons, he was Type A to the max. Aggressive, driven, and with a very short fuse, even on his best days. But these were his worst days. No matter how much he might try to play up the macho-surgeon routine, working eighteen-hour days with no breaks and little sleep for weeks on end was enough to drive even Dr. Harlan Wilkinson to the edge. He might be tough, but he was also human. He was already frayed along the edges, and it wouldn’t be much longer before he completely fell apart. These days Harlan always felt about three seconds away from having a nervous breakdown, and he was taking out his frustrations on his beautiful new wife. She’d put up with it so far, but Harlan knew Joanna well enough to know she wouldn’t put up for it for much longer. A few more weeks of this, Joanna would divorce him.

He couldn’t risk losing Joanna. She was the most important thing in the world to him. More important than his medical career, more important than money. More important than his own life, even. He could risk losing everything, but he didn’t dare risk losing her.

The only problem was, Harlan wasn’t sure if he knew how to hang onto Joanna. He wasn’t even sure he could hang onto himself at this point.

His skin was scrubbed almost to the point of bleeding. He had to stop now, whether he liked it or not. If he bled in the OR, he’d breach the sterile field and endanger the patient. No matter what his personal problems were, he had to get a hold of himself. Right now, the patient came first. Even before himself. Even before Joanna.

He took a deep breath and sighed. Harlan had always put his career above all else. It had cost him dearly. He’d lost his first wife to tragedy because of it. And now, he just might lose his second one, too—not to tragedy, but to indifference.

He switched on the floor taps with his foot and held his hands and forearms out in front of him to rinse them under the scalding water. He dried off on the sterile towel, and the scrub nurse suited him up with a fresh OR gown and mask. He trudged into the OR, pushing himself through the sterile swinging doors, dreading every passing second. He dreaded this operation more than any he’d performed in the past several months, in fact.

Why? Because though she didn’t know it yet, his wife Joanna would be assisting him on this operation. And Harlan knew himself well enough to understand that chances were pretty good he’d screw things up royally.