Hot Bodies Boxed Set: The Complete Vital Signs Erotic Romance Trilogy (5 page)

Shirley gave Jason’s cock one last long, hard tongue-bath—and then got the hell out of the way.

At the very last second, she leaned over his about-to-explode cock, lifted up her halter, and let him come all over her bare breasts.

The sight of his cum dripping across her cleavage nearly caused Jason’s eyes to pop out of his head. “Who the hell are you, anyway?” he sputtered. “And where have you been all my life?”

By way of answering, Shirley traced a fingertip across her dripping chest and then licked the boy-toy’s sweet essence off her finger. The mere sight was enough to send Jason’s cock pointing skyward once more. “Never you mind who I am,” she breathed. “Just do what I ask, and I guarantee tonight will be the best night of your life.” She took a condom from the packet in her purse and slid it over Jason’s cock. “Just to be on the safe side,” she explained.

With that, Shirley wiped her breasts clean with a towel she found on the floor, shucked off her bluejeans and panties, and mounted Jason’s cock for the ride of her life.

She rode him like a galloping horse in heat, alternately grinding her hips in a clockwise motion with the classic ride-em-cowboy bounce. And when she got bored with that, she spun around on his cock until she was in the reverse-cowgirl position. Jason was obviously ignorant of the merits of clitoral stimulation, so Shirley first played with herself, then guided the young man’s thick fingers around her clit and vulva, showing him exactly where and how she liked to be touched. He caught on quickly; in just a few short minutes, Jason managed to make Shirley come twice. And no matter how hard she rode him, Jason wasn’t anywhere near coming. They could fuck for hours, if they wanted to.

And fuck for hours is exactly what they did. Shirley didn’t stop riding Jason in every imaginable sex position—including upside-down against a wall—until the break of dawn. They fucked until Shirley’s Economy-Size box of Trojans was completely empty.

When her boy-toy was finally spent, Shirley tried to entertain him with some war stories of her own escapades in and around the Sigma Nu house during the early-90s grunge era. But before she could get three words out, Jason was stone dead asleep.

And even though she’d been fucked from here to the moon—she’d had no less than twelve orgasms—Shirley felt more energized than she’d been in years. Sleep was the absolute last thing on her mind.

Feeling a bit naughty for “loving and leaving,” Shirley dressed and prepared to leave. Just before she did, she penned a goodbye note to Jason on a scrap of paper she found underneath his cot. It read:

Dear Jason:

Thanks for a wonderful time. We’ll have to do this again sometime.

With love,

A SEXY OL’ CHI-O

Chi-O.
It had been more than a decade since
Shirley had referred to herself by her old sorority’s nickname, but it seemed appropriate. After all, back in her day, the ladies of UNC’s Chi Omega chapter were known as the best lovers on campus.

Shirley wondered if she might soon become known as the best lover at Covington Community Hospital, too.

She could always try.

Joanna’s alarm clock jolted her awake at 7:30 am. She had already overslept. How many times had she hit the snooze bar? Five? Six? She had a little less than half and hour to shower, dress, and arrive at work for her next shift. As she headed for the bathroom, she said a silent prayer that her fellow surgical nurse Lindsay Strouse had recovered from the flu so Joanna wouldn’t have to get dragged into any more extra surgery shifts herself. An easy, quiet, stress-free stint behind the nurses’ station—the “break” Administration had long promised her—was all Joanna had the energy for today. Plus, it was unlikely that Harlan would cross her path there. If he was like most surgeons, he’d give the mind-numbing paperwork and dripping bedpans of the ordinary duty nurses a wide berth.

And a wide berth from Harlan was exactly what she needed. She could hardly afford to cross paths with him today. Because it seemed every time she did, she ended up dropping her drawers. Not exactly a good career move.

Joanna stepped into the shower and turned the taps all the way over to “HOT”. She stood stock-still underneath the scalding water, not soaping or shampooing herself, just enjoying the heat and steam for a few fleeting moments. Even as she looked forward to her easy nurses’ station shift, Joanna had the feeling that this one minute of relaxation was the only down time she’d enjoy all day.

As if on cue, Joanna heard her phone ring. Agitated, she jumped out of the shower without bothering to wrap a towel around herself, and dripped water all over the carpet as she made a dash for the hallway phone.

“Hello?”

“Watson, why the hell aren’t you at the hospital?” growled a familiar male voice.

“Harlan—I mean, Dr. Wilkinson? Is that you?”

“Of course it’s me,” was his terse reply. “I’m calling to find out where the hell you are.”

“I’m standing in my front hall.” Joanna’s voice was clipped. What business was it of his where she was right now? Her shift didn’t start until 8:00, and she wasn’t slated to be on surgery duty, anyway. And she wasn’t about to become anybody’s booty call.

“Well, get the hell out of your front hall and get the hell over here,” Harlan seethed, and hung up the phone before Joanna had a chance to reply.

Joanna slammed down the receiver so hard she almost knocked her telephone table over. The nerve of that egotistical bastard! The
nerve.
She wasn’t due in to work yet. And she wasn’t exactly in the mood for an early-morning parking-garage fuck with him, either. Especially given the fact he was acting like a troll.

Well, she’d show him. She’d take her sweet time getting over to Covington Community Hospital that morning. She’s laze into the duty nurses’ station at 8:01, and wouldn’t even bother to show her face in Surgery and Recovery unless Maryam Malone or a senior member of hospital administration ordered her to. She didn’t care what that SOB Dr. Harlan Wilkinson said his contract gave him the right to do—he wasn’t going to get away with ordering her around. No siree.

“I’ll show that rat bastard a thing or two,” Joanna said aloud as she went to her bedroom to get dressed.

There. That made her feel better. That calmed her down enough to keep from putting her fist through her bedroom wall.

Or did it?

As Joanna pulled on her bra and panties, she felt again the familiar warmth that had crept into her groin the day before, along with a heavy tension in her chest and a hot, rapid throbbing between her ears. It felt vaguely like a panic attack, but Joanna had never been one to get panicked just before going to work.

No, it felt much more like a case of The Hornies.

Like it or not, Joanna’s crotch was screaming for another quickie.

Damn it.
This just could not be happening again.

Joanna stumbled back into the bathroom to splash some cold water onto her face. Even after a good soaking in the icy water, her face still felt hot. She stared at her reflection in the mirror and saw that her cheeks were still flushed—red as ripe crabapples, in fact—and her eyelids half-closed in an expression that was pure sexuality.

Oh no
, Joanna thought as she stared at herself in the mirror. At that moment, she knew why she felt so out of sorts. She knew why the pit of her stomach melted and quavered at the mere thought of Dr. Harlan Wilkinson, no matter how rude he might be with her. No matter how much of an ill-mannered, conceited oaf he was, no matter how much he played cavalier with hospital regulations, no matter what kind of hard time he gave her in the OR, at that moment Joanna Watson knew she was falling for him.

She was falling, and falling hard, whether she liked it or not.

And that, of course, set up a whole separate set of issues when it came to Dr. Harlan Wilkinson’s potential as a romantic partner.

Ever since she and her husband Bob had separated three years ago, she’d thought off and on about trying to find love—or even lust—again, but no one had sparked so much as a second glance on her part until Harlan crossed her path.

And he had done a lot more than spark a second glance. He had awakened sensations in Joanna’s body that she’d never known existed. But with the now-constant soupiness between her legs, with the way her heartbeat sped up whenever she imagined his rugged, razor-stubbled face—she knew that at the very least,
lust
had found her. A lust that absolutely must be satisfied.

But as Joanna dragged herself over to her closet to pick out a fresh set of nurses’ attire, she knew that even satisfying her growing lust for the globetrotting surgeon would not be enough. Having him in her bed wouldn’t do enough to cool the heated pounding between her ears or the pulsing ache in her nether parts. No, just having Dr. Harlan Wilkinson in her bed wouldn’t be enough, not at all.

Somehow, Joanna knew, she would have to win Dr. Harlan Wilkinson’s heart, too.

Not an easy task, to be sure, because from what she’d seen of him so far, Harlan didn’t
have
a heart.

“You’re late.” Maryam Malone’s sweet-yet-authoritative voice greeted Joanna at the nursing station just as she arrived.

Joanna glanced at her watch. 8:02.
Good
, she thought. Two whole minutes past the start of her shift. That ought to fix Harlan’s overblown ego-wagon nicely. “I’m only two minutes late,” Joanna replied. “I’m sorry, but I got delayed by a few minutes when that rat bastard Dr. Wilkinson called me at home and pulled me out of the shower.”

Joanna was careful not to mention that the mere thought of Harlan turned her crotch into a running river. And she didn’t think Maryam needed to know how many times she and her new boss had already done the Horizontal Bop, either.

Maryam chuckled. “I see you have had the pleasure of making Darth Vader’s acquaintance. Has he tried the old Jedi Mind Trick on you yet?”

Joanna pulled off her light jacket and tossed it over the back of the nurses’ station chair.
You have no idea
, she thought silently to herself. “I didn’t know you knew so much about
Star Wars
, Maryam.”

“I learned everything I ever needed to know about
Star Wars
from my grandsons,” the seasoned old nurse explained. “Enough to know that Dr. Wilkinson answers to the Dark Side, at any rate. He’s been looking for you all morning, by the way. And judging by his mood, he’s not happy that you didn’t come in at the crack of dawn like he did. I suppose that’s why he called you at home.”

Joanna smirked. “I suppose so. How did he get my number, I wonder?”

Maryam shifted anxiously on her sneakered feet. “I gave him your number. I hope you don’t mind.”

Joanna stared at her, incredulous. “Why did you do that?”

Maryam smiled. “Sorry, but I couldn’t help it. He used the Jedi Mind Trick on me.”

“I see.” Joanna gritted her teeth. Now thanks to Maryam’s unwitting participation, she figured she’d now be Harlan’s personal twenty-four-hour booty call for the forseeable future. Not that it would be a bad thing, but. . .

Joanna blinked her eyes several times, trying to clear her mind of the image of Harlan’s giant, dripping cock. She was at work, and her job as a nurse was serious business. She simply could not allow out-of-control blind lust to cloud her judgment on the job any longer.

Joanna composed herself, pulled the morning’s patient files out of the plastic wall tray and started shuffling through them. “Maryam, I hope you told him after the Jedi Mind Trick wore off that I’m already assigned to regular nurses’ station duty for the next two weeks, and am therefore off-limits in the operating room. Unless Lindsay Strouse never comes back from sick leave, that is. By the way, is she getting better?”

“She’s back today, actually.”

“Good,” Joanna replied. “Then she can go deal with Dr. Wilkinson herself. I’m not in the mood.” A lie. But she couldn’t exactly tell Maryam the truth. The truth would just get her fired.

Nurse Malone pulled up an extra chair and sat down. “Well, there’s kind of a thing you and I will have to talk about on that score,” she said, a nervous edge to her voice. “You see, it doesn’t really matter one way or the other that Lindsay’s back from sick leave. You’re on surgery duty anyway.
Double-shift
surgery duty. Maybe even triple, if need be.”

Joanna’s breath caught. “What?”

“I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news, Joanna, I really am.” Maryam sighed and shook her head. “But Dr. Wilkinson’s gone over my head to Administration and ordered the powers that be to put you at his disposal at all times. You’re off nurses’ station duty until further notice. From now on, you’re on call 24/7, and you report only to Dr. Harlan Wilkinson. You might even say that he
owns
you.”

Owned her? Harlan
owned
her?

Joanna bit her lip. Although she’d already figured after last night that it was only a matter of time before something like this happened, she hadn’t expected it so soon. Clearly, this threw a wrench into Joanna’s plan to beat both him and his heart of stone into womanly submission.

Maryam gave Joanna’s shoulder a maternal squeeze. “You should probably head over to Surgery now,” she said. “I can manage the nurse’s station until Lindsay can get herself over here. Good luck, Joanna. Trust me, you’re going to need it.”

“Thanks,” was Joanna’s reply as she left to face her surely-coming doom.

****

Joanna arrived in the Surgery and Recovery wing about five minutes later, dragging her jacket and duffel bag behind her. She dreaded facing Dr. Harlan Wilkinson more and more at every step. Her entire body quaked with fear and desire. How could she ever have thought herself capable of taming him? How could she have imagined herself able to suppress the lust that had overtaken her body and annihilated all of her ladylike Southern good sense? How was she going to suppress the irresistible urge to drop her drawers and open her legs as soon as she laid eyes on him?

God only knew.

Joanna took a deep breath, and decided that the best course of action was like removing a Band-Aid—a nasty job best gotten over with quickly. She trudged up to the Chief of Surgery’s closed office door and knocked on the opaque glass.

After a moment, it opened. Dr. Harlan Wilkinson regarded her with a mixture of relief and contempt. Unlike the rumpled scrubs, disheveled hair, and nine o’clock shadow he bore yesterday during their first encounter, today he was clean-shaven, neatly coifed, and outfitted in a crisp white oxford, pressed blue slacks, and an immaculately knotted red silk tie. A stethoscope was draped around his neck, and he wore a loose-fitting white lab coat over his obviously expensive, custom-tailored clothes. He looked more like a laid-back family doctor than a chief hospital surgeon.

“I see you’ve finally made it in, Watson,” he said, his voice about as warm and welcoming as your average meat freezer.

Joanna shot him a look as frigid as his tone. “I was scheduled to arrive at eight a.m. today, and I arrived at eight a.m. I don’t know where you get the idea that I’m late, Doctor.”

“You arrived at eight-oh-two,” Dr. Wilkinson snapped back. “I had Nurse Malone call me and tell me the exact time you showed up, and that’s the answer she gave me. So yes, you were indeed late. Although I’m sure Maryam Malone has already acquainted you with your new work arrangements, and from now on I expect you to be on call 24/7. I’ve requisitioned a beeper for you from Supply, you should have that shortly. Until you get the beeper, however, I suggest you set yourself up with a cot over in the residents’ sleeping quarters. That way, I’ll know I can rely on you to be here anytime I need you, day or night.”

Joanna blinked twice. Did this maddening man really expect her to be at his beck and call
twenty-four hours a day
? To the point she was expected to
move into
the hospital—sleeping, eating, and bathing here just like some kind of prisoner? Not to mention becoming his own personal twenty-four-hour, on-site booty call?

Ha. Not if she could help it.

“Dr. Wilkinson, with all due respect, there is no amount of money this hospital could pay me to get me to move in to residents’ sleeping quarters and work twenty-four hours a day. I’m sorry, but that’s just outrageous.”

Harlan’s eyes narrowed. He folded his arms across his chest. “You were willing to put that kind of time in for my predecessor. So why not me?”

Joanna was taken aback at this. On-site booty call, indeed. The incorrigible man would be lucky if he ever caught sight of Joanna’s bare pussy again.

“I pulled all those extra shifts for Dr. Turnblatt as a personal favor to him,” Joanna answered, locking her verdant eyes with Dr. Wilkinson’s azure ones to show her defiance. “I didn’t have to, and he didn’t make me. I worked for Dr. Turnblatt for many years, and I respected him enough to know that he was paying me a compliment when he requested I support him on all those surgeries. And I will also have you know that he made all the shift arrangements with me in advance, and never once required me to wear a beeper or make the hospital my primary residence. I happen to have a nice condo to live in, Dr. Wilkinson, not to mention a personal life.” (She said this despite the fact that since her divorce, her so-called “personal life” consisted mostly of spending her nights alone in front of the television eating microwaved Lean Cuisines.)

Dr. Wilkinson’s expression softened. “Why do you think my request you work all this extra time is any less of a compliment coming from me than it was from Dr. Turnblatt?” Dr. Wilkinson’s ice-blue eyes took on a slightly suggestive glaze, and Joanna could swear she caught those eyes dip to catch a glance of her bosom. Was Harlan really insinuating that she had given the elderly, dried-up old Dr. Turnblatt the same sexual favors she’d bestowed on him?

The bastard. She wanted to slap him. “Just what are you implying, Dr. Wilkinson?”

A slow smile spread across Dr. Wilkinson’s chiseled features. “I’m not implying anything untoward, Watson, believe me. I was trying to make a joke. There’s this great new thing called laughing. You should really try it.”

Joanna smoothed the front of her nurse’s uniform with her hands and turned her attentions to the pile of incoming surgery patient files. “Sorry, Doctor, but I’m not amused.”

“Joanna, what I’m trying to say is, I am requesting all these extra hours and service from you because I know you can handle it.”

Joanna.
He‘d said her given name. The mere act of those three syllables escaping Harlan’s lips was enough to set her pulse to racing. Damn, what was this man doing to her? Joanna pretended to be interested in the file of a sixty-eight-year-old triple-bypass patient due in for surgery the next day, but the heat brewed in her chest at every word he uttered.

“You did some damn fine nursing in the OR yesterday,” Harlan went on. Joanna couldn’t tell if he noticed her aroused state or not, but if he did, he didn’t comment on it. “
Damn
fine. Some of the best I’ve ever seen, in fact. What’s more, you stood up to me without batting an eyelash. Do you know how many nurses there are in this world willing to do that? None. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m not the friendliest of people.”

“No, I hadn’t noticed that at all, Doctor.” Joanna’s voice was nothing but a croak. She could feel that Harlan had taken a step closer to her. He was behind her, just inches away. She could feel the heat of his torso. She could feel the feathery touch of his breath against the nape of her neck. She felt an invisible connection growing between them, a line of sensual electricity that was just barely there, but present enough to make her insides quiver, to make her nether parts wet, to make her head so heavy with desire she could hardly remain standing. It was all she could do to keep breathing. And still, Harlan’s warm breath was there, lapping at the back of her neck like a babbling brook.

“I think you’re lying.” He was so close behind her now, his breath on her neck felt almost like a kiss.

Joanna stepped away from him abruptly, almost ready to lose control. But she wouldn’t,
couldn’t
show him a moment’s weakness.

Joanna backed up against the front panel of the refrigerator just outside the office used to store blood plasma. “Dr. Wilkinson, with all due respect, I hardly think it is appropriate or professional for you to accuse me of lying when I was merely stating a fact about our working relationship, which I frankly do not find in any way out of the ordinary.”

A boldfaced lie, of course. Joanna’s voice was quavering so much now she could hardly get the words out at all.

Harlan gave her an odd look. “Watson, are you sure you’re all right?”

Joanna forced a smile. “Of course I’m all right. I’m fine. What makes you think I’m not?” Now Joanna’s voice sounded low, hoarse and breathy. She was mortified at the sound of it.

“Watson, you sound like someone working a phone sex line.”

So much for getting the upper hand.

Joanna cleared her throat, willing herself to speak in a normal tone of voice. “Dr. Wilkinson, that is a
completely
inappropriate thing to say to your lead surgical nurse. If you
ever
make a comment like that to me again, I swear I’ll—“

“Write me up for sexual harrassment? That might be kind of hard, given what you and I did yesterday. Twice.” Although his voice was hard and serious, Harlan shot her a boyish grin that showed her he was joking. Joanna couldn’t help but chuckle.

“Ah, I see you’ve finally heard about that great new laughing thing,” he chuckled. “How’s it working out for you?”

Joanna stopped laughing and set her jaw. “Dr. Wilkinson, would you mind returning to the task at hand? I was hoping you could brief me on the patients you’ll be operating on today so I can assist you in the OR to the best of my nursing abilities.”

Harlan’s features hardened a little and his body stiffened. He seemed disappointed, perhaps even a little angry that Joanna was purposefully backing away from him. Maybe she was finally going about this delicate dance of seduction in the right way. (Which was kind of ass-backwards, considering that she’d already fucked the man twice. But better late than never.)

Joanna silently scolded herself for marrying the first man who’d ever shown an interest in her—Bob, her impotent, possessive, and (thankfully) now ex-husband—instead of “playing the field” more. Joanna was in way over her head.