Caught in the Middle - Chapter 1

A warm, firm body—pressed against mine. Hands—searching. Lips—finding. Mouths—hungry, exploring, everywhere.

My eyes drooped closed, fluttering lids battling the glare of the neon lights overhead. The cold toilet seat cover under my ass was definitely not helping to jump-start my libido. The knowledge that my beeper could go off any second now wasn’t, either. Some people might get a kick out of a semi public environment for their intimate moments, but this definitely wasn’t doing anything for me. Maybe because it had become routine too long ago. Maybe I was really overthinking this.

Maybe I should just shut my inner narrative up and get back to rubbing one out?

Snorting at my own antics, I yanked on the drawstring of my scrubs and pretty much shoved my right hand down my panties. Not quite the kind of forceful action I had in mind, but better than not scratching that itch at all.

Where was I? Ah, right.

Lips trailing wet kisses down the side of my neck. Hands, warm and strong, stroke over my arms. I moan, but the sound gets cut off by his hungry mouth on my lips. His tongue thrusts into my mouth, slides against mine, demanding, taking. One hand lets go of my arm to push underneath my shirt, his touch eliciting sensations where it hits the skin of my ribcage.

Under clothes action, seriously? I really didn’t have time for this! Why were there even clothes involved in my wank fantasy?

No clothes, just naked skin on naked skin. I can feel the heat of his body so close to mine, getting warmer still as he closes the distance, a muscular thigh brushing mine—and something else, too. His cock is hard and ready, begging to be touched, and he flashes me a cocky grin as I wrap my hand around it. Gray eyes hold mine for a second, then he steals another kiss that deepens, and his hands are everywhere—my thigh, my sides, my tits. I’m burning for more, I need this, I want this so much, and he knows it, is only too happy to give me what I need. His lips leave mine only to kiss a hot trail down my jaw to my neck, blond hair filling my vision as he nudges my head to the side to better reach that special spot that makes me go crazy when he flicks his tongue over it. My head falls back and another breathy moan leaves my lips, followed by his name—“Jack.”

What the fuck? Who in their right mind moans names during sex?

But, I had to admit, he would get off on that. Definitely. And while I wasn’t opposed to my imaginary hand stroking his imaginary cock, I wasn’t up to stroking egos of whatever inclination.

Now, of course, the cocky bastard is grinning at me, and I get annoyed. Annoyance doesn’t do a thing for me!

It was always the same with Jack, and the mental image I had of him was so incredibly life-like that even wank-fantasy Jack only took five seconds to get under my skin in that not-exactly-exciting kind of way.

Groaning with frustration, I screwed my eyes shut and forcefully wiped my mental slate clean. This so wasn’t working as it was supposed to be!

Taking a deep breath, I let my fingers skim sensually over my clit. Responsive enough, but a quick check lower confirmed what I was afraid of—I was still dry as hot sand in the middle of the desert. Gnashing my teeth, I considered my options, but then decided that dawdling wasn’t one of them. I still felt kind of sleazy, and not in a good way, as I stuck two of my fingers into my mouth, then pushed them back into my pants. Ah, much better! A little circling motion and clenching of my pelvic floor muscles, and we were back on track!

That still left that other problem, but thankfully, I had an easy solution for that, too.

Strong hands grab my arms, and I feel my body getting flipped over. I barely have the chance to steady myself with my palms flat against the wall before the front of my body collides with it. He’s on me a moment later, his naked body pressing against my back, keeping me trapped, helpless, at his mercy. He grips my wrists, pulls them up, and transfers them to a single hand where he keeps them locked against the wall, his skin a few shades darker than mine in contrast. He’s taller, if somewhat less muscular, and his hard cock rubs over the upper curve of my ass. His lips skim over my shoulder, then there’s teeth; a small bite only, but enough to make me hold my breath.

His free hand moves between my body and the wall, sure fingers finding my breast, digging in, claiming, taking. I go still when he finds my nipple and tweaks it, hard. Sensation zings down my body, need, lust, with more than just a hint of pain, but that’s what I crave, too. I shiver in response, making him chuckle, a deep, masculine sound that resonates through his chest.

“Spread your legs, slut,” he whisper-grunts into my ear, making my breath hitch in my throat.

Then the hand drops from my breast and reaches between my legs, finding my labia swollen and wet. He doesn’t dawdle, doesn’t tease. Two fingers thrust inside me while his thumb starts rubbing my clit, fast.

I buck against him, feel his hard cock leave a wet trail of pre-cum over my lower back. The hand that holds my wrists lets go, but I keep them crossed. Instead, he threads his fingers through my hair and pulls my head back and to the side, forcing me to look into his face. Dark brown eyes stare unblinkingly into mine. I bite my lip to hold in a moan, but then a third finger joins the other two, and I lose that battle. The corner of his mouth quirks up.

“Ask me.”

My eyes want to roll back into my head from the wonderful sensations he creates, but I force myself not to bow down—yet. So I stare back at him, half in challenge, half in silent plea to just get on with it. But, no, that’s not how he does things.

“Ask, or I’m going to leave you hanging high and dry.”

Not so very dry by now, but I hastily chased that thought away.

I know it’s a losing battle that I’m fighting, but fighting is part of the fun, and losing never felt so good.

“Simon, please.”

“Please what?”

Swallowing thickly, I resist, but then he bucks his hips, making his cock slip between my ass cheeks, and my resistance crumbles.

“Fuck me!”

His grin widens, but it’s that hungry kind of grin that could never irk me in any way and feeds right into my frenzy.

“That wasn’t so hard now, was it? And because you’re a good little slut, I’m going to fuck you, hard and fast, like you’ve never been fucked.”

Does anyone say shit like that outside of porn? I really didn’t know, but the fact that I questioned it now annoyed the hell out of me. I was close, so fucking close, right at that point where I could already feel my vaginal walls clench, the absence of fingers or cock still there, but dwindling to the point where it didn’t matter anymore. Just a few more seconds, just—

Beeeeeep!

“Fuck!”

Another orgasm slipped away, close enough that I could already taste it on my tongue—ignoring the fact that I had no fucking clue how a climax should be quantifiable via taste buds, but I kind of liked the idea. I was, once again, thwarted by the job that I loved, but was also sure would be the end of my sanity sooner or later.

Of course, I could have taken those extra twenty seconds to finish myself off, but already that sense of duty that startled my brain awake at random moments of the night—way too many nights—pushed through the haze of lust and got me scrambling for the toilet paper. I tried to tell myself that it was a small triumph for my physiology that this time I’d at least made it to the point where natural lubrication kicked in, but that felt like a very stale victory.

Thirty seconds later I stormed out of the bathroom, my hands still wet from the cursory attempt to get the scent of my own juices off them, if not properly clean. If they beeped me at four in the afternoon, that meant they needed me down in the emergency room, and I wouldn’t get into direct contact with the patient before I had scrubbed in, anyway.

Ignoring the elevators, I hurtled down the two floors through the adjacent stairwell, which spilled me out into the chaos of the ER just in time to see two new patients being wheeled into ORs three and five. Eliza, one of my fellow residents, was straddling one of them, performing CPR on the spot. Shit. She’d beaten me down here. Then I saw a nurse fly after them with no less than three blood bags in her hands, and I allowed myself a moment to relax. She might have been first, but it didn’t look like she’d get much time logged on that one.

My bet was that they’d need me in the other operating room.

“Slater, you’re late. What do you lazy bitches do on your shifts that you need almost two minutes to get down here? You don’t even smoke! You’re with me.”

I quickly fell in behind the blonde fury marching after the trail of EMTs, nurses, and ER doctors. Some people had problems with Zoe Tyne’s tone, but she was the best trauma surgeon I’d ever met. I would still have admired her if she’d actually treated me like a piece of shit, rather than just talked trash occasionally. It had taken me the better part of the first two years of my residency for her to even notice me; I was not going to fold now because the woman had a mouth like a sailor.

“Scrub in,” she told me needlessly as she swept into the prep room, sending the nurses on standby scurrying.

“What’s the situation?” I asked, reaching for the soap to start the thorough cleaning ritual no surgeon worth their salt would ever skimp on.

“How should I know? You want soft, classical music with your well-plotted, finely choreographed, chicken-shit surgeries, you can go right back to where you hid from me the entire day. Here we are in the trenches, and in the fucking trenches you need to actually look at a patient to know what the fuck is going on. If that’s too insecure for you, Missy, run now, because I don’t need a wimpy dancer; I need a soldier.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I snarked back, hiding a smile. If anyone but the nurses heard us talk like that, the HR department would chew out our asses—again—but I couldn’t help the excitement spreading like a physical wave through me. No one talked shit like that in front of a patient, but taking that extra moment to clear my head usually did wonders for my alertness afterward.

The nurse was ready to help me into the gown, then tied it behind my back while I waited with my raised hands, both eager to get going and wondering how stupid I must look. No need to wonder, really. I just had to glance to the side where my mentor was suffering through the very same last step. She caught my gaze and gave me a curt nod, and then we were off into the thick of the fray.

“Status?” she barked at no one in particular, but then protocol was a useless thing when you were out to save lives.

“Construction worker, thirty-five, fell off a scaffold and impaled himself on a bar. Went clean through. He lost consciousness four minutes ago, BP dropping.”

The nurse continued rattling off numbers that I filed away while I got a quick first assessment of the patient. The bar that had pierced his lower abdomen was still inside the wound, practically tamponing it, else the poor bastard wouldn’t be alive anymore. If he was lucky enough that it missed any major organs, then his chances were good. If not, Zoe and I would have a hell of a lot of chasing after the next spurting artery to do to keep him alive.

As they say, there was only one way to find out. Five hours later, I found myself staring bleary-eyed at my phone.

The patient had made it, but wasn’t in the clear yet. The bar had punctured his liver and spleen, cracked two vertebrae, and done yet-to-be-determined damage to his spinal cord. He was scheduled for surgery at 5:00 a.m., but I wouldn’t be a part of that because Josh was banging the head of Neurosurgery, and she’d penciled him in for assistance before I could have a chance to point out that he was my patient. That grated, but only so much. Getting a chance to sleep instead sounded good after the hell of a week I had on my back already. Technically speaking, I should have left the hospital late Thursday night when I went over the official eighty hours medical staff were allowed to work per week, but Zoe had managed to tweak things to get me on the day shift for Friday. I’d switch to night float tomorrow evening, anyway, and what was left of my circadian rhythm would send me to my knees.

The phone. Right.

Not one, not two, but five text messages and two missed calls were waiting for me. The first was a curt and perfectly spelled reminder of the event I had stupidly agreed to attend tonight. I was sure a part of Simon would die if he ever used an acronym. The other texts were a series of atrocities that likely only a sixteen-year-old could have deciphered, the last consisting of abbreviations only. It was obvious that Jack was messing with me there, but—likely as he’d intended—the last text made me smile. There couldn’t be any acronym for “talk to you later” that looked like a dick. At least I thought that was what it should spell, but the meaning wasn’t lost on me, either.

Both calls were from Jack, one dated about an hour after the first text, the other I’d missed by only ten minutes.

I considered just turning off my phone and going home straight away, but as exhausted as I was, I doubted that I would be able to sleep. Performing CPR with your hands thrust into an open ribcage for thirteen minutes straight could do that to you. I was way too wound up now, and with twenty hours to go until I had to clock in at the hospital again, I could even allow myself to sneak a shot or two. Besides, my work schedule had forced me to cancel on the guys three times in a row, and I didn’t put it past Jack to bring the party to me if I tried to skip a fourth time now.

I wondered for a moment if that would really be the worst thing that could happen to me, but then shoved my silly daydreams away.

It was bad enough that my brain was so starved of actual social interaction—and sex—that the only thing I could come up with for my wank fantasies were my best friend and his roommate, but I couldn’t allow myself to let that idiocy seep into my actual conscience. No, as much as the lizard part of my brain might lust after the guys, they had a strictly defined space in my life, and that was for relaxing and booze. Quite frankly, if I couldn’t have sex, that still sounded like a tantalizingly good offer.

Kira Barker  |  2016  |  Impressum  |  Disclaimer