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When it came to women, Carter often wondered if they could sense whenever he was emotionally vulnerable, much like sharks honing in on blood in the water. They clamped down and never let him go, and for whatever reason, he always let them.
Lucy Knight wasn’t even sinking her jaws into him this week, per se, and yet once he saw her milling around the admit desk, circling the area much like one of those aforementioned sharks, he grimaced and finished off the remainder of his half-eaten donut – a stale prize leftover from the weekend – before walking around the counter and scanning the board, pretending he hadn’t noticed her.
Cysts…vomiting…hemorrhoids…the trifecta of nothingburgers, as far as he was concerned, and with a disappointed little huff, his agitation only swelled once Lucy appeared at his side with far more persistence. Speaking of a growth that needed lanced...
“I’m a little busy here,” he deflected, never once removing his gaze from the board.
“I think you can spare a few seconds,” Lucy coolly replied. Out of the corner of his eye, he noted the way she folded her arms beneath her breasts, enhancing the snugness of her top. Before he could lustily ogle her appearance, she drove in the proverbial knife and declared, “So, Roxanne and I had coffee this morning. Any guesses on what she wanted to talk about?”
Unbidden, a faint heat crept along his neck at the mention of Roxanne – God, he should’ve called in sick – and finally, Carter dared to glance down into Lucy’s eyes, praying that the heat beneath his collar hadn’t spread up toward his cheeks.
“What are you talking about?” he demanded, his tone a touch defensive. “Why would Roxanne want to hang out with you?”
Lucy seemed equally clueless on the matter, and despite the fact he wasn’t too worried, the idea of his girlfriend talking to his med student didn’t sit well with him. He knew all too well what women could do while under the influence of gossip – not that he was immune to such excitement – and exhaling through his nose, he dismissed, “Why don’t you just say what you mean, huh? I’m not in the mood for guessing games, Lucy, and I certainly don’t have time to hold your hand through whatever ‘feminine drama’ you’ve got going on with my girlfriend.”
Harsh? Perhaps. But Lucy was making him anxious, and if there was one thing he didn’t respond well to, it was being left in suspense.
“You want me to say what I mean?” Lucy asked, her tone sharp and growing louder by the second. “All right, fine. How’s this for transparency? For some reason, you haven’t been able to tell Roxanne we’re not a thing – in fact, it’s to the point where she thinks we are a thing.” Lucy narrowed her eyes. “Should I go on, or is that obvious enough for you?”
In the corner of the admitting desk, Jerry appraised them with an inquisitive little leer, and with a panicked burst of adrenaline, Carter grabbed Lucy by the elbow and started tugging her off for more privacy, unwilling to add fodder to County’s ever-growing gossip circuit.
“Start over,” he commanded, his limbs jittery. “I get that you and Roxanne had coffee, but what I don’t understand is why she sought you out to begin with. Why didn’t she just come to me?”
Irritably shaking him off, Lucy came to a stop with him inside the prescription room, her chin jutting, and her eyes burning like fire on a lake. “You can’t seriously be that dense,” she hissed. “You’re still closed off, Carter. You still withdraw from people. Roxanne can’t tell why you’re so distant, and apparently, you won’t tell her I’m not the reason. And maybe I’m just as dense as you are, but I genuinely can’t figure out why that might be. Because according to you, we’re not compatible.”
Carter opened and closed his mouth, a panicked jolt of adrenaline spiking through him as he became entrapped by Lucy’s sharp, accusatory gaze.
Why couldn’t he look away?
Why couldn’t he look away?!
Feeling the proverbial jaws of fate clamping around his throat, he attempted nonchalance and straightened, smoothing a hand over his tie once, twice, before lifting his shoulders in a dismissive shrug. “I’ve been working a lot of late shifts,” he replied, cursing the slight lilt at the end of his remark, almost as if he were questioning his own elaborate lie. “You should know that. This job is very demanding, and we don’t always get the chance to have lives outside of it.”
Lucy frowned. “That’s a load, and you know it. And you still haven’t answered my question.” Irritably, she lifted a finger and poked it against his chest. Hard. “Either you tell me what this is all about, or we go to HR and have them settle it for us.”
Carter scoffed, his face heating with embarrassed alarm. “You wouldn’t.”
“Wouldn’t I?” she bit back. “I’m sick of this, John. It’s always hot or cold with you, and this is starting to affect my performance. Both of ours, arguably.”
Well, if nothing else, she had a point… Carter wasn’t sure why he couldn’t tell Lucy or Roxanne the truth. But then, that would require knowing what the truth even was to begin with, and he’d been wrestling with his mercurial feelings about Lucy for weeks now. Anytime she was around, he was painfully aware of her in his personal trajectory; it was almost as if he was stuck in her gravitational pull, helpless but to orbit her every move.
“Well?” Lucy snapped, pulling him back to attention. “Are you finally going to give me an answer, or are you just going to stare at me like some sort of slack-jawed nincompoop?”
Carter tightened his hands into fists. He wasn’t much of a talker. Whenever it came to his feelings, he much preferred to hide away or act, and in Lucy’s case, the problem with having her mere weeks ago was it could no longer be ignored; not when he remembered the way she whined whenever his lips touched that certain spot against her neck, or the feel of her teeth in his throat as their hips rocked with firm, mounting need while she writhed against the tile floor in radiology.
“Hello?” Lucy snapped her fingers in front of his face. “Are you seriously daydreaming right now? I can’t believe you! You’re such a…such a manchild!”
“Shut up.” The words were out before he could stop them, and the sight of her peevish expression stoked the growing fire in his lower belly.
She narrowed her eyes at him. “Excuse me?”
“Shut up,” Carter said again, but this time with more conviction. “Being brash and loud doesn’t make you right.”
“That’s it.” Shaking her head, Lucy declared, “I’m going to Dr. Weaver. I don’t have to put up with this anymore.”
She moved to sidestep him, but Carter was much faster. Taking hold of her arms, he dragged her back into place and shoved her against the shelving, the prescriptions rattling in their containers as Lucy looked up at him with a gasp.
He wasn’t sure why he did it. It was stupid, stupid, stupid, and yet with the constant fight against desire versus what was ethically sound, he didn’t have enough willpower to not take what he wanted.
And want her, he did.
Snagging his fingers through her hair, Carter pulled until Lucy’s mouth was clashing with his own, fierce and wet as her fingers twisted through his lapels. Her teeth caught on his bottom lip, and he staggered with her against the shelves, several pill bottles tipping over as they licked, bit, and groped at one another with rising need.
“God, you’re irritating,” he growled, holding onto the rack with one hand while yanking on her hair with the other, opening Lucy up to him as he smeared his lips down over her chin, her neck, and the heaving swell of her breasts.
Lucy moaned, and then her hands were both tangling through his hair, the sharp prickle stinging along his scalp before she dragged his mouth back up into hers, harsh and bruising as their tongues tangled. This was far worse than before. It was far more dangerous, because this time around, when she moved to unfasten his pants, he didn’t stop her. This time, he allowed her to slide her hand inside his boxers and squeeze, her fingers wrapping around his cock before giving him a firm, slow stroke that had him whining pathetically into her mouth.
Moremoreinsidemore.
Lucy pumped him with purpose, leaving Carter’s limbs shaky and near useless as he rocked his hips, the pleasurable drag of his cock against her soft, stroking palm almost bringing him to his knees. He felt disgusting, pitiful, pathetic, and completely vulnerable, and as her thumb smeared his precum over his leaking tip, he thought he might pass out from the sensory overload of her hand in his pants and her tongue in his mouth.
Finally, Lucy broke the kiss with a breathless shiver. “Wait, wait, wait,” she begged him, “what are you telling me here, John?”
With a full-body shudder, he dropped his forehead against her shoulder and groaned. “If you have to ask, I must not be doing it right…”
“I'm serious!” she cried.
“So am I...” Impatient, Carter rocked his hips again, hoping to get her to keep stroking until he reached his fruition. At this point, he didn’t give a damn if he came in his pants – he needed this, needed her, and just as he moved to slot his mouth back over Lucy’s protesting lips, a chipper singing swelled up from behind them, followed by the light tread of sneakers.
With a gasp, Lucy shoved hard at Carter’s chest and straightened, quickly fixing her shirt and hair as Carter clumsily struggled to zip his pants up over his throbbing erection. No sooner had he buttoned his slacks than Chuny came into the room, her dark eyes bright and impish as she flashed them both a knowing grin.
“Having a party in prescriptions?” she teased, her gaze bouncing between the pink-cheeked couple with interest. “Find what you were looking for?”
With an incoherent mumble, Lucy snatched a couple bottles off the shelf, then pushed past Carter with a rushed clip of their shoulders, her head bent and face growing progressively hotter as she made her escape.
Mouth opening and closing, Carter smoothed a hand over his tie and turned to face the queen of County gossip herself, attempting nonchalance as he replied, “Yeah, uh…found everything I need. Thanks.”
“I’ll bet,” Chuny agreed, simpering. Stepping farther into the room, she moved alongside him and started rummaging through the varying containers. Though just as he tried to make his own escape, she nodded down at his tented arousal and quipped, "Hey, how did you know I needed a rod to hang up some decorations? You're so thoughtful, Carter."
With a cackle, she snatched a couple prescriptions from the shelf, then turned and left him there to reflect, wide-eyed and flushing all over with embarrassed heat.