Wanted: A Bad Boy Romance (27 page)

“Dr.
Cawthorn
at five o’clock,” one of the
nurses tells me as I finish charting at the nurse’s station. She stifles a
grin, and I know exactly why. Dr.
Cawthorn
has wanted
me since the day she met me, and she makes no bones about it. She looks at me
with a fierce, almost terrifying determination.

Our schedules vary and contrast, but every once in a while she fills in
for one of her partners or her rotation falls on a weekend, and we bump paths.
I never should’ve fucked her years ago, but I was new in town and she was
attractive and we’d had too many drinks after a long shift. It was a one-time
mistake, and one that I’d been paying
for ever
since.

“Sutton,” she says, slinking up next to me. She smells like expensive
perfume and her lips are coated in dark pink lipstick. She flips her
coffee-brown hair over her shoulder, letting her gold bracelets clink as they
fall down her wrist. She’s always dressed to the nines under her lab coat, at
least when I see her. She’s the only doctor I know who delivers babies in
scrubs and Gucci heels. They don’t call her “Dr. Chic” for nothing.

“Corinne,” I say, avoiding eye contact at all costs. I hand my paperwork
to the nurse and turn to head down the hall. There’s a gentle padding of her
heels against carpet as she chases after me.

“Wait up,” she calls out. I stop. “Are you hungry at all? You want to go
downstairs and grab a bite in the cafeteria?”

She can’t get a real date with me, so she’s constantly trying to con me
into having dinner with her on work time.

“I’ve got to get some sleep,” I say. I press on, heading to the on call
room. She follows. I give her a polite half-smile before slipping in and
shutting the door. I take a seat on one of the beds and pull my shoes off.

The door flies open, presenting Corinne with a devilish grin on her
face. She spins around and locks the door before rushing over to me.

“Quick, we only have a few minutes,” she unbuttons her white coat, her
breathing heavy. There’s a look in her eye that sends my cock into a shriveled
state of NOPE. Dr. Corinne
Cawthorn
is beautiful by
anyone’s standards, but she’s all kind of crazy, and she’s not anyone I’d
remotely entertain being with. “Come on. Hurry up!”

She reaches down for my cock, but I block her hands.

“Hurry, my patient in twenty-five is about to deliver any minute,” she
says.

“Corinne, what are you doing
?!
” I grab her
gently by her narrow wrists, guiding her needy grasp away from my flaccid cock
that wants nothing to do with the shit she’s peddling. “Don’t do this.”

“Don’t do what? I’m making this easy for you,” she says, licking her
lips. Her eyes fall to my crotch. “God, that fucking piercing, Sutton. The way
it rubs against my g-spot…”

She looks like she’s about to orgasm on the spot, simply from memory.

“I have to have it again,” she begs. She pulls her lab coat off her
shoulders and begins unbuttoning her skirt and tugging it down her hips.

“Stop.” I stand up and head to the door. If she’s not going to leave, I
will.

“What the hell is wrong with you, Sutton?” she calls after me. “You’re
messed up in the head. You need a psych consult, you know that? You won’t date
anyone. You won’t fuck anyone. You won’t let anyone in. Are you gay or
something? Are you not into women?”

I don’t justify her accusations with a response. I bite my tongue and
get the hell out of that tiny on call room and Crazy Corinne.

I finish my shift with zero sleep on the off-chance Corinne might try to
sexually assault me with her heightened state of desperation once again. The
nurses get it. They say nothing. They only keep the energy drinks and fresh
cups of coffee coming as we work side-by-side delivering a handful of babies.

Despite the shift from hell, I can’t stop thinking about
Lauryn
. I need to know how she’s doing and if she’s crying
over that asshole, James.
If she has any smarts about her,
she’ll be celebrating and thinking about the next time she’s going to see me.

I chuckle at that notion. It seems so far-fetched.

When my twenty-four hours are up, I clock out and head home, stopping in
my tracks when I round the corner to my apartment and see
Lauryn
sitting on the floor, leaning against my door.

“I wasn’t sure what time you got off,” she says. Her eyes are clear,
like she hasn’t been crying. That’s a good sign. She doesn’t seem upset, in
fact, she seems unshakably calm. “I tried texting you and then my phone died. I
couldn’t find my charger.”

“Uh, huh,” I tease. “It’s okay if you wanted to come see me. You don’t
have to make up excuses.”

I slip my key into my lock and let us in, tossing my keys in a bowl on
the console after kicking off my shoes.

“Make yourself at home.” I yawn. I’m exhausted, but seeing
Lauryn
has given me reason to fight that tooth and nail.
“I’m going to shower.”

By the time I emerge from the shower, she’s sitting on my couch rifling
through an old yearbook. She looks up at me and flashes a slow grin. We had a
lot of good times together when we were younger. “Found this on your bookshelf
over there.”

I take a seat next to her. She’s flipping through the back where there’s
a picture of the two of us our sophomore year – before we stopped
speaking to each other. We’re covered in face paint that matches our school
colors and running down a football field hand-in-hand.

“I miss us.” She says it in one dreamy sigh. “The old us. I miss the
people we were before life got shitty and complicated.” She runs her hand across
the slick pages, as if she could possibly touch a memory. “Why didn’t you try
to stop them?”

I lean back, running my hands across my thighs.

“When you found out about our parents, why didn’t you try to tell them
not to do that? Why didn’t you threaten to tell or make them realize they were
destroying lives?” She sounds like a broken little girl when she talks, and I
realize her pain, though well over ten years old, is still as fresh as the day
it all began.

“I did,” I say. “Your dad clocked me across the face.”

“That’s how you got that black eye?” she asks, her voice tapering off.
“You said you got in a fight with Cody Preston at school.”

“Nope, that was
DeVonn
,” I say. “He socked me
and told me I could never see you again if I breathed a word to anyone. Shit,
Lauryn
. I was embarrassed. I didn’t want you to think I was
weak or that I couldn’t fix things for you.”

She leans against my shoulder. I take it as her way of apologizing for
being wrong. I accept in silence.

“Look, I could take the beatings,” I say. “But I couldn’t take not being
able to see you. And then that happened anyway, so…”

She nuzzles against me, breathing me in. “My mom never did remarry.
She’s taken a vow of celibacy. For the last ten years, all she’s done is tell
me that men are evil and that we’re all better off alone. She didn’t even like
James, and let’s face it, at face value, James can be extremely likable.”

“Fucking James,” I say with a snicker. “You confront him yet?”

Lauryn
nods. “It didn’t go the way I hoped it would. There were no
bloody knuckles and broken noses, but I think he leaned a lesson. I’m going to
let him squirm for a few days before I call HR and report him for abusing his
company card. Bye-bye bonus…”

“That’s rather generous of you,” I say. “I’m sure you could do a lot
more damage than that.”

“Oh, no, that’s where you’re wrong. Money is everything to James. I’m
going to hit him where it hurts. He’s going to miss that bonus, believe me. And
he’ll have to explain to his darling Colette that he’s officially jobless.”

“Remind me never to cross you,” I tease, slipping my hand around her
back. I’m holding her, and my heart is racing. It feels good to hold her, to be
close to her again. Seeing her smile is reassuring. I’d happily let her cry on
my shoulder, but she doesn’t appear to be sad. She almost seems relieved about
the whole thing. “You never wanted to marry him, did you?”

She slinks a single shoulder upward. “I don’t know. I thought I did? I-I
don’t
know.”

“It’s hard for you to admit the way you feel about things.” I want to
reach for her hands but I don’t. We’re not quite there yet, and I don’t want to
scare her away the moment she’s finally warming up to me. “Why is that?”

“It’s how I survived the last ten years,” she admits. “Never dealing
with my emotions. Never dealing with reality.”

“Which was?”

“That I missed you.
That I was hurting.
That as
much as I convinced myself that I hated you, I really still loved you.”

She trembles slightly, as if years of buried emotions are working their
way from the deepest parts of her to the outermost parts. It’s difficult for
her to be so honest.

“Loved me like a…
stepbrother
?”
I test her.

She blows a breath between her lips. “I hated you as a stepbrother.
Let’s set the record straight on that.”

“But you loved me as…”

“I loved you as…I don’t know.” She rubs her hands against her jeans,
creating warm friction.

“You can say it.”

“I loved you as…I don’t know. I loved
you
. I was in love with
you
.
There. I said it.”
Lauryn’s
face flushes, and her
lips twitch. Her eyes snap to the yearbook in her lap, which she shuts in
haste.

“You should’ve said something when you had the chance,” I say. “I had no
idea.”

“Really?” She turns to me. “You had no idea? After that summer we
shared? All the things we did? We were together every single day. Couldn’t keep
our hands off each other. I gave my virginity to you.”

“And it was a fucking fantastic gift.”

She elbows me. “God, you really are dense.”

“Not as much as you think,” I say. “I’m not sure that I knew what love
was back then, and I’m not sure that some seventeen, eighteen year old punk
should go around saying those kinds of words. Look, all I knew was you were the
only thing that mattered to me back then,
Laur
. And
you still are. I know now that that was love.”

She bites her full bottom lip, her eyes half-open and falling toward my
mouth. She’s right there, on the edge. I just have to give her a good push.

“I want to kiss you,
Lauryn
,” I say. “I’m
going
to kiss you.”

“No,” she says. She swallows, her lips parting. “I don’t know if I’ll want
to stop once you start.”

“Then we’ll keep going,” I say. I lean into her, grazing my lips across
hers. “I want it,
Laur
. I want you. Don’t you want me
too?”

Her eyes squeeze shut, and she nods. “I want you,
Sut
.”

My hands cup her sweet face. I claim her mouth
as
mine, forcing her lips apart and sucking her tongue as our lips dance
.
Her breath heaves and she sinks back into the sofa. I take the opportunity to
pin her under me, tearing off her top like the inconvenience that it is.
Anything that stops me from taking
Lauryn
from here
on out shall henceforth be demolished and ruined.

She’s mine.

Now and forever.

“But isn’t this weird?” she sighs, pulling away. “We’re stepbrother and
stepsister. Technically.”

“No, it’s not fucking weird,” I groan. My hands are working the
waistband of her leggings, slipping down between her thighs. My cock hardens,
and the metal ball of my piercing rubs against my boxer briefs. I’m literally
aching for her, and if she doesn’t give herself to me in the next five minutes,
I’ll have a medically concerning case of blue balls.

“But, like, right now, you’re my stepbrother, and you’re about to fuck
me,” she says with a teasing grin. She knows what she’s doing. She’s torturing
me on purpose and loving every second of it.

“It’s kind of hot,” I say, pressing my lips into the hot flesh between
her full breasts. They’re spilling out of the lace cups of her bra, the pinks
of her nipples beginning to peek out. Her breasts are perfect: round, natural,
and generous. I pull a cup down and take a nipple in my mouth, running it
between my teeth enough to wake it up. She sighs in response, pressing her head
against a throw pillow. “Besides, first you were like my bratty kid sister, and
then you were my friend, and then you got boobs and got all hormonal, and then
I thought you were hot so I fucked you like crazy, and then we became
stepsiblings, and now I’m going to fuck you, like I did back in high school,
only now we’re adults. That means we can do whatever the fuck we want.”

I unhook her bra, setting her free, and she slides her leggings and
panties down, kicking them off. They fall in a heap on the floor, and her hands
lunge for the button of my jeans. My boxer briefs hardly contain my erection,
and she wastes no time unleashing me from my confines.