Escort (A Standalone Romance Novel) (New York City Bad Boy Romance) (18 page)

She grabs my erection with one hand and
slips the condom over my tip with the other.

“You’ve lost whipped cream privileges,”
she says.

I remove my mouth from her breast and
shrug before kissing her deeply.

She works the condom the rest of the way
over me, and she puts her legs around me, her feet on my ass, and she
encourages me forward, my cock still in her hand.

“Did you bring a towel or something?” I
ask.

“Yeah,” she says, “but are you sure you
really want to go get it right now?”

Her case is all the stronger for the fact
that she’s rubbing my tip over her folds.

“Want to, no,” I tell her. “But you’re not
my last appointment today.”

“Got another sex kitten coming in here
after me, huh?”

“Yeah,” I tease, “and she’s the jealous
type.”

“Oh, I’m not that worried about it,” Grace
says. “I could kick her ass.”

“You know,” I tell her, trying to keep my
eyes in a forward position as Grace
eases
me into her,
“if there actually was another woman, I’m pretty sure you could.”

“Damn straight,” she says and brings her
legs back from behind me. “The towel’s in the bottom of my purse,” she tells
me. “You should probably grab it.”

“Genius plan,” I tell her. “Wherever do
you come up with such brilliant ideas?”

“You know,” she says, “I think I liked you
better before you learned how to be sarcastic. That’s my shtick, you know.”

I make my way around the desk, shirt on,
tie off, belt on, pants on and my throbbing self hanging out the front like
some primitive compass.

It’s easy enough finding the towel in the
bottom of Grace’s purse as there’s almost nothing else in there with the
exception of her vaporizer, her keys, and a couple pairs of spare condoms to be
used for any eventuality.

“Lift your butt,” I tell her and she lifts
herself a few inches off the desk.

The wood beneath her is already a little
wet, but there’s not much we can do about that right now, so I just set the
towel down under her.

“Actually,” I tell her as I come back
around the desk, “stay like that for a minute.”

Her heels — her bare heels, that is — are
on the edge of the desk and she’s supporting her upper body with her arms.

I position myself back between her legs
and, as I work myself halfway into her, I put one of my forearms under each
knee and, before I lift her at all, I tell her to put her arms around my neck.

She does and, when she’s comfortable with
her grip, I lift her the rest of the way off of the desk.

“Look at you getting all adventurous,” she
whispers in my ear and, before I slide into her the rest of the way, she grabs
the towel from the desk behind her, her other hand firm against my upper back,
and she drapes it over my cock. “I figured you probably didn’t want your pants
to, you know…”

“Thanks,” I tell her and she puts her
other arm back around my neck. I bring her lower body against mine, going all
the way into her now.

Her chin is resting on my shoulder as she
embraces me, and I’m just hoping we’re not both going to need a tie to shove in
our mouths to keep quiet as the logistics of that aren’t particularly appealing
at the moment.

Her breasts are still exposed out the top
of her shirt and every so often when she leans back, I get a quick glimpse of
them as they tremble from our motion.

Everything is absolutely phenomenal right
up until I hear the door to the outer office, the waiting room opening up.

“Shit,” I whisper and lift Grace off of
me, setting her down softly, her feet on the floor.

She grabs the towel and she runs around
the desk, putting it into her purse.

Meanwhile, I’ve got my back to the door
and I’m persuading my very hard cock back into my pants and, with some more
effort, into my boxers which I don’t bother buttoning as I only have a moment
to zip up my pants before-

There’s a knock on the door and it opens.

I’m sitting in my chair, my legs far
enough under my desk that the bulge in my pants isn’t visible.

Grace is sitting in one of the chairs
across from me, and we both look over toward the door, smiling like we’re happy
to see Yuri.

“Hey, boss,” she says. “I’m back early. I
hope you don’t mind.”

“Not at all,” I tell her.

“I’m not interrupting anything, am I?” she
asks.

“No, we’re just talking,” I answer.

“You sure?” Yuri asks.

“Yeah,” I tell her. “Why?”

“Because you’ve got part of a condom
wrapper on the floor behind you,” she says
and
 
at
me before leaving my office and
closing the door.

*
       
*
       
*

Yuri’s kind enough not to say anything as
Grace is leaving the office, but as soon as I’m done with my next appointment,
I can’t get her to shut up about any of it.

“So, is that the kind of treatment all of
your patients can expect from here on out, or just the pretty ones?”

“Yeah, yeah,” I answer. “What’s next?”

“Inpatient rounds,” she says. “So, does
this mean the two of you are a couple now?”

“We haven’t really talked about it,” I
tell her, “but I think that’s the way we’re both leaning, yes.”

“That’s good,” she says, “you know, if you
don’t think about how bad it is.”

“What do you mean? I thought you liked
Grace.”

“I
do
like Grace. I just don’t like seeing you try to win some kind of record for
most ways to get your license revoked.”

“That’s not going to happen,” I tell her.

“Whatever you say, boss,” Yuri says and
hands me the inpatients’ charts. “Mr. Hollingsworth says his pain is coming
back and Laney Michaels is scared about her radiation treatment tomorrow. Maybe
you can talk to her.”

“Yeah,” I agree. “Thanks.”

I glance over the files a moment and then
walk out into the hall.

Mr. Hollingsworth is already maxed out on
his morphine drip and there’s really not much else I can do for him. That’s not
what’s got me nervous right now, though.

What has me nervous is Laney.

Although I’ve only been in this hospital
for a couple of years, there’s not much left that really gets to me.

There are still things here and there that
catch me off guard, like Mrs. Probst dying in my office right in the middle of
our conversation, but the one thing that’s consistently hard for me to deal with
is working with terminal children.

Laney’s scared and what she’s afraid of is
certainly a lot more significant than anything I’ve ever experienced, but
nothing makes a person want to hang it up quicker than knowing a child is going
to die, no matter what you do.

All anyone can really do is to try and
teach them how to deal with the reality of their own death: something no seven
year old should ever have to experience.

I’m not only nervous, but intimidated, as
I know for a fact that that little girl and the dozens of others I’ve already
treated and the hundreds I’m likely to treat throughout my career possess a
level of strength and maturity I never will.

The important thing, though, is to never
let the kids or their parents see that. They’ve all got enough on their minds
without having to worry about the emotional state of their doctor.

I do my job no matter who the patient is,
but I always try to go that extra mile for people like Laney.

My phone rings as I’m approaching Mr.
Hollingsworth’s room.

It’s Yuri.

“Yes?” I answer.

“Doc, I’m sorry, but you need to come
back,” she says.

“Why? What’s going on?”

“Grace had a seizure in the lobby.”

Chapter
Fifteen

Holding in Air

Grace

For the second time in my life, I wake up
in a hospital bed with only a vague idea as to how I got here.

A low tone enters my ears, but I just
ignore it, closing my eyes again.

“Did I have another seizure?” I ask the
air around me.

If there’s an answer, it’s not one that I
can understand.

After a while, things start to clear up a
little bit more and I am, if nothing else, able to recognize the voice in the
room.

It’s Dr. Willis.

Dr. Willis, head of the trial for JH813,
the experimental drug for
oligodendroglioma
that’s
still running through my veins — the drug, that is, not the tumor; that’s
thankfully stationary — is a shorter woman with flowing blonde hair and
absolutely no ability to form her mouth into a smile.

“Grace, can you hear me?” she asks.

“Yeah,” I groan. “What happened?”

“You had a seizure,” she says and looks
down to her clipboard. “Is this the first seizure you’ve had since your
diagnosis?”

“No,” I tell her. “I had a seizure a
couple of months ago, and that’s what led to my diagnosis.”

“Have you been feeling any new or
worsening symptoms since the last time we’ve met?”

“Other than the seizure I apparently just
had?”

She looks up, perfectly incapable of
finding anything charming. “Yes,” she says. “Apart from that, have you noticed
anything out of the ordinary?”

“No,” I tell her. “Actually, I’ve been
feeling pretty good being off the chemo.”

“You haven’t had
any
symptoms over the last few days that you haven’t reported?” she
asks.

“No,” I tell her. “Where’s Jace?”

“Jace?”

“I’m sorry,” I say, “Dr. Churchill.”

“I’m in charge of the trial, and while
he’s been notified, I’m your primary physician at this time,” she says.

“Don’t you think that’s kind of weird?”

“What do you mean?”

“Your job is to pump me full of a mostly
untested drug and see if it’s going to help cure me or if it’s going to make me
worse and that, somehow, makes you my primary physician,” I explain.

“It’s a double-blind study,” she says.
“There can’t be anything shared that might jeopardize the integrity of the
trial.”

“What did he say?” I ask.

“What did who say?” she returns.

“Dr. Churchill. What did he say when you
told him what happened to me?”

“I’m not the one that told him,” she says.
“To be frank with you, I don’t think it’s entirely appropriate that he be
involved in any part of your current treatment.”

“Who told him?” I ask, but the answer
couldn’t possibly matter. “Never mind. What happens now? Are you going to take
me off the drug, or do we up the dosage or what?”

“First off,” she says, “we don’t know that
you’re
on
the real drug. As I’ve told
you a few times now, both in our previous meetings and in this conversation,
that this is a double-blind study. I don’t know who’s on the drug and who’s
not, and if I did know, I would have to recuse myself from the trial as it
would no longer be double-blind.”

“Okay,” I tell her, “I get it. You’re a
whore for procedure, but if you could just answer my question-”

“I don’t think there’s any reason that we
should change our approach,” she interrupts. “You’re still new in the trial and
you haven’t exhibited any new symptoms, so the best course, in my expert
opinion, is to proceed as before.”

What kind of person is so in need of
validation that they refer to their own opinion as “expert?”

“Is there anything we can to do help
prevent further seizures?” I ask.

“No,” she answers. “Are you feeling
lightheaded, nauseated?”

“No. So we’re just going to do nothing and
hope it doesn’t happen again?”

She sighs and rolls her eyes, saying, “It
doesn’t seem to be a result of the trial, so it’s anecdotal.”

I’m preparing myself to beat a little
humanity into this misanthropic freak when the door to my room opens and Jace
bursts in.

“Grace!” he exclaims before he sees Dr.
Willis standing at the foot of my bed. He turns toward her, trying to act as if
nothing were amiss. “What happened with my patient?”

Dr. Willis answer him or look over or even
acknowledge his presence, she simply continues talking to me.

“We’ll run some tests, but I’m confident
we’ll be able to keep you in the trial. If you start having more frequent
seizures, we can revisit it, but I think one outlying incident doesn’t mean
that much,” she says.

“I’d like to get a copy of any tests you
run,” Jace says.

“No deal,” Dr. Willis replies. “I know
you’re relatively new here, but even you should know that we’re not going to
disclose any kind of information about one of our trial patients until we
publish the results of the trial itself.”

Jace holds his tongue.

“So, just so I’m clear on this: you’re not
going to actually do anything about the fact I just had another seizure, huh?”
I ask.

“I have other patients to deal with,” Dr.
Willis says and, before I have time to ask her any more questions or call her a
cunt, she’s out of the room.

Once the door’s closed behind her, Jace is
at the side of my bed, holding my hand.

“How are you feeling?” he asks.

“I’m still a little out of it, but I’ll be
all right.
You
on the other hand have
really got to do some work on your poker face. If I didn’t know any better, I
would start to think that something was going on between you and me.”

“You’re a strange woman,” he tells me,
“but you have a point. I’m sorry. I was just worried about you.”

“Funny how you didn’t seem so worried
about me the first time we met. I’d just had a seizure then, too. I think you
want some of this,” I say and squeeze my boobs, “don’t
ya
?”

“They are pretty remarkable.”

“Well, I think we should probably wait
until I’m out of this hospital bed before any copulation takes place,” I tell
him. “Then again, you’re the doctor.”

He laughs. “I think you’re going to be
fine,” he says.

“Glad to hear it,” I tell him, but I’m
getting tired. Something about having a seizure just takes it right out of a
person. “I hope you don’t mind, but I think I’m going to power down for a
little while. It’s been a long day. I had to go to the doctor where we
conducted a procedure I’m pretty sure isn’t in the AMA guidelines and then I
apparently fell down somewhere and danced like it was nineteen ninety-nine, so
I’m kind of beat.”

“That’s fine,” he says. “I’ll check in on
you when I can. If I’m not here when they’re getting ready to discharge you,
let me know and I’ll make sure either Yuri or I can give you a lift home.”

“Thanks, sexy doctor man,” I mumble.

If he says anything else, I’m asleep
before I hear it.

*
       
*
       
*

“I really don’t think we should be doing
this,” Jace says, looking up at me from ten feet below.

“Yeah, you said that last time,” I tell
him. “Are you coming up, or am I going to have to enjoy this view by myself?”

He just stands there, so I keep climbing.

It’s about three o’clock in the morning
and I’m climbing the metal-rung ladder welded to the side of the old,
broken-down Ferris wheel.

What Jace is so worried about is the fact
that it’s only been about thirty-six hours since I was lying in that hospital
bed after having my second seizure.

What I’m not telling him is that I’m
terrified of heights. Up until my diagnosis, I was perfectly content to remain
acrophobic, but something about having my lifespan significantly shortened made
me want to change that.

In fact, if I could die without any
remaining fears, that would be spectacular.

The fear of death, now that’s going to be
a particularly relevant one, but I think it’s best to tackle one thing at a
time.

I’m about halfway up and my heart is
pounding so hard, I’m a little nervous it’s going to affect my equilibrium.
Naturally, it doesn’t, but that hardly makes my anxiety go away.

Below me, I can hear the metal clang,
clang, clanging of Jace as he begins to follow me up the ladder.

I’m committed now, if I wasn’t before, but
that’s kind of the point.

When I was in college, I was usually the
one standing at the bottom of the Ferris wheel to make sure that no security
guards came by, but it was only an honorary position, achieved by the fact that
I was the only one there with breasts, and I wasn’t afraid to show them.

When I reach the top of the ladder, I
freeze.

I don’t know what I was expecting, but in
order to get into one of the Ferris wheel’s cars, I’m going to have to just
climb up and into it.

It doesn’t make sense that there would be
some magical, rail-enclosed platform, but that’s more along the lines of what
I’d told myself to expect.

Jace catches up to me before long —
apparently, heights aren’t such a big deal for him — but I can’t move or speak.
I can hardly breathe.

“Are you all right up there?”

“I’m fine,” I lie. “I’m just trying to
figure out the best way to go about this.”

“Take your time,” he says, and I wonder if
he can see me shaking from where he is below me. “We can go back down if you
want. I think you’ve proven that you can do this.”

For whatever reason, that statement is all
the motivation I need to take a step up to the next rung and lean forward, one
hand still on the top rung, the other hand on the car sitting at the top of the
wheel.

I know these cars lock if you roll them
too far either forward or backward, but it doesn’t seem like that knowledge is
going to help me here.

I take another step up the ladder, making
sure to lean as far forward as I possibly can as I do and my body from breasts
up is over the car.

There’s no choice now, so I let go of the
top rung of the ladder and grab the enclosing rail at the front of the car
which immediately swings open a bit.

The guys hadn’t mentioned that when they
came down.

There are a few empty beer cans in the car
and what I’m pretty sure was some kind of smoking device, although it doesn’t
look like it was something to be used with pot — I’m starting to get familiar
with those by now.

I take another step up and I’m starting to
realize that leaning as far forward as I am, while it certainly seemed like a
good idea in theory, is going to lead me to falling into the car. Maybe that
wouldn’t be such a problem, but with the metal bar at the front swinging open
freely, chances are I’d end up falling out the front of the car.

The good news, I guess, is that that would
save me tens, possibly hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical bills.

Not worth it.

My only real option is to steady myself as
best I can and straighten myself up so I can simply step into the car.

“I think we should go back down,” Jace
says.

“Shh!” I scold. “I’m concentrating here.”

Slowly, I start to get back to standing
nearly straight up, and I hold onto the back edge of the car with one hand
while I step up to the very top rung.

My heart the only sound I can hear, I
gingerly work one foot off the top rung and over the car itself.

I’m slow, deliberate in lowering my foot
to the floor of the car, but I’m almost there.

I have to kick a couple beer cans out of
the way before I set my foot down, but once it’s in there, my second foot comes
a lot more easily.

Still with a death grip on the back of the
car, I move to the far side and start to sit down. The car rocks a little, back
and forth and I’m absolutely certain I’m going to die right until my butt hits
the seat.

After a moment, the rocking subsides and I
look back toward the ladder at Jace, whose head is just coming up above the top
of the ladder to the side of the car.

“The front doesn’t stay closed,” I tell
him, “so don’t get cute and try to rock this thing while we’re sitting in it or
I might just have to throw you out of it to save myself.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” he says.

It’s dark, but I could swear that he’s a
few shades lighter in color as he climbs the final rungs to the top.

“You’ll want to lean forward a little
bit,” I tell him, “but not too much. I think the best way is just to step in.”

“Okay,” he says, though I’m pretty sure
he’s not hearing anything I’m saying.