Gorgeous Rotten Scoundrel (9 page)

"Well, it looks like we have our own little orphan club."

"It's very exclusive," I said in a high-brow tone.

"Let's finish the bottle."

"
Heath...
" I said, in a motherly tone.

"I don't want to get hammered. I just want to have a nice dinner. I like talking to you when you're not being such an icy shrew."

"I wonder what in the world would cause me to be less than hospitable to you."

But I relented. It felt right that evening, for me to stop being so hard on him, and he finally started treating me like something other than just another sexual plaything. I assumed the change was only because he was stuck with me.

We shared the glass: a sip for him, a sip for me. The wine opened us up in ways I had never anticipated. It made me giggly and less stern, and it dissolved his douchiness.

"How's Brock doing?"

"We texted. He had surgery, and the docs are evaluating the options. Knowing him he won't say if it's bad and he's probably getting 30 different opinions. He's ever the optimist. I just sent him a care package. Homemade cookies and energy bars."

"Well, just show him a pic of this and that'll lift his spirits because at least he's not me." I rolled my eyes. I would not play into the pity pit in which he was wallowing. "That sucks. They were hoping for a championship season, but it's starting to look unlikely with him being in and out like that." Then it looked like a lightbulb went off in his head. "Did the two of you...?"

"What? No...not all bosses hit on their workers!"

"Just curious. I don't know how any virile young man wouldn't try."

"Well, good thing you're now covered in casts, keeps you from being so goddamned handsy. Besides, Brock is the perfect gentleman. He would never stoop to your caveman version of chivalry." Except for that one night he came home hammered when I was supposed to be housesitting. He kissed me, but he was sloppy drunk and I put him to bed. I had always assumed he didn't remember.

"You are a cruel woman."

"You wanted direct."

"I am starting to rethink that whole schpiel."

"I was just thinking. The nurse, we'll have to get you a new one."

"No, I just want you."

"But I'm not a nurse."

"She barely did anything. I don't like it. I don't like her cleaning me up, or feeding me. It makes me feel like I am not in control, to have a strange woman bathing me."

"I don't know."

"I'll pay you more."

"It's not that Heath. You don't have to pay me more." It was because I was afraid to become closer to him than I already had. "Plus, I am so not wiping your ass."

"Excuse me, no one wipes my ass but me. You are just nasty. That's my point, I just need your help on some small things. The nurse is annoying. Plus, she smells like moth balls."

I spit up my wine.

"I can take my own meds. But sometimes I just need help getting in and out of my chair and there's a machine that does most of the work. I want you to do it, Sadie. I just want it to be you. I feel comfortable with you, and you smell like flowers. You're the only person I trust right now to see me like this."

How could I say no to that? To the crass young man-whore who had melted in front of my very eyes? "Okay," I said, in soft defeat.

"Thank you." He rubbed the nub of his cast on my hand.

"Well, I better clean this up and get you into bed." I stood up quickly and my head spun a bit. Only then did I realize how much I drank.
Bad nurse.

I cleaned up the mess from that morning and returned upstairs to help Heath into bed. Luckily, he had this machine with a sling that wrapped under his arms and raised and lowered him from a seated position. Once he was seated in the bed, though, I had to help adjust him and get him comfortably under the covers.

"You're a big boy," I said, lifting his legs up.

"You're an angel," he murmured, woozy from the booze.

I used all of my might to push him in further, and slipped on the rug, falling on his chest. Our faces were within inches of each other, and yes, there was that pause, that moment of: should we or shouldn't we? But unlike before, he didn't jump at me. He respected me now, and it only made me enjoy him more.

"Alright, goodnight."

"Goodnight," he smiled warmly.

I meandered back to my bedroom, still heady from the wine. This quiet evening was the most pleasant one I had in a long time and I felt a surprising sting of sadness going back to my room alone.

I lay in my bed, staring at the ceiling, unable to sleep. I missed him. Like Heath, I too didn't want to be alone. I couldn't remember the last time I felt that way. It wasn't just physical, it's that feeling you had as a kid when you met a friend you liked so much that even though you spent all day with them at school, as soon as you got home you would call them up. Or the way you might stay awake as long as you could at a sleepover because no matter how tired you were, sleep was not nearly as enjoyable as the conversation with your friends. I wasn't ready for our time together that night to end.

The wine in my veins made me shameless enough to follow through.

I tip-toed to his room and slowly opened the door. In my gut, I hoped he might be asleep and I would change my mind.

"Is everything okay?" he asked almost as soon as I stepped foot in the room.

"Yes, I couldn't sleep."
What the hell are you doing? Tell him you're here to check in on him as his new nurse--yeah, that's the ticket!

"Oh, me neither. It hard with all this crap on me," he said in an amused whisper. He did bizarrely resemble a living, modern-day mummy. And from my limited knowledge in Egyptology, I believe only dead people were mummies. Which would make him a zombie mummy. A really friggin’ hot one. But I digress.

"I don't want to be alone tonight."

"Okay."

His cast-encased arm was splayed out to his side, and his legs were propped up on several pillows. When I imagined getting into bed with a male model, this was certainly not the image I had pictured. I gently closed the door behind me and slid under the covers with him, resting my cheek on his chest. I felt his chin rest gently atop my head. Then as if his presence triggered something in me, maybe a feeling of security, I quickly dozed off.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Shitshitshit.
Those were my first thoughts when I woke up that morning with my head still resting on Heath's bare chest. Yet another terrible idea of mine. Listen, I wasn't hammered or anything the night before, but there was enough alcohol flowing through me to give me misguided ballsiness. And that wine-induced bravado mixed with the laughs, and the good conversation, the intimacy of feeding someone a meal as they tell you their innermost fears, I hadn't had that type of connection in a long time. I didn't realize how much I missed it until I had it again.

I gently lifted my head and hand off of him. Maybe I could slip away and pray the Percocets had left him in a non-life-threatening coma. But you know me by now--that would never be the case, as that would mean things work out for me, and it seems they hardly ever do.

"Good morning, nurse," he said playfully, the rasp of sleep still in his voice.

"Morning." I tried to sound easy, but the words plopped out of my mouth like anchors. "I will make you breakfast now."
That sounded ridiculous.

"Strange, I always thought English was your first language.
I will make you breakfast now
," he recited in a Russian accent.

I shook my head, clearly frazzled, nervously searching the room for a cardigan to cover my bare shoulders and cleavage, which were freezing in my light camisole. But, of course, this wasn't my room, so why would my clothes be lying around in it?

"Jesus Sadie, relax. It's not like we bumped uglies or something."
How eloquent.

He's right, but it almost feels like what we did was worse.

"I'm fine. I'm fine," I said, more to myself than him, like I was trying to talk myself off of a mental ledge of sorts. "Okay, I'll be back. I think we should get you downstairs? Don't you? You've been cooped up in this room too long. We should get you moving."
You're rambling.

I scanned him over. His legs and arm jutted out from his torso, covered in hard protective man-made shells. Movement was hardly an option for him.

"Whatever you say, nurse."

Nurse.
What the fuck did I agree to last night?
Stupidstupidstupid.

***

Somehow, we ended up on the couch. Well, literally what happened was that he had one of those chair lifts installed the week before that took him up and down the steps at negative five mph.

By the time we were wrapping up breakfast, my embarrassment had subsided significantly. Cooking has always been a calming force for me. I realized bumbling around like a middle schooler after her first kiss wasn't helping either one of us. So I bucked up and tried to go back to business as usual.

"So what do you want to do today, Señor Hillabrand?"

"I really don't feel like going out like this, not yet."

"Okay. Okay. Makes sense. No pressure."

"Why don't we just binge-watch something? I mean, I can do that. You don't have to stay here with me all day."

"No, that's fine. I don't have any other plans. It's not like I'm a lady of the town."

"A lady of the town?"

"Yeah, I don't know what that was."

We settled on Breaking Bad, as it appears we were both the last people on earth who hadn't yet seen the show and felt it must be destiny for us to do so together. So we spent the rest of the afternoon on the couch, Heath laying his encased body on it, and me sitting at his feet. Several times during points of excitement during the show, I hi-fived his arm cast nub. We were becoming buddies. Maybe this nurse thing wouldn't be so bad after all. It was like being paid to be his friend.

Hours passed before we decided to break from the trance-like state of binge-watching Netflix.

"This is kind of shameful, the amount of television we have just consumed," I confessed.

"Hey, I have a legitimate excuse. You're the one who should be ashamed."

"So, dinner?"

"Not really hungry, this lack of movement has kept my appetite down."

"Okay. Maybe I could put you in the wheelchair and walk you around the property?"

"Only if you want."

"Sure. I've been sitting all day. This will get me some exercise."

So I went through the tedious process of helping him up from the couch and into his wheelchair (maybe I should have taken the extra pay). It was then I started to feel something. Now that he backed off, that he wasn't trying so hard to loosen me up, or get in my pants, it made me want to be with him more. Maybe I missed being told how desirable I was, or I enjoyed playing hard to get, but now that he had completely pulled back, all I wanted was for him to tell me how much he wanted me.

I pushed him along the driveway. It was early evening; the chirps of crickets and the sound of wheels on gravel filled the otherwise quiet summer air.

"Confession. I lied." Heath's words broke the stillness.

"What do you mean? What about?"

"There is something I need to do."

"What's that?"

"Well, the nurse never got around to helping me wash."

"Oh...
Oh!
Of course."
So nursing doesn't mean watching Netflix all day.
"I am so sorry. I am pretty new to this."

"No need to apologize. I'm just afraid you won't want to hang around me if I start to smell like ass."

"Okay, well let's head back in then. I might need you to walk me through what she did."

We went through the tedious process of getting him back upstairs and into his bed. He told me the nurse had these wipes and where they were.

"These seem cold. I bet you miss a warm shower."

"Woman, you have no idea."

"I'm going to warm these up for you."

"You are a saint."

I took as long as I could before returning upstairs. He would be naked, and I would be rubbing his body with warm, soapy cloths. Every crevice, every muscle, would be a fraction of a millimeter away from my hand. And it was becoming harder and harder for me to see him as a repulsive man-whore. Now that the sycophants had nearly vanished, it was just the two of us, and we had found ourselves on a deserted island of lonely abandoned souls (since it's his home, we could just call it Manwhore Island).

My hands shook nervously as I carried the cleansing cloths up the stairs, I turned to the threshold and there he was, sitting up, shirtless, his boyish smile and thick dirty-blond hair every-which way. I felt that jump your heart feels when you know you want someone and you know that inevitably you will end up having that person, no matter what the rational side of your brain does to protect you.

But I had pushed him away so hard and so strong, that I finally got what I wanted: respect. And now because of it, I wanted him more. I wanted him badly. And I wanted him to want me back again, but I feared it was too late.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

I placed the warm cloth on the nightstand and dimmed the lights. I figured that would be easier on him, though I am sure male supermodels aren't shy about exposing their bodies.

"So, what do I do?" I asked.

"Well, to start, you can get my torso."

I grabbed a cloth and rubbed it along his torso. My breathing tightened as I felt a surge of nervous energy. I rubbed it along his neck, the curves of his jawline, the ridges of his abdomen. His flawless skin almost glowed in the soft lighting of the room.

"Can you sit up?" I asked.

He smirked, the first hint of flirtatious Heath I had seen in a while. I am sure he was enjoying this spectacle and was not the least bit embarrassed himself. I placed one hand on his shoulder and rubbed the cloth along his back with the other. It was my first contact on his bare skin, and the nerves on the ends of my fingertips sparked. I reached over to get the far side of his torso, and I was close enough to smell him. Not his cologne, or shampoo, but the scent of his skin, which cut through his usually soapy scent since he had not washed up in almost two days. I found myself biting my lip, his smell released something primal in me, I honestly wanted to bite his shoulder right there.

Sadie
,
this is not a porn. Nurses don't actually fuck their patients in real life.

I stood up before my thoughts could wander any further.

"You can sit back now," I said softly.

I knew what was next, and my stomach clenched in anticipation.

"Okay...your boxers?" I wondered if he could clean his own dick, but part of me wanted to see the goods.

"I'll need your help. I wound up my shoulder throwing the plate yesterday."
Serves him right.

"Of course." I involuntarily sighed deeply. The sigh betrayed me by showing how hot and bothered this experience was making me.

I slowly grabbed the waistband of his boxers and slid them down. To my surprise, he was semi-erect.

"Sorry Sadie, I'm trying to be professional here, but you're too beautiful."

I nodded. There was nothing of his usual cheeky manner in his tone; he sounded genuine. But when I saw it, how it responded to my touch, I too responded down below, with a flood of arousal.

"It's okay."

My chest was thudding with excitement. I had to touch him down there, but he was aroused and I was aroused and how could I just pretend that what was happening, wasn't really happening?

"If you don't want to, I can do it. My shoulder hurts, but I can manage."

"No...I've got this." I looked up into his blues, and my fucking sweet baby Jesus did he look hot as hell. I told him I had it covered but I didn't move, I just stared at him, and he recognized the look in my eyes. This is a man who gets paid to induce feelings of lust, because everyone wants to fuck him or be him. He spotted the look in my eyes like an owl spotting its prey on a moonless night.

"If I could move my arm. I would run it through your hair. You are doing a great job. I just want you to feel comfortable."

"Thank you. I am. Comfortable."

"Can I?"

"Can you?"

"Touch you."

"But your shoulder."

"It would be worth it."

"I don't know..." The remaining physical distance was the only thing keeping me from throwing the cloth in the air and shoving him in my mouth. But, he was already pulling his arm out of the sling, grimacing all the way. He very slowly ran his fingers through the hair on the base of my scalp, and like a kitten, I closed my eyes and titled my head down, rubbing my cheek along his hand. I nearly purred.

"This is bad, Heath."

"Why?"

"Because I'm me and you're you." I clenched the washcloth in my hands with nervous anticipation.

When I opened my eyes I saw that he was now fully erect.

"Okay." Dammit, he said
okay.
If he had begged, if he had asked, if he had given me something to resist, I would have had something to push away from. Instead, he stepped aside, and I just caved.

I wrapped my fingers around him, and his eyes went wide. I don't think he thought it would be that easy.

I gripped his erection and massaged him, it was so firm, it would have been perfect for me to mount, but I wanted to do this for him. I wanted to make him feel good and forget about his broken body. I assumed it had been a while since he came, as even his "good" arm was very injured and I knew he wasn't getting any visitors.

He moaned throatily and threw his head back. His abs flexed and relaxed with his deep inhalations. I was so turned on, watching this man submit to such a small gesture.

Sure, it occurred to me that I was jerking off a guy who was in nearly a full body cast. It's not the kind of thing one fantasizes about, but I don't think I would have done it any other way. It was his weakness, his total vulnerability that had become such a turn-on. His breathing sped up and his cast nub made a thud as it pressed against the night stand. He was coming close to climax. I took my available hand and pulled down one of the straps of my tank, revealing a breast.

He moaned a little bit louder when he saw it. I leaned down, rubbing my nipple on his tip, and then he came, letting out a lingering groan, making a thudding sound as his leg casts hit each other.

I felt dirty yet powerful. For all the teasing sexual advances I endured, it was me who took control. I popped his cherry. I was the person who moved the chess piece into the spot her opponent never saw coming:
Checkmate muhtafucka.

Only because at that moment, I enjoyed the mindfuck (and honestly didn't know what else to do), I didn't say another word. I simply resumed cleaning him off as if nothing had transpired while he watched, his mouth agape. Oh yeah, I liked him, I liked him a lot, but I couldn't let him see all that yet.