Nightfall (5 page)
And then Susan began to thrust into her.
There was something happening, something more than just the sex. Something more than just the energy she was pulling out of the earth and making her own. Something deep, something strong and primal. She couldn’t make out what it was, not while Susan was thrusting into her, grinding into that nubbled place inside of her. It was all she could do to cling to the woman, groan into her pretty blonde hair, and let the sensations sweep her away.
The orgasm, when it came, was hard, intense, overwhelming. She cried out, throwing back her head, and Susan ran her tongue from Izzy’s clavicle to her chin. Before Izzy was even done shuddering, Susan tossed her onto the bed. Izzy had a moment to wonder how the other woman moved her so easily—she was barely bigger than Izzy was herself—but then the woman pushed the black cock into Izzy’s mouth, and Izzy had to focus on opening her mouth and licking her fluids off the cock that had been heated in her own pussy.
Susan groaned, thrusting into Izzy’s mouth, shuddering through her intense emotions, but before Izzy saw her come, she jerked the toy back out of Izzy’s mouth and kissed her way down between Izzy’s thighs. She licked her once, from opening to pubic bone, and then wrapped her tongue around Izzy’s clit and suckled her hard. Izzy arched off the bed, the noises coming from her somewhere between a groan and a scream. The energy that had swelled her belly seemed to be flowing out of her, flowing faster than it should have been, and she thought the woman was stealing it somehow, drinking it, but she was coming again, coming faster and harder, and the woman was sliding a finger into Izzy ass, and she was screaming now—
In the second before the orgasm hit, pain seared through her senses. She screamed again and flailed hard, felt her thigh tear. “
¿Qué chingados?
” she cried out, her mind reaching for the Spanish first. The woman grinned up at her, blood smearing her teeth, and Izzy kicked out, the heel of her foot catching the woman on the shoulder. It was a solid blow, and Izzy had grown up around her annoying brothers; it should have sent the woman flying, not sent a shock reverberating up to her knee.
The woman showed no sign of attacking her again, or wiping the blood off her chin. Izzy took a quick second to glance at her inner thigh. The bite was high, just a few inches below the crease of her hip, and it was shallow, and it hurt like—well, like she’d been bitten by a wild animal. “What the fuck?” she said, finding English this time, and the woman’s smile just broadened.
Something was wrong. Really wrong. Her head was spinning, swirling, like she’d taken a hit off a joint that was spiked with something potent. She reached for the woman, for something to grab a hold of, and missed, slamming down onto the bed again. She bounced, and even though her brain knew that she only caught an inch of air above the mattress, it felt like she was going to fly off into the clouds.
Susan stood over her again, stroking that thick black cock that was held onto her by straps and buckles. Her vision was swimming, fading in and out of focus. Susan leaned over her, her tongue sliding along the outside of Izzy’s ear. Izzy tried to push her away, but her arms were dandelion stems, bending under the weight of her hands.
“Notice I never asked your name?” she heard Susan whisper as the world faded to black all around her. “It’s because I don’t give the first shit who you are, just what you can do for me. Hear me,
curandera
?”
After the hook-up, Roxanne had tried to stop her weekly breakfasts with Matt, but it turned out not to be that easy. He was persistent, and they had been good friends for so many years that just walking away wasn’t an option.
If there was a way to have the romantic stuff with him, without the sex, that would be perfect. Before the hookup, she’d been able to cuddle with him while they watched movies, vent with him about boys she was dating, listen to him rant about the women he knew. They’d been the best of friends.
The hookup hadn’t just made that too awkward to stand now, it had cast a weird and upsetting light on everything that had happened beforehand. She found herself wondering if he’d been thinking about kissing her during all of those late night cuddles. If he’d been thinking how much better he’d treat her than all the guys he’d complained about. Granted, when he’d vented about his girlfriends, she’d told him he deserved better than the way he was being treated. She’d just never meant that
she
should be the one to treat him better.
“How’re you doing?” Matt asked. “You look distracted.”
“Just work,” she lied through her teeth. “We had a patient come in all torn to hell yesterday. I’m hoping he’s okay.”
“I’m sure he will be, with your tender care.” He flashed a smile that was supposed to make it a joke, but there was something else there, something that made her want to roll her eyes.
“The least fun part of the ER is that there’s no guarantee he’ll be there when I get there,” she said. “He may have been moved up to one of the regular floors, and then there’s no medical reason for me to check in on him.”
His tone was way too casual, and she cursed herself for entering territory that she should have known better than to enter. “Do you have a non-medical reason to want to check up on him?”
This time the sigh was not internal. She’d tried being subtle with Matt, over and over, and had gotten nowhere. “He’s a good-looking man,” she said. “And he’s not from around here. I’m interested in how he got here, and what happened.”
“But that’s all?” he pressed.
“Matt, it would be completely unethical for me to hook up with a patient. I’d lose my job.”
“But what if he wasn’t your patient? Would you be interested in him then?”
She set her jaw and took the deepest breath she could manage. “I would be interested in Chris Hemsworth if he showed up at my apartment and begged me to do naughty things with him, but it’s not going to happen, so what’s the point of talking about it?”
There was something in his eyes, something fiery and determined. “Roxie, I want to talk about what happened at the party.”
The urge to tell him that
nothing happened
was huge, but maybe if he could just get this out, he would shut up about it already. “Okay,” she said.
His eyes flickered with surprise. This probably was the first time she hadn’t just deflected the conversation, or shut it down. His surprise was warranted, and she decided carefully not to hate him for it. He took a long moment collecting himself. “I really care about you, Roxie.” He waited for her to interrupt. She kept her grip on her coffee cup, so tight that she thought it might shatter in her hands. Her knuckles were as white as the china. “I feel like things kind of went… wrong that night. I’m worried that I took advantage of you.”
That was unexpected. She glanced up and saw only sincerity and concern in his eyes. “Are you asking if you raped me?”
He gave an awkward shrug. “I realized after the fact that you’d been drinking. Maybe you said yes, and wished you hadn’t. I should have… done that differently.”
More emotion than she’d felt towards Matt in a while flooded through her. “Thank you so much for asking. No, I don’t think anything inappropriate happened. We’d both had a few, and maybe we both should have moved more slowly, but I meant my yes. I just… didn’t feel the fireworks, Matt. I’m so sorry to say that,” she said as his face fell. “But I don’t think there’s ever going to be more between us than friendship. I hope I can keep your friendship, though, because you’re one of the best friends I’ve ever had, and it’d break my heart to lose you. But at the same time, if you need to step away, then I can understand that.”
He was silent for a long time before he looked up at her. “Thank you for being honest,” he said. She studied his face, his tone, trying to figure out what he was really saying. “I’m not going to say I’m not disappointed. And you know, if you ever decide to give it another chance, please just let me know. But at the same time, I don’t want to be that creeper guy who stalks you even though you’ve said ‘no.’”
She smiled at him, hoping he meant it. “I’m glad, Matt,” she said. “And I owe you an apology, too. I used you horribly that night, and I’m sorry for that. I had… an itch that I wanted to scratch, and that’s not what you use people for.”
He shrugged, his smile kind of sideways and broken underneath its smooth exterior. “If it helps, I was more than happy to be used.”
And there was the problem, she supposed. As far as she could tell, he utterly meant it. The words didn’t repel her, but they— Fuck, they were something she wanted to say. They were the sort of thing that flew through her mind when she’d imagined the man in 24 above her the previous night.
Use me, fuck me, do it hard, do it now, hurt me
.
What did that even mean about her? Did it say something about who she was? Something bad?
If she hadn’t heard of BDSM and Doms and subs before she’d have been living under a rock. But the whole concept had never seemed to match up well with her life as a vaguely religious, liberal nurse in East Texas. She couldn’t imagine herself all decked out in leather and chains, bound to a wall while someone beat her senseless. That all seemed extreme. But there was something else, something a bit more moderate in that realm, that made her clit ache to experience.
She’d never had the guts to tell anyone about it. She’d never looked one of her boyfriends in the eye and begged him to hold her down and call her names while he screwed her. Honestly, she thought most of them would be horrified if she asked. Matt included. And maybe that was why everything other than her fantasy life seemed so unsatisfactory.
Would telling Matt ever be an option, she wondered? He was so eager to please, so nearly desperate to do what she wanted—but how could she possibly find the words? He was so gentle and delicate, it would be almost a crime to ask him to change.
“It’s time for you to head to work,” he said, doing her the favor of not making her end the conversation awkwardly. “Thanks for breakfast. My turn next week?”
“Sure,” she said, almost on autopilot. She didn’t look at his eyes. She had a feeling the emotion she’d see there would break her heart. She finished her coffee, stood up, and hugged him, all without meeting his eyes.
“Thank you,” he said again. This time, she just nodded. She left the restaurant without looking back, climbed in her car, and drove to work. She stayed perfectly focused on the road, and blinked as hard and fast as she could to keep the tears from falling. It almost worked.
* * *
She drove to the hospital and ended up a solid twenty minutes early for her shift. That would give her enough time to get a cup of coffee that was better than the diner swill, and also get a report from Eva, the night nurse, without her needing to stay late. It was a small thing, but she knew Eva appreciated it, and Eva tended to show her appreciation with baked goods. Really well made baked goods that often involved chocolate. Being friends with Eva was good news.
The report from Eva, however, was missing one specific detail. “What about the man in 24?” Roxanne asked.
Eva looked confused for just a moment, and then nodded. “Yes. He finally told us his name; Julian Greer. And then he walked out.”
“
Walked out?
Dr. Alexander had to treat a twelve inch laceration that went an inch deep into the thigh, never mind the cuts that needed to be stitched. He needed to be admitted and watched for infection. How could he even walk?”
Eva gave her a shrug, and the sort of dark look that said it had been a long twelve hours, and there were brownies on the line. “I don’t know about any of that. I got here for the start of my shift, and the man was shouting at Caroline. She said he had to at least sign himself out AMA, and he shoved her out of the way and stormed out. He was moving just fine. Caroline has a concussion, though, she hit the wall so hard.”
“Jesus,” Roxanne said, shaking her head.
“After that, not much overnight,” Eva said. “You’ve got a suicide in 22 who’ll end up inpatient for a few days while she gets hooked in with mental health services, but other than that, nothing much on your plate yet.”
“Thanks, Eva. Get some rest, okay?”
Eva laughed and went on her way. Roxanne poked her head into 22; the girl was turned away from the door, and it sounded like she was crying quietly, but there was a sitter with her so she wouldn’t have to maintain watch. And then she found herself wandering into 24.
The room had already been cleaned, but something of what had happened yesterday still hovered on the edges of her awareness. That feeling of being drawn in, pulled toward something. They hadn’t taken that out with the linens or the mop on the floor.
It had taken ages for the stitches to be completed on Greer’s body. He’d had huge nasty cuts, and Dr. Alexander had stitched for what felt like hours to get the worst of them properly closed. There was no way he’d thrown Caroline, a solid black woman, into a wall and left her with a concussion.
But at the same time, Eva wouldn’t make something like that up, and she wouldn’t have been confused by it. Maybe, after her shift, Roxanne would give her charge nurse a call, make sure she was okay, see if she could stop by with some soup and get the rest of the story.
It was funny; even being in the room made her body heat up again, just a little bit, as if the air was still full of Julian and the easy way his eyes had rested on hers. She shivered thinking of it. And of last night, imagining him over her. That one orgasm had been the first of many; by the end, she could almost feel his weight bearing down onto her as she throbbed with the urgency of her need. She’d never managed to feel done. Sore and aching, sure, but the need had swelled back into her after just a few moments each time. She’d never reacted to anyone like this. Never in her life.
“
Nena
, you can keep staring, but he isn’t going to come back just because you’re staring.”
Izzy’s voice behind her made her spin. The younger woman had just finished up her week and was supposed to have a few days off. Roxanne was prepared to chew her out for being here when she should be sleeping, but there was something in her voice—she didn’t put it together until she saw the way Izzy was standing, keeping all the weight off her leg. There were tight lines around her mouth from pain. “Izzy, what happened?” She moved fast, putting herself under Izzy’s arm so the other woman could take the weight off the sore leg entirely. Izzy sighed with relief.
“Long story,” she said. “I need your help with something. And—
ay, Santa
, I need it to be discreet, if you can?”
It only took a moment for Roxanne to make that call. It wasn’t the request that surprised her, but the tortured look in Izzy’s eyes as she asked. “Sit down,” Roxanne said. “I’ll close the door.”
