He slid her pants down around her ankles and followed with her panties. She leaned back. Her body reclined on the table. He placed his hands on her knees and slowly spread them apart. Kneeling down, he kissed her stomach and then her thighs.
This drove Isabella insane. She grabbed a fistful of his neat hair and pushed his face right where she wanted it. He grinned, achieving the result he was looking for. His moist tongue stimulated her with perfect precision—the man knew exactly what he was doing.
Her hands gripped the sides of the vinyl table as she tried to keep quiet. He inserted his fingers, and it set her over the edge. Though she was quiet, he could feel her muscles spasm with pleasure.
She hastily tore at his clothes, undoing his belt and pulling his pants down past his hips. She turned, braced herself against the table, and backed her ass into him. He grabbed her flesh, using it as leverage to go faster, deeper. She came a second time that evening, much to James’s delight.
Isabella flipped onto her back, and James collapsed on top of her.
“I missed you today,” he said softly as he nuzzled her neck. “I didn’t have you to stare at, so I just had to picture you in bed. The image tortured me all day.”
“I’m afraid I’m going to get addicted to this.” She laughed.
“Oh, God, I hope you do,” he replied.
They were in no hurry to go anywhere, so they just lay together for a moment, looking into each other’s eyes.
“Maybe one day, we can do this in an actual bed,” James said.
“Didn’t we last week?”
He rolled his eyes at her. “Away from the hospital, I mean.”
“Ha.” She chuckled. “I don’t know about that. Why complicate a good thing?”
She pulled on her clothes and threw away the paper cover on the exam table. She went home, leaving James behind her.
Chapter Seven
Things were heating up between Isabella and James. The added distance between them made them long for each other during the day. Their chemistry was unstoppable. Not only did they click in bed—or exam table, or supply closet—but they enjoyed each other’s company.
James could hardly hide the fact that he was falling for Isabella. He tried to join her at the lunch table, but she pushed him away, worried that someone would notice their friendship. To a hospital employee, it would look strange for anyone to sit next to interns, as they were on the bottom of the totem pole.
Isabella enjoyed her time in the research study, but she missed being out on the floor with the other interns. She missed the excitement of never knowing what was going to happen. She missed the rush of having seconds to make a correct diagnosis and prescribe treatment. She missed working side by side with James.
She was making a good name for herself in research, though, and the doctors were taking notice. Generally hard to please, these surgeons praised her work ethic and thinking skills. She was quick to learn new things, so the surgeons were giving her more responsibilities.
Despite this, Isabella felt like something was missing from her life, but she couldn’t decide what it was. She had everything she could have hoped for at this point. She was successful in her internship, and she was blowing off steam with a hot doctor. For her, it was a relief that she found a man who just wanted to have casual sex without wanting her to be in a time-consuming relationship.
She wondered if maybe she needed some companionship in her life. Isabella was never one to have a large posse around, but she was starting to feel lonely in the moments that she wasn’t hard at work. Her friends from college had started their careers ages ago, and in the time Isabella was in medical school, they were off getting married and having kids.
There weren’t a lot of close friends from medical school because her over-competitive nature was off-putting for a lot of people. People were jealous of her knowledge, but she also didn’t try to be any less insufferable. She had a few study pals she could talk to on occasion, but she was mostly alone.
Jordan was one of her medical school acquaintances with whom she wanted to form a closer bond. For most of Isabella’s life, teachers and other adults always told her how brilliant and beautiful she was, and no one ever gave her constructive criticism. She liked Jordan because she wasn’t afraid to set her straight when she was being obnoxious. Jordan didn’t see her as a threat to her own success, so she liked spending time with Isabella, too. It was hard to be a young woman in a man-dominated profession, and it helped to have someone similar by her side.
In an attempt to build friendship, Isabella invited Jordan out for drinks one night after work. They went to a cocktail lounge far from the hospital, where they wouldn’t be at risk of running into anyone they knew. Jordan loved having the chance to gossip about everything that had happened while Isabella was away at the lab.
“Did I tell you about the time I walked in on Martin crying in the supply closet?” Jordan giggled into her martini.
“What? No, tell me everything!”
“Well, he’s such a know-it-all and he got in an argument with a nurse over the correct drug dosage to give his patient. He insists that he’s right, so he tattles on the nurse, and James set him straight. As it turned out, he was wrong, and it was too much for him to handle. I went to grab a fresh catheter from the closet later, and I found him sniveling in there.”
“Oh man, that is too good.” Isabella laughed. “What did he say when you caught him?”
“Not a thing,” Jordan said after a gulp of her drink. “He pretended like it never happened.”
Isabella laughed. She was sad she missed out on these moments.
“Speaking of keeping things secret,” Jordan pried, “When were you going to tell me about your secret affair with—”
“What?” Isabella exclaimed.
“—Justin?” she finished. “I’m kidding. That’s obviously a ridiculous rumor.”
Isabella’s heart was pounding. “Wait, what?”
“Oh, nothing,” Jordan said casually. “It was just a short-lived rumor that you were hooking up with Justin. Apparently, it didn’t make its way down to the lab.”
Isabella took a deep breath to steady herself. For a second, she thought her secret rendezvous with James was public knowledge. She took a long sip of her drink.
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” Jordan noted. “Honestly, everyone’s already forgotten about it. It probably helps that you already have the reputation of being a sexless try-hard,” she said matter-of-factly.
“Seriously?” She wasn’t upset by this since it wasn’t that inaccurate.
“Yeah, but don’t be offended. People around here still like you well enough.”
“How the hell do you know all of this?” Isabella asked.
“I’m friendly with a lot of the nurses. They are the eyes and ears of that hospital, and they truly run the show. It’s astonishing that more doctors don’t try to have good relationships with them.”
Isabella snickered. James was correct about his early assessment of the girls—they were the ones to look out for.
“I also forgot to tell you,” Jordan said, taking a second drink from the waiter. “I think James is seeing someone.”
Isabella’s heart dropped into her stomach. “Seeing someone?”
“Like, dating a girl,” Jordan clarified. “I was looking at a reference book in the office, and he was on the computer, searching for romantic restaurants in town. I think he’s got a girlfriend.”
Isabella took a drink. “Good for him,” she said nonchalantly.
“I’m not surprised,” Jordan continued. “If a hot surgeon can’t find love, what hope is there for the rest of us?”
Isabella felt sick. She didn’t want to be in a serious relationship with James, but she also didn’t want to be the other woman in an affair.
“I should be going,” Isabella said, looking at her watch. “I have to get up early tomorrow for surgery with Dr. Jensen.” It wasn’t completely true, but she needed a good
excuse to leave.
“Okay,” Jordan said, draining the rest of her drink. “This was fun. We need to go out more often.”
“Agreed,” Isabella said.
Isabella left the bar and thought about driving over to James’s house right then to confront him. However, as she soon remembered, she had no idea where he lived. In fact, she didn’t know anything about him. For all she knew, he could be married with four kids.
The next morning, she purposefully left her apartment later than usual. She didn’t want to run into James. Not today.
When she opened her locker, there was a box in there with a note attached.
You said you needed a new one of these. You can thank me later. –J
She opened the thin box to reveal a new, state-of-the-art laptop.