As I ended the call, I realized something felt different. The howling wind had been so constant, it had almost become background noise, but now it had died away. And there was no movement outside the windows: the snow had stopped. I ran over to the main doors to get a first look at what the blizzard had left.
Drifts were waist-deep along the sidewalks and cars were buried up to the tops of their tires. As I got closer, I triggered the automatic sliding doors and a blast of air rushed in. It was cold like I’d never felt it: it actually sent me stumbling back a few steps in shock. God, the air felt like ice water, it soaked right through your clothes! I wrapped my arms around myself and ventured as far as the doors.
Snow had drifted up against them, almost hip-deep: we’d have to shovel it aside to get patients in and out. I tried poking it with my sneaker and I couldn’t believe how thick and dense it was, as much ice as snow. The hills and forests that led up to the mountain were covered, too, the branches of the pine trees laden with blankets of white.
Icicles hung from every roof and windows and windshields were frosted with ice. Some of the strings of fairy lights that lit up Main Street at night were hanging limply down, their wires snapped by the weight of the ice that had formed on them. No wonder the phone lines were down. We were lucky we still had power.
Shivering, I stepped back to let the doors close and went to find Corrigan. When I couldn’t find him anywhere in the ER, I pushed open the door of the locker room and—
I was looking at glistening, tanned abs. My gaze slowed to a crawl as it rode each hard ridge: up and down and up...and then it locked onto a drop of water that was sliding down the hard valley of his centerline, following it past his navel, down to his—
“For fuck’s sake, Beckett, in or out,” said the very naked Corrigan.
Without thinking, I stepped forward and the door swung closed behind me. We were maybe six feet apart. He was still dripping wet and steam from the shower was wrapped like a lover around his body, every inch of tan skin gleaming. All the parts of him I’d dreamed about—fantasized about—were right there, perfectly displayed. The chest, so wide and strong, his curving pecs crested by pink nipples the size of silver dollars. The upper arms, even bigger than they’d looked beneath his scrubs, his tattoos shining as if the ink was still wet. I saw what the snake tail was, now: it led up to a staff and wound around it before turning its head back to glare at the viewer. A Caduceus, the symbol of medicine, but styled more like a biker tattoo. And he really did have circular scars that might be from bullets, one on his left pec and two low down on his side, and a long, thin knife scar across his abdomen.
His wide shoulders and tight waist formed a V, an arrow pointing downward, and my eyes obeyed. They found the deep line of his adonis belt and followed it along, past his thickly-muscled thigh, to—
My fantasy had been eerily accurate. Big. Thick and long, the head satiny and—
I forced my eyes up to his face. He gave me the wickedest grin I’d ever seen.
I stared at the ceiling. “I just came to give you your phone back.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him nodding, utterly relaxed in his nakedness. “Throw me a towel, would you?”
I grabbed a towel off the pile and tossed it over to him, then tried to keep my eyes on his face while he toweled himself off. But my gaze seemed to keep drifting down, following his hands as they rubbed the little jewels of moisture from his chest...his abs...his—
I jerked my eyes away and saw that wolfish grin again. He turned side-on to me as he dried his ass, his hard cheeks dimpled. I couldn’t stop thinking about my fantasy, how my fingers had dug into those cheeks, my thumbs right in those dimples….
He lazily pulled on a pair of jockey shorts and then swaggered towards me, a stripper teasing the shy girl at a bachelorette party. I think he was expecting me to blush and hurry away, and that would have been the end of it.
But something happened.
With each step he took, I could see his eyes changing, the heat rising in him. And the look he gave me rooted me to the spot: I couldn’t run. The mood began to shift. Three steps from me and it had become only partly a game. Two steps. One step. And suddenly, it wasn’t a game at all.