“Not now?” I glanced at her, hoping to read some truth in her eyes before I heard the deflection in her words. “Or not ever?”
She held my gaze for a long moment. Long enough that it surprised me she wasn’t looking over her shoulder to make sure no one noticed. “I don’t know.”
“Then I’ll wait,” I said. “Until you figure it out.”
Ten
Whitney
Transplant Surgery Rotation:
Rule Number Seven: Keep it classy.
I threadedmy fingers through his dark hair as I pressed the side of my face into the pillow. I couldn’t watch. I was so close and we’d just started. I needed this to last.
“Slow down.” My grip on his hair tightened. “Too much.”
“You can take it.” His words rumbled over my clit.
“I can’t.” My entire body pulled tight as I arched into the pressure of his fingers, his tongue. “I can’t, Henry, it’s too much.”
“It’s not even nearly enough.” He pressed his teeth to my inner thigh, nipping just enough to make everything inside me twist and coil. “It will never be enough, Whit.”
I blinked and I was on my knees. Henry’s arm was banded around my torso, flattening me to his broad chest as he pounded into me. His free hand moved between my legs, circling me in a lazy rhythm that didn’t match the merciless way he fucked me and only served to make me shake with need.
He kissed a path from the ball of my shoulder up to the tender spot behind my ear. “Come here,” he growled, turning my face to him. “I’ll never get enough of you.”
Our lips met in an urgent, imperfect kiss and a great ripple of energy moved through me, like I was taking my first real breath after being held underwater. It was a gracious kind of hurt, rolling through me and spilling everywhere, all around me, until I couldn’t draw a line between the before and after. I was the energy, the ache, the goodness that swelled until my mind gave up on making sense of it all.
“Never,” he whispered to my lips. “Don’t you dare forget it.”
I reached back, wanting to fill my hands with his skin. To tell him in the only way I knew how that I wouldn’t forget—and though it scared the shit out of me, I didn’t think I’d be able to get enough of him either.
All I could find was a sweat-damped pillow wedged between my legs and the most hysterical need to orgasm I’d ever experienced. Blindly fumbling in my nightstand, I settled on the first toy I could find. I didn’t care. I just needed to relieve this overwhelming pain immediately.
But I couldn’t.
The minutes ticked by as I tried to get myself back to the point in my dream where I fell apart while Henry kissed me, but I couldn’t seem to reach it. I couldn’t reach anything beyond a slight flutter that left me feeling like I was braced on a precipice, my whole body fighting to hold on when all I wanted was to let go.
I tried other toys. My fingers. Even the pillow, god help me.
I ended up in the shower and nearly power-washed my clit off. I found some relief though it came mostly from the freezing cold water shocking my nervous system so hard that it forgot about getting me off for a second.
The apartment was quiet and relatively clean when I headed into the kitchen. Nice change of pace from Brie’s usual calamity. I started some toast and skimmed through my emails in an attempt to ignore the throb between my legs.
I was also ignoring Henry’s role in that throb.
It wasn’t like I needed a reminder about the night we’d spent together. Every time I looked at him, a highlight reel played in my head. But dreaming about him—aboutus—was brutally unfair. I knew we couldn’t go there again. I didn’t need such vivid reminders of what I was missing.
Since I was too edgy to answer emails, I put my phone down and ate my toast at the sink.
I knew it was rather feral to eat over the sink, but I liked looking out this window in the morning. There was something about the way the sun slanted in over the brownstones that I found beautiful. And I couldn’t risk running into Henry at my coffee shop again.
A spider had been spinning a web for months and now it stretched from the far end of the balcony railing to the neighboring building. I wasn’t sure I had the kind of faith to create something that fragile. I didn’t know if I could keep going, day after day, knowing everything I’d worked for could be lost in a storm. That I could try as hard as I wanted but that didn’t mean the things I’d built would last. That I’d always find myself between immovable objects, filling the gaps as best I could to hold it all together.
I glanced through social media as I brushed the crumbs from my blouse. I only followed friends, mostly from med school and residency, and bakeries. I wanted to see everyone’s babies with their toothless grins and I wanted to hear about the advancements in cake. There was nothing else I needed from socials.
But today—which was already on the rocks—the first thing I saw was a post from my sister. And she was in New York City with a dozen friends.
