Her teeth sank into her bottom lip as she glanced away. I couldn’t begin to guess what she was thinking, but I wanted to believe she was right there on that edge with me, driving a knuckle into the same fucking bruise and wondering if it would keep on hurting.
She trailed me to the door, but stopped me with a hand on my forearm. We stared at each other for a second, her lip still snared between her teeth and the walls closing in around us. She squeezed my arm. I heard her swallow.
I wasn’t sure who made the first move. It was possible we moved at the same time and it was possible that such details weren’t relevant when shoving a woman up against a door and kissing her the way I’d been thinking about for months. Really, the only thing that mattered was the way she immediately sighed my name against my lips.
I scooped her up, bringing her legs around my waist and not caring whether we broke down the fucking door in the process because I was not about to let her go. Not now. Not yet.
I rocked between her legs and we cried out together. Here we were, right at the edge. Maybe a little too close.“Whitney.”
She slipped her hand into my shirt, sliding along my shoulders and settling at the back of my neck. “Don’t stop yet. Just one more minute. Okay?”
I kissed my way down her jaw and back to her lips. “You can have all the minutes you want.”
She locked her legs tighter around me. “We can’t.”
“Why the fuck not? It’s just you and me, Whit.”
“You have no idea the amount of pressure I’m under right now,” she whispered against my cheek.
“Then tell me,” I said between kisses.
“My whole life is about professional standards and ethics.” She raked a hand through my hair as she said this. “And I can’t be the attending sleeping with a resident. I can’t. Iwon’t.”
“Then we won’t sleep. Easy fix.”
“We can’t do this,” she breathed. “Not yet. Four more weeks. It’s just twenty-eight days.”
I leaned back just far enough to catch her eyes. “I’m really fucking pleased I’m not the only one counting down to the end of this rotation.” She blinked at me, saying nothing. And that was when I knew I wouldn’t shake her. I couldn’t. And while a good part of me admired her for it, another part of me cared only about making sure her neighbors knew my name before the end of the night. My hips still rocking against her, I said, “Then we’ll get through these four weeks and then figure it out. Together. Can you let me do that?”
She pulled her hand from my shirt and waved toward the kitchen. “What do you think I’m doing? What do you think all of this is?”
“I don’t know,” I cried. “You don’t tell me what you’re thinking too often.”
“I invited you to my home on a Sunday night, Henry.Alone,” she snapped. “What the hell does that sound like to you?”
“I thought I knew what it was and then you handed me a chicken to crack open!”
“Because you need the practice,” she replied.
“Message received.” I brought a hand to her face and tucked her hair over her ears. I brushed my lips over hers one more time. “We’ll figure it out. Okay? Trust me on this.”
I would’ve set her down then. Disentangled our limbs, pried ourselves apart, and thought about sewing up a chicken until my jeans fit a little more easily. But Whit held me tight, tugging me closer until I had no choice but to get lost kissing her.
It felt like the elevator all over again. Back in Tahoe. That first kiss when all I could think about was consuming every inch of her until I knew her better than I knew myself. When I’d forced myself to shove past all reminders that I was moving to Boston the next day and that my life was a train lurching from station to station though never quite stopping long enough to grab hold of anything permanent. When I wanted her to rip me to shreds just so I could do the same to her.
I took a tentative step away from the door. We’d continue this conversation on the couch. Same principles, softer surfaces.
“Henry,” she whispered.
“Shhh. We’re just talking.”
I felt her smile against my lips, and for a second I had a lot more hope than I walked in here with.
But then her phone rang and she dropped her forehead to my shoulder with an angry groan. “Fuck.That’s the hospital.”
Thirteen
Whitney
