The door closes, and I slide onto the floor, still shaking. His words ring in my ears, and I know with terrifying clarity that I am running out of time… And I don’t know how to fix this.
The city went to sleep hours ago. And I’m late. Not disastrously late, but late enough that my internal clock cringes a little with every second it ticks past midnight.
This is what happens when I try to do something domestic. It sounded simple enough in my head.A home-cooked meal for Blake.Except, somewhere between the stove and reality, everything went sideways because I don’t cook.At all.I can operate surveillance systems, make decisions under fire, and snipe a guy from five hundred yards practically in my sleep. But put me in a kitchen, and suddenly, I’m incapable of working under pressure or reading instructions.
Cooking her dinner took longer than it should have. Way longer. Apparently, you can’t just turn the heat up to make it go faster. At least not unless you want charbroiledeverything. I learned that lesson the hard way. After watching me with the long-suffering patience of a man who was physically pained at the chaos I was creating, Damon stepped in.
The meal I was cooking was apparently no longer salvageable, and he had to start from scratch. I hovered uselessly, holding lids and stirring when instructed, as I checked the clock every few minutes, realizing there was no way I was going to make it to our date on time.
Parked in front of the hospital, my stride is a little too fast as I cut through the handful of vendors near the entrance who stay open late for the hospital staff. The food in my bag is enough, but my feet stop anyway when I reach an elderly man at a corner stall, closing up for the night, buckets of flowers half-covered with canvas.
“You still open?” I ask, and he looks up at me with a tired squint.
“For you, I open again.”
I grin, pulling back the canvas and crouching to scan what’s left. I settle on a bundle of wildflowers bundled in twine, with the beautifully vivid colors bleeding together. “These.” I lift them from the bucket.
“Good choice.” He nods. “Those are resilient and stubborn.” I pay him more than he asks and jog the rest of the way to the hospital. When I reach the entrance, I check my watch again.Fuck… I’m really late.Inside, I head straight to the nurses’ station. It’s controlled chaos—phones ringing, keyboards clacking, and tired voices laced with dark medical humor.
I spot Blake immediately. She is leaning against the counter, arms folded tight across her chest, talking to a nurse with dark curls and sharp eyes. “Hey.” I approach, lifting the flowers in a peace offering for my late arrival.
She looks up with a smile. But her smile looks different… muted. Like someone turned her dimmer switch down. “Hi,” she greets me, breathily like the word is caught in her throat.
“For you.” I hand over the bouquet, and her fingers brush mine as she takes them. “I’m sorry I’m late.”
“These are beautiful. Thank you.”
The dark haired woman clears her throat and reaches for the gift. “I’m Zahra. And I’m going to put these in water, so I can be… literally anywhere else.”
Blake nods with a fake smile before looking at me. Her shoulders are tight with tension, and she keeps rubbing anxiously at her wrist. Keeping my voice light as I quickly study her. “You okay, Doc?”
“Yeah,” she answers quickly.Too quickly. “Just a rough shift.”
I dip my head, accepting her lie. “You hungry?”
“Starving.” She lets the charge nurse know that she is taking a dinner break. Lightly gripping the front of my shirt, she gives a gentle tug. “Come on.”
She leads me around the corner, past patient rooms, to the staff lounge. When she pushes open the door, she freezes immediately at the nurses crowded around the table and an elderly doctor sprawled on the couch, his mouth open and snoring softly. One of the nurses looks up and says, “We can make room.”
“That’s okay.” Blake steps backward, letting the door fallshut. Turning to look over her shoulder, she shares, “I know somewhere else we can go.”
I follow her without question, down a maze of unoccupied hallways. Unlike the rest of the hospital, it’s so quiet here that our footsteps echo in the almost silence. She leads us into a stairwell, the door swinging shut with a heavy thud, sealing us in the quiet space. The air in here is dusty and stale, but it’s private. “No one ever comes back here. We can eat uninterrupted.”
Sitting on the steps, we are close enough that our thighs brush. The touch sends a jolt of excitement straight through me. I set my bag down at our feet and unpack her dinner. I pass her the Tupperware, a bottle of grape juice—in lieu of wine because she’s working—and silverware, before zipping up my bag. She glances at it and then at me. “Where’s yours?”
“I ate earlier with the guys.” I reach up, my thumb tracing her jaw and coaxing her gaze back to mine. Leaning in, I press a soft, wet kiss against her lips, tasting the lingering taste of hospital coffee on them. I tease the drawstring of her scrub bottoms when I pull back a hair. “But trust me, I still have plenty of room for dessert.”
Her eyes darkening, she exhales my name. “Jagger…”
“Blake…” I teasingly mock her admonishing tone.
Taking the still-unopened container of food from her hands, I set it a couple of steps behind us before gripping her waist and lifting. I stand her between my knees and gently pull at the string, loosening the bow further. “You said no one comes back here, and that you’re having a rough day,” I murmur, my fingertips running alongthe elastic of her panties, the lilac fabric soft against my skin. Her breath hitches as I continue to draw a line where the fabric rests against the skin. My voice low and gravelly with want, I ask, “Can I make you feel better, Doc?”
Her head bobs in a quick, jerky motion as her eyes widen.
“I can’t hear you,” I softly growl, my thumb pressing into the hollow of her hip.
“Yes, Daddy.” The words are barely a whisper, but they cause my cock to jerk against my zipper.
