Chapter 38 Zeth #2
Lacey sits on the bed looking anxious as I hurry off to get into my scrubs before nearly late transforms into actually late.
Everyone thinks the interns are under the most pressure to perform, but that’s not true.
It’s just as easy to get booted from the residency program if you’re behind in your work.
Being tardy is kind of frowned upon. As is bringing a twenty-six-year-old woman who needs constant babysitting to work with you.
I make it through rounds, on time thankfully, and I see the patients who have been admitted on my day off.
Punctured lung. Congenital heart defect.
Septicemia. Everything is serious today.
Serious enough that I have to spend a considerable amount of time with each patient, assessing their progress and filling out the necessary paperwork for their records and meds.
It’s midday by the time I finally get the chance to lock myself in the bathroom and text Zeth.
Me: Your friends followed me to work this morning.
A minute passes before the phone chimes in my hand.
Zeth, Rcv’d 12:48 pm
What happened?
Me: Nothing. They just followed us. Parked out front. What do you mean, what happened? Is something going to *happen*?
Zeth, Rcv’d 12:51
Doubtful.
And then…
Zeth, Rcv’d 12:51
You okay?
I should tell him the truth: No, I’m not okay!
But that wouldn’t serve any real purpose.
Plus, for some reason, I don’t want to look weak in front of him.
If I admit to being frightened of his thug business colleagues, then it feels the same as admitting I’m frightened of him.
And no way am I admitting that. He knows I am, but I’ll never own up to it.
I’m in the middle of typing a long, strongly worded text back to him when the phone starts ringing in my hand. I pick up, frowning.
“What?”
“You didn’t reply. You told me you were being watched. When I ask you if you’re okay, you answer, Sloane,” he reprimands me in his deep, gravel-filled voice. “Bad things will happen otherwise.”
“I was replying to—urgh!” I don’t even bother. “What can you do about these guys eating donuts outside the hospital?”
“Nothing.” He sounds completely unconcerned.
“What? They’re your boss’s men, right? Don’t you get along with any of these guys?”
That makes him laugh—a rumble that teases its way into my ear and makes me shiver. “We tend to keep out of each other’s way. Charlie prefers it like that.”
“Well, what am I supposed to do if they follow me home when I’m done here?” The thought of going home and sitting in that big house on the hill with only Lacey for protection isn’t exactly a reassuring one.
“You’re gonna be fine,” he tells me. “I got boys looking after you. Besides, they’re just watching. If one of them breaks into your house, just stab them.”
Just stab them? My mouth falls open. “I don’t go around stabbing people!”
“Got a gun?”
“No!”
“Then you can’t really shoot them instead, can you?”
I pinch the bridge of my nose between index finger and thumb, sitting down heavily on the closed toilet lid. “Zeth, can you please just get back here as soon as possible. Please.”
“Anyone would think you needed me,” he says in a low, silky tone. I have shivers again. All over my body.
“I don’t!”
“Well, I need you.” The tenor of his voice slips into a vocal range I’ve never heard from him before.
It’s so deep and rough that my whole body starts to burn.
“Next time I see you, I’m introducing you to a few friends from the bag.
I’m getting fucking hard just thinking about it.
Fuck. There’s one toy in that bag that I think you like almost as much as I do. ”
He’s talking about the knife, I know he is. I swallow thickly, shaking my head, trying to push all memories of the last time he used it on me out of my mind. He makes that really hard when he continues talking.
“I wanna slide my hands up those thighs, Sloane. I wanna tear your clothes from your body and make you tremble. I want to dig my fingers and my teeth into your skin and make you scream my name. You want that, too, huh?”
Cold sweat pushes out of my pores, making my skin prickle.
I’m a visual person. Say something to me and I instantly imagine it—and at this exact moment in time I find myself visualizing Zeth’s impressively big cock straining against his jeans, begging to be freed.
I clear my throat, closing my eyes. “That isn’t exactly a practical thing to want right now. ”
“What about me screams practical to you?” His voice dips in volume again, so that it’s one level above a whisper. It has a flustering effect on me. “Where are you right now?” he asks.
“In the bathroom.”
“Anyone else in there with you?”
The question seems like a sensible one. A question any normal person would ask if you were discussing mob bosses, being followed, and stabbing people to death. I duck my head, looking underneath the stall dividers. No feet. No one standing at the washbasins, either. “No. No one else,” I confirm.
But with his next words, it becomes obvious that Zeth isn’t concerned about people overhearing information from our conversation. “Good. Put your hand down your pants for me, angry girl.”
“What?”
“Do it. Put your right hand down your pants for me. I want to hear you come.”
Good God above. “I am not masturbating in a public bathroom! You’re crazy if you think I’m doing that!”
Zeth makes a pleasant growling sound on the other end of the phone. “I’m not asking, Sloane. I’m telling. Touch. Yourself. Now.”
“No!”
Zeth seems confused by my refusal. “Would you be saying no to me if I was standing in front of you?”
I think on that for a second, imagining it playing out in my head.
If he were standing in front of me in this toilet cubicle, I’d do pretty much anything he told me to.
Goddamn him. I don’t say anything, which makes him chuckle.
“I’ll make you a deal.” He breathes heavily down the phone.
“If you slip your hand down those prissy blue scrubs of yours and you’re not already wet for me, then you can hang up the phone. ”
He loves doing this. Turning my own body against me.
But not this time. I huff into my phone, smug that I’m about to prove him wrong.
I could just tell him I’ve done it and laugh haughtily as I hang up, but that won’t work.
But he’d know. “Fine!” My hand slides down inside the waistband of my scrubs, but over the top of my panties—no need to go that far.
The smile falls off my face when I realize I’m not only wet for him, but I’ve soaked all the way through my thin cotton underwear.
“Middle finger first, Sloane,” Zeth rasps into the phone. He doesn’t even ask if he won our deal. He just knows he has. The bastard. I screw my eyes tightly shut, kicking myself.
“I don’t have time. I have patients to see.”
“You’re catering to my patience right now,” he informs me darkly. “I wanna hear it in your voice, Sloane. I wanna hear every single agonizing second that you’re toying with yourself, wishing that your fingers were my cock.”
“You’re very full of yourself, you know that?” My breathlessness doesn’t do much to make me sound confident.
He tuts down the phone. “Use your middle finger. Slide it inside yourself and tell me that’s not exactly what you’re thinking. Wishing for. My dick, slamming into you. Do it now, Sloane.”
I want to laugh. I want to hang up the phone and go on my rounds and forget about this stupid demand he’s making of me.
But I also want to do it. Zeth doesn’t say anything further, but I can hear his laden, heavy breathing still on the line.
I spend thirty seconds battling with myself.
This is exactly like the situation he engineered back in his richly decorated apartment.
He’s trying to make me reach this decision by myself.
To make me see it’s actually what I want.
I already know it is, so why am I fighting it?
That Pippa-sounding voice whispers in my ear. Because you don’t know him. And what you do know is terrifying. But it’s the last two years of my life that have been terrifying. At least I know for a certainty what and who he is.
I slip my panties to one side and press my finger into my center, gasping quietly. I’m so wet, so turned on. I’ve never felt this way when I’ve done this by myself. But I’m not alone now, am I. Zeth might as well be guiding my hand with his own.
“Good girl, Sloane.” He must have heard me gasp, or he’s using some sort of that strange psychic power that he’s thus far kept hidden. “Is your clit swollen?”
I shut my eyes, trying not to feel absolutely lost and embarrassed. “Yeah. It is.”
“Rub it for me.” I do. I work my fingers back and forth over the slick flesh between my legs, fighting to keep my breath even. “Does it feel good?”
“Uh-huh.” I gasp as a ripple of heat shivers up my spine, burning my ear tips and scorching my face. My lips tingle like crazy. I bite the lower one in an attempt to disperse the sensation, but it only makes it worse. I sigh deeply.
“That’s it. Don’t hold your breath, angry girl.” Zeth’s deeply resonating voice is hypnotic now, working into my subconscious. It feels like a physical presence in itself, sending shooting relays of pleasure around my body. “Take your shirt off.”
I stop what I’m doing and comply, pushing all thought of objection out of my head.
No point now. I yank off my scrubs top and my tee underneath, letting the clothes drop to the floor between my legs.
It isn’t cold, but I shiver as I shrug out of my bra straps.
My nipples are already tightly drawn buds, so sensitive that the still air against them almost hurts.
“Squeeze your breasts. Imagine my hands,” Zeth orders. “My mouth.”
Squeeze my breasts? That’s not something I do when I’m on my own.
I never really have. I always reasoned that it wouldn’t be the same as a guy doing it, but now when I lightly trace my fingertips across my goose-bumped skin, I am imagining him.
I feel the heat of his breath as he stoops to suck one nipple and then the other into his mouth. My own breath catches again.
“Good. That’s right,” he encourages me. “Put me on speakerphone. You’re gonna need two hands for this.”
I fumble with the phone, hitting the speaker icon and setting the phone down on top of the pile of clothes at my feet. I’m already too lost to think about what I’m doing. I’m using my own discretion now, touching and stroking where I see fit. I’m panting, too. Lost to madness.
“Now. Slide your fingers inside.” Zeth’s voice is rougher than normal, and that’s saying something.
I obey him immediately, slipping first my middle and then my index finger into my pussy.
I inhale sharply, the pressure warm and tight and blissful.
The forbidden pitch of his words works its magic over me when he commands, “Fuck yourself for me, Sloane. Do it. Fuck yourself hard.”
I can’t prevent the moans and soft gasps that escape my mouth as I work my fingers inside myself, imagining him on top of me, his rock-hard cock pulsing in and out of me, the sublime burn of his rough stubble on my sensitive skin.
He breathes words into the phone, growling and hissing out his approval as I grow louder and louder.
I can’t focus on what he’s saying, though.
Soon, a tightening, fizzing sensation grips me.
It happens suddenly. A wall of heat crashes through me like whitewater smashing into the wall of a dam, simultaneously rising upward and dragging me down with it.
“Holy… FUCK!” The curse rips out of me like a plea for help. My chest heaves as I try to catch my breath, up and down, up and down.
Zeth’s lazy, amused laughter echoes around the narrow cubicle. “Sounds like you enjoyed that, angry girl.”
“Fuck you,” I pant, only half meaning it.
And then I hear something that makes me freeze in place: a toilet flush. Zeth is silent for a moment and then he says, “Let me guess. That wasn’t you.”
I sit up straight, slapping my hands over my mouth. Zeth just starts laughing. I snatch up the phone and hit the big red end call button, feeling all my blood rush to my cheeks.
Holy. Fucking. Shit.
A stall door opens. Not the one right next to me.
The one on the very end. A tap squeaks, and the sound of rushing water fills the bathroom.
Whoever it is hurriedly washes their hands and then rushes out of the bathroom.
I grab up my clothes and dress myself frantically.
I need to find out who the hell that was! No. Nooooo, no, no. Fuck!
I hastily wash my own hands, and then dash out of the bathroom, chest now heaving more from horror than the orgasm I just experienced.
The corridor bustles with nurses, doctors, and members of the public.
Members of the fucking public! I don’t know what’s worse, the thought of a colleague having just heard that or the poor, unsuspecting family member of one of my patients.
My shame becomes absolute when Oliver Massey saunters down the hallway toward me, grinning.
He holds up his hand, grinning at me. Without thinking, I respond, giving him a high five as he passes.
He raises an eyebrow at me as he continues on his way.
“Scrubs are inside out, Romera,” he says, winking. “What have you been up to?”