8. Lauren
8
LAUREN
I tried to focus. My God, did I try. But Dr. Park made my heart flutter every single time we were in the same room together. I was fine, handling it well, I thought, until that moment in the ER when he told me he'd have to order me to be silent if I kept showing off. I wasn't by any means showing off. I was simply diagnosing a patient, but I found out really quickly how much my quick thinking and experience turned him on. I also may or may not have flirted with him a little right then.
Now I struggled to follow what he was saying. We had no patients today, hadn't in forty-eight hours, either, which meant we'd been in the diagnostics office at a table watching videos and listening to Dr. Park lecture on rare and infectious diseases that he had encountered in his career thus far. As long as I could stay hooked on the topic, I was fine, but the minute I noticed the way his nose quirked to the right slightly, or the new strands of silver hair growing in his stubble on his chin, I was done.
"So, wrapping things up, do you guys have any questions?" he asked, and Ginny and Patrick both launched off into a round of questions I already knew the answers to. Dr. Cooper and Dr. Baine neither one had a lick of common sense, which was such a struggle for me and Dr. Holt when it came to differentials. Now and then, they got it right, but more often, they showed their lack of experience.
I chose to stare at my notebook which had more doodles and scribbles than actual notes. I used it as a healthy distraction from the handsome doctor teaching us. I didn't know how else to whittle away the time. At least when we were diagnosing patients, I didn’t have to think about the way Dr. Park's stubble scraped my chin when we kissed or how much I wanted to feel that same scraping of his stubble between my thighs.
"Alright, keep your pagers on tonight. We're on call. If you don't hear from me sooner, I'll see you all in the morning." At his pronouncement, everyone collected their things and stood. I was no different, slowly stacking my pens and notebook on top of my tablet.
Dr. Park headed into his office and sat down, and for a minute, I thought of staying here to ask him what the heck was going on between us, but I thought better of it. It was already bad enough as it was, forcing myself to forget his kisses as if they hadn't happened. Eventually, it would fade to a simmer and I wouldn't think about him anymore. I didn’t need the distraction from my job, either. If I screwed up and lost this gig, Jason and I would have to move and it would devastate him.
So I followed behind the group, but when I walked up to the elevator, the doors were already closing. Their chatter was friendly and happy, and I loved feeling like a part of the group, but I knew I didn’t belong there. I was years older than them, and they were all first-year interns. While I was closer in age to them, though, I had more in common with Dr. Park. We were both licensed doctors with experience. We both had war stories to tell and knew how crazy things could get very quickly.
I turned to look back at the office and noticed all the lights on the floor were off except Dr. Park's light. I was too far away to make him out now, but I knew he was there. An overwhelming urge to talk to him rose up again. He probably worried that I was going to report him for sexual harassment or something. The way he asked me not to say a word wasn't a direct order, and he couldn't actually order me to stay silent. But I knew it wasn't harassment. I'd wanted it as much as he had.
Besides, the heat between us was so obvious, I would be surprised if the other interns hadn't been suspicious already. I got flustered every time I looked at him. The only time I was able to maintain a straight face was if we were in an emergency situation with a patient who was in desperate need of help. I was horrible at hiding things like this.
The elevator dinged and the door slid open to greet me, but I didn’t move. I stared at the empty carriage and sighed. I had dated a few guys in my past and I'd had sex with a few of them, but I had never dated a man as old as Dr. Park. Besides being my boss and it being highly off limits, I didn't know if I'd even like it. Would he be the sort of guy to go to bed at eight p.m. while I sat up till midnight eating snacks alone? Or would we find out that he hated technology and thought the internet ruined the world and I was young enough to embrace it all for the good it could do?
Worse yet, what if I put myself out there because I thought we had something and Dr. Park was more principled than me? What if he laid the rule down that we were colleagues and shot me down and my heart got broken? Could I even show my face around work again?
I looked over my shoulder at the office light in the distance as the elevator doors slid shut again and the hum of the motor faded. What if Dr. David Park was everything I could ever have wanted? What if he was the man of my dreams and I missed out because I was afraid of rules and policies? And what if I never met a man who made my heart flutter like this again? Because it wasn't just that kiss that made my heart feel this way. I loved his mind, how he thought, how he could come up with answers to complex problems and made it look like child’s play.
I bolstered my courage and walked back toward the office. Nothing good ever came from running away from things. And being a Friday night, if we had an awkward conversation or it didn’t go the way I thought it might, I'd have the weekend to calm down and let things cool off. It wasn't like he could fire me for bringing this up. I could actually point out that he had ordered me to kiss him and that order was from a superior. I'd never turn him in, but it would be enough to keep my job, so I had almost no risk in speaking up now. I wanted to know what he actually thought, and with no one around, it was the perfect time.
When I walked into the diagnostics office, he didn't even look up. I walked quietly to the table and set my things down, and Dr. Park's eyes were glued on his laptop screen, though even in the reflection on the glass wall behind him, I couldn’t see what he was looking at. I didn’t really need to see it. I could tell it was something not safe for work based on the lust haze on his eyes. That got my motor running really fast.
I tapped on his door, and he looked up and jerked straighter in his seat, slamming the laptop shut as he ran a hand over his face. I almost chuckled a little when he waved me in, but I managed to hide that behind a smile and bit my lower lip to keep it from trembling.
"What's up, Dr. Newhouse?" He slid his laptop off the desk and put it into his messenger bag, and I took a few steps into his office, letting the door shut behind me.
"Uh, Dr. Park, I need to speak with you about something." My heart was pounding. My palms were drenched in sweat, and I thought based on the way I got lightheaded that I might pass out.
"Of course," he said, clearing his throat. But he was flustered, so much so that I saw him lick his lips at least three times. It looked like he wanted to stand up but couldn't, and I could only assume there was a bulge in his pants he was trying to hide. "What would you like to talk about?"
I stepped closer and recounted the way he had acted so boldly flirtatious with me only days ago. This quivering man had been caught off guard, and I found that highly arousing. I had some sort of pull over him that made me smile.
"Did you mean what you said when you told me you'd have to order me to be silent because my 'showing off' made your dick so hard you couldn’t work?" There… I'd said it, and now the ball was in his court. I was either turning him on or calling his bluff, and my gut needed to know what the heck was going on. Workplace infatuation or not, I definitely couldn’t keep working like this. The not knowing was killing me.
Dr. Park's head dropped and he sat there for a minute before answering. When he looked up at me, he was a changed man. The feral animal who had made that comment to me the other day was there in his eyes, searching me. It made goosebumps rise on my arms and butterflies stir in my belly. It also made something down south start to stir in me.
"I never say anything I don't mean." He sat there calmly and folded his hands in front of himself over his desk.
"So, what were you looking at on your laptop?" I asked, taking another step toward him. He meant it, that I did things to him. I figured that or he wouldn't have said those things to me, but just because I made him feel things didn’t mean he was willing to act on them. And it still didn’t mean there was anything more than mutual attraction. Plus there was the hurdle of the hospital's non-frat policy.
"You really want to know?" he asked, glancing down at his open messenger bag.
"Yes, I really want to know." My pulse thrummed past my eardrums, and I took another step toward him.
He blinked slowly and the beast came out, growling out of his throat. "It was porn. I found an actress who looks like you, and I was imagining you right here under my desk with those pretty pink lips of yours wrapped around my shaft as you look up at me."
My heart stopped and so did I. I didn't know what to expect, but I didn't expect this. "Would you order me to do that too?" I asked, not sure why I was even asking. There were huge risks involved in this. It was an HR nightmare. If it went badly, we'd be stuck working together after a breakup. What the heck was I thinking?
"I'll do one more. I want you to strip for me, right now."
"You what?" I asked. It was my turn to be flustered now. I glanced at the dark hallway and then back to him.
"Strip for me, now." He stood, and I saw what I'd done to him. It wasn't just a tent in his trousers. It was a frickin' circus big top. "You swore you'd follow my orders, so do it. I order you to strip."
My pussy burned and my groin clenched as he flicked his wrist in a gesture that demanded I heed his wishes. I was really going to do this? For my boss? Strip naked in front of him?
My God, I hoped I wouldn’t regret this come Monday morning.