What is That and What is it Doing #2
Bailey gave the man in question a sideways glance, and to his horror, he made eye contact, the kind that clung.
Oh, those hazel eyes did not get any less appealing when they were staring at Bailey like they were trying to devour his soul .
Sarree cleared her throat, and Bailey jerked his attention back to the matter at hand.
Okay, then, all things considered, if Junior G-Man here could promise his brother would get some rest and someplace comfortable to stay, and somebody to bring him back the next day for a follow-up, he was pretty sure that would be a better bet than a night in the hospital.
He glanced up at Dean Royal sourly. “Okay, then,” he said. “Let me actually see the patient. Then I can buzz the pharmacy to start his prescriptions, and we’ll see what we can do.”
A HALF hour later, after one more visit with the grumpy but cooperative Val Royal, Bailey stepped out of the rather crowded room and took a breath.
The ER had settled down to the late-afternoon quiet stage, and he wondered if he could hit Sarree up for that two hours of sleep he so desperately needed.
Without conscious thought, his imagination summoned up an arresting pair of hazel eyes. Val’s eyes had been darker, he thought randomly, and the face a little more square. The man had been handsome and well-built, but something about Junior G-Man’s swagger seemed to be yanking Bailey’s chain.
As though conjured by thought alone, the man himself was suddenly at Bailey’s elbow.
“Thank you,” he said. “He’ll do much better with McCauley taking care of him.”
“Are they an item?” Bailey asked and then fought the temptation to kick himself. For fuck’s sake, this was Texas , and you just did not ask another man if his brother was gay.
Dean Royal didn’t seem put off in the least. “Here’s hoping,” he said with feeling. “Val’s a grumpy bastard. He needs some softening.”
Bailey started down the hall, relieved when Sarree nodded at him, pointed at the clock, and held up three fingers.
Bailey blinked. “Three?” he asked out loud.
“Not a minute less,” she told him.
“ You are definitely on the Christmas card list,” he told her, and his reward was the faintest crack of a smile.
“So what do I have to do to get added to the Christmas card list?” Dean Royal asked at his elbow, and Bailey realized the man had followed him quietly as he headed for “the crib”—the spare room full of cots where doctors on call or pulling doubles went to catch a few winks.
“Let me sleep?” Bailey offered, suddenly disconcerted.
“ Let you sleep or help you sleep?” Dean asked, his voice falling to a purr.
Bailey’s eyes popped way open. For a moment all he felt was outrage. “I am not that easy!” he protested as he took the last left down the corridor that led to the crib.
Dean cocked his head. “I didn’t say you were easy,” he evaded. “I said I could help you sleep.”
“Yeah, but you didn’t mean with Reiki, did you?” Bailey demanded, and he saw the corners of Dean’s mouth turn up right before he pounced.
One minute he was standing at the door to the small bunkroom, his hand on the handle, glaring at Dean Royal in irritation, and the next, Dean was pressing him back against the door, hand fumbling for the handle, his mouth so hot on Bailey’s that he thought he was going to explode.
The door opened, and they tumbled into the room. Bailey had enough presence of mind to glance around and make sure it was empty while Dean threw the bolt, and then Bailey was being kissed back against the bunk bed until he couldn’t move, even to sit on the lower bunk.
Dean’s hands were busy at the waist of his scrubs, and it turned out Bailey didn’t have to sit down. Dean squatted in front of him, dropped Bailey’s drawers, and….
“Oh God,” Bailey gasped.
Dean was licking him, pulling his mostly hard member into a hot, skilled mouth, and Bailey saw fireworks as he grew fully hard and Dean kept sucking. His hair was too short for Bailey to get a grip on it, so mostly all he could do was cradle Dean Royal’s skull and try to form words.
The words weren’t going well, but the blowjob was spectacular.
“Oh God,” Bailey gasped again, pulling his hand up to his mouth so he could groan into it without making too much noise.
Dean was really good, his mouth and tongue moving on his head, his hand gripping the shaft and pumping.
Not too hard—that was a mistake sometimes when passion erupted—but just hard enough.
Hard enough to make Bailey want more, to want to be lying, vulnerable, pants down, ass up, as this man plundered his body.
He wasn’t aware of spreading his thighs, but he must have, because he felt Dean’s spit-slickened finger probing, and God, that was all she wrote. Bailey grabbed the frame of the bunk bed with one hand and moaned into the other as his cock spat come and Dean Royal swallowed it down.
There was a heartbeat of silence, and Bailey stared down at Dean in shock. For his part, Dean gazed up Bailey’s body, a sort of irresistible smirk on his face as he wiped himself off on the inside of Bailey’s briefs.
“Uhm…,” Bailey managed behind his hand, and then Dean stood, pulled his hand off his mouth, and kissed him, gentler this time, nuzzling Bailey’s neck and his ears, making reassuring humming sounds in the back of his throat.
“Uhm…,” Bailey tried again.
“Do you have a card?” Dean asked, and Bailey blinked hard, trying to parse that.
“What?”
“Never mind.” Dean dipped his fingers into the pocket of Bailey’s scrub top and pulled out one of the cards Bailey carried to paperclip to pretty much everything—paperwork, receipts, drug prescriptions. “Is this your work cell or your home cell?”
“Work cell.”
“What’s your personal?”
Bailey rattled off his home cell number on automatic, and Dean pulled one of Bailey’s own ever-present pens from the same pocket from whence came the card and wrote it down quickly.
“Good boy,” Dean murmured, putting the pen back and thrusting the card into his pocket.
“Why’d I just do that?” Bailey asked, a terrible lassitude stealing over him because that’s what happened when you hadn’t slept for forty-eight hours and somebody sucked your brains out of your dick like it was a straw.
Dean patted his cheek gently. “So next time I’m in Texas,” he said softly. “You can return the favor.”
“Next time—”
Dean dropped quickly to the floor to pull up Bailey’s scrubs and tuck him in, giving his cock a loving little kiss before it was all tidied and put away.
Then with a little push in the right place, he had Bailey sitting down on the lower bunk before he swung Bailey’s legs sideways and onto the bunk, leaving Bailey no choice but to put his head down on the pillow.
With a last fussy movement, Dean Royal pulled the afghan some intern had crocheted and left in the crib for her colleagues over Bailey’s shoulders and tucked him in.
“You need your sleep, Dr. Dodge,” Bailey’s own Junior G-Man whispered. “But I sure am grateful for a quickie in the crib.”
With that he kissed Bailey’s cheek and then… nuzzled his temple.
“I’m HIV Negative,” Bailey mumbled, probably a day late and a dollar fucking short.
“I’m on a prophylactic protocol,” Dean told him with a little pat on his hip. “But it was sweet of you to think about it.”
Bailey’s eyes were at half-mast, but he still managed to say, “Are you really coming back to Texas?”
“Yeah.” Dean smoothed his fingers through the hair at Bailey’s temple. “I know a really hot doctor here, and I’d like to know him better.”
And then he was gone, and Bailey fell asleep so fast that when he woke up, he wondered if it was a dream.
It wasn’t until he stumbled back onto the ER floor, a giant mug of coffee in his hand, that he thought to check his phone.
You haven’t seen the last of me, Dr. Dodge.
Bailey smiled, knowing the anonymous texter had to be Dean Royal but absolutely positive what had happened in the crib was just a really amazing interlude, never to be repeated again.
THREE WEEKS later, while stumbling up the stairs to his apartment after another double shift, he found Dean sitting on his hardbound suitcase, leaning against the wall in the foyer next to his door, his arm in a sling and his eyes closed as though in sleep.
As Bailey careened to a halt in front of his own damned apartment, those amazing hazel eyes opened, and Dean gave that dead sexy smirk that Bailey couldn’t believe turned his key.
“Dean?”
“Heya, Dr. Dodge. Aren’t you going to invite me in?”
“Did you get shot ?” Bailey asked, a little bit of panic skittering through his blood.
“Cool your jets. It’s only a sprain.” Dean accepted his hand up, and Bailey unlocked his door and paused.
“How did you even find me?” he asked, as though this had just occurred to him.
Dean rolled his eyes. “FBI,” he said, and Bailey grimaced.
“Yeah. Dumb question. Come in.”
Dean did, sparing a glance around, taking in the cream-colored couch and the cream-colored cat and the ebony paneled tables, bookshelves, and dining set—and the bright ocean and wheat field blown-up photographs on his walls to give the small area a feeling of space, as well as green-and-rose-colored throws on the couch.
“Nice,” he said, with a tilt of his head that indicated he meant it. “What’s the cat’s name?”
“Abominable,” Bailey said, sparing a pat for the animal, who spared less than a glance for Bailey. “Bumble for short.”
Dean let out a surprising bark of laughter, and Bailey spent a moment staring at the smooth column of his throat and the momentary relaxation of a face that always seemed to be held stiffly at attention.
“Dean,” he said after the laugh faded, “what are you doing here?”
Dean held up his good hand and cupped Bailey’s cheek with it. “You,” he purred, that suddenly sexually dominant side popping out again, “owe me something, Dr. Bailey Dodge. I’ve come to collect.”
His mouth on Bailey’s was a little less surprising this time, but no less commanding. Bailey fell into the kiss without a net and allowed Dean to push him back toward the bedroom.
They’d have to talk this time, right? This couldn’t be a relationship already, could it? They needed to discuss what they were doing, how this was happening, what sort of affair this was, didn’t they?
People didn’t just have sex whenever one person was in town, right?
Right?