Chapter 2
two
. . .
Mia
I have a list of things I should be doing right now.
Running to HR. Calling security. Remembering the six years of nursing school, the loans, the late nights studying, the career I’ve bled for.
Instead, I am sitting on the edge of Dr. Elias Thorne’s desk with his hand wrapped around the back of my neck and his mouth so close to mine I can taste the coffee on his breath, and all I can think is: holy shit, he wants me.
Not just wants. The word doesn’t cover what’s coming out of his mouth.
Breed. Claim. His baby. His ring. Phrases that belong in some dark romance novel, not in the sterile office of the most respected surgeon in the hospital.
Phrases that should send me sprinting down the hall to file a complaint so fast my shoes smoke.
Instead, my body is doing things I didn’t know it could do. My nipples are so hard they ache. There’s a throbbing between my thighs that’s getting wetter by the second. And when he called me “little one,” something in my chest caved in like a sandcastle at high tide.
“I should report you,” I whisper, and it sounds pathetic even to my own ears. Because my hands are gripping his forearms like I’m afraid he’ll let go, and my hips are shifting on the desk edge, grinding against the massive hard-on straining his scrubs.
“You should.” His thumb traces my lower lip, and I shudder. “But you won’t.”
He’s right. I won’t. Because the terror of destroying my career is currently tied in a dead heat with the molten need pooling low in my belly, and need is winning by a landslide.
Dr. Elias Thorne has noticed me. Not just noticed—watched. For months. Every blush. Every lip bite. Every time I’ve stood too close during rounds and caught the clean, sharp scent of his cologne. He’s been counting. Collecting. Hungering.
And I had no idea. I thought I was invisible to him.
Just another wide-eyed nursing student trailing after the brilliant attending, tripping over my own feet whenever he fixed those ice-gray eyes on me.
I’ve spent six months convinced the man barely registered my existence beyond the occasional correction of my technique.
Turns out he’s been memorizing the curve of my waist.
“I’ve never—” I start, then stop. My inexperience hangs between us, obvious and embarrassing.
“I know.” His voice gentles, just a fraction.
That surgeon’s precision turned to something softer, though no less intense.
“I’ve watched you with patients. The way you touch them.
Gentle. Careful. No man has ever gotten his hands on you.
” His grip on the back of my neck tightens. “No man except me.”
And then he’s kissing me.
Not the tentative, nervous kiss of a man who’s unsure.
This is the kiss of someone who has been planning this for months.
His mouth is hot, demanding, his tongue sweeping into me with a confidence that makes my toes curl.
I make a sound—half whimper, half moan—and my hands fly up to clutch at his shoulders.
He’s so much bigger than me. So much harder.
All lean muscle and controlled strength, and the contrast between his body and mine makes something primal and feminine wake up deep inside.
He kisses me until I’m dizzy. Until my lips are swollen and my lungs are burning and my scrubs are damp between my thighs.
Then he pulls back, his breathing ragged, and looks at me with an expression I’ve never seen on his face before.
Hunger, yes. But underneath it, something that looks almost like reverence.
“I’m not taking you tonight,” he says, and the disappointment must show on my face because his mouth quirks.
“You fainted, Mia. You’re exhausted. And the first time I’m inside you, I want you alert.
I want you feeling every inch.” His hand slides from my neck down to my chest, and his palm cups my breast through my scrub top.
My back arches involuntarily. “But that doesn’t mean I can’t start claiming you. ”
His fingers find my nipple through the thin cotton and pinch. Not hard. Just enough to make me cry out.
“Good girl,” he murmurs, and the praise goes straight to my clit like a live wire. “Such a good girl for me. Taking my touch so well.”
He pushes me back on the desk. My scrubs top is bunched around my ribs, and his mouth is on my breast through the fabric, sucking hard enough that the wet heat of his tongue seeps through. I gasp, my hips bucking, and his hand slides down my stomach to the waistband of my scrub pants.
“Lift,” he orders, and I do, because that voice has been giving me orders for six months and my body responds on instinct. He strips my pants down to my knees, then his fingers are sliding beneath the elastic of my cotton panties.
I am so wet. Soaking. Embarrassingly, obscenely wet, and when his fingertips brush through my folds, he makes a sound—low, gratified, almost predatory.
“Fucking drenched for me,” he growls against my breast. “Been thinking about this, haven’t you? My little nursing student with her pretty pussy dripping every time I correct her charting.”
“Yes,” I whimper, because lying is pointless when his finger is circling my clit and my thighs are shaking. “God, yes, I’ve been—thinking about?—”
His finger slips inside me. One long, thick digit pushing into my tightness, and I cry out, my back arching off the desk. He works it slowly, curling it forward, finding a spot inside that makes stars explode behind my eyelids.
“There it is,” he murmurs, watching my face.
“There’s my good girl’s sweet spot.” He adds a second finger, stretching me, and the burn mingles with the pleasure until I’m panting, my hips chasing his hand.
“Going to come on my fingers. Then I’m going to put my mouth on this pretty cunt and eat you until you come again.
And while you’re shaking apart, I’m going to tell you exactly how I’m going to fill you up.
How I’m going to pump my come so deep inside you it takes root.
How I’m going to watch your belly swell with my baby. ”
The words are filthy. Obscene. They should horrify me. Instead, they coil around my spine and yank, and my orgasm crashes through me with a violence that steals my breath. I clench around his fingers, my thighs clamping around his wrist, a broken, sobbing moan tearing from my throat.
He doesn’t stop. His fingers keep moving, gentler now, working me through the aftershocks while his mouth finds my other breast. Then he’s sliding off the desk, dropping to his knees between my spread legs, and his mouth replaces his fingers.
The first swipe of his tongue against my clit has me seeing white.
He eats me like a man starved, his tongue flat and broad, circling, sucking, his beard rough against my inner thighs.
I’m coming again within minutes, my hands fisting in his silver-streaked hair, my hips grinding against his face while he groans against me like he’s the one being pleasured.
When he finally lifts his head, his mouth is glistening. My come. On his lips. On the distinguished, brilliant Dr. Thorne who terrifies the entire surgical department.
He stands, tucks me back into my panties with careful hands, and pulls my scrubs up. Then he lifts me off the desk and sets me on my feet. My legs are jelly. I sway into him, and his arm bands around my waist, holding me steady.
“I’m taking you home,” he says. Not a question. A statement of fact.
“Home,” I echo dumbly.
“My home. My penthouse. You’re not going back to that shoebox apartment, Mia. Not tonight. Not ever again, if I have anything to say about it.” He brushes a strand of hair from my face, and his touch is so tender it makes my chest ache. “You’re mine now. Everything else is details.”
He gathers my things—my bag, my jacket, the half-eaten energy bar from the break room that started this whole disaster—and ushers me out of the office. His hand never leaves the small of my back. Possessive. Anchoring.
In the parking garage, he helps me into his car—a sleek, expensive thing that smells like leather and his cologne. He drives with one hand on the wheel and the other resting on my thigh, his thumb tracing small, absent circles on the inseam of my scrubs.
The city slides by outside the windows. Tall buildings, glittering lights.
And me, in the passenger seat of Dr. Elias Thorne’s car, with his come still drying on my thighs and his breeding promises ringing in my ears, wondering how the hell I went from invisible nursing student to claimed woman in the span of one fainting spell.
It should terrify me. It does terrify me.
But underneath the terror is a current of something warmer. Something that feels suspiciously like coming home.