Chapter Twenty-One
Kate
Need You Tonight by INXS
“That was…” Sharon says breathlessly as I finally lift my mouth off her and lean back on my heels.
“Oh, cute,” I say, pulling my hand out of my underwear. I lick my fingers clean.
“What?” Sharon frowns at me.
“It’s cute that you think it’s over,” I say.
Her frown deepens. “Isn’t it?”
I stand, and while my legs are shakier than I’d ever admit, I don’t think Sharon notices.
I undo my suspenders and she watches every single movement my fingers make as I roll my stockings down my legs.
When I then slide my knickers down my thighs, Sharon’s eyes are so dilated and dark, they’re a completely different colour.
“No, Sharon Goldblatt, this is far from over.” I hold out my hand. She takes it but doesn’t move. “Where is your bedroom?”
“I…” She shifts but doesn’t stand.
“Legs a bit wobbly?” I tease. The craftiness in my smile is something I can taste.
Her stare is thin and sharp. “You know they are,” she says, dropping my hand and bending over to retrieve her underwear. Once they’re pulled up her legs, she pushes herself up to stand. She almost looks surprised once she’s taken a few steps.
“This way,” she mumbles and I follow.
With Sharon in front of me, I don’t have to hold back how eagerly I look around as we walk down the short corridor that leads out of the front room.
The beige carpet is a little scratchy, but has hardly any worn-down patches so I assume it’s vaguely new.
The walls are painted a soft cream colour and are decorated with modern art – the abstract kind that I neither understand, nor wish to.
It could be what came in the frame or it could be worth tens of thousands of pounds; I’m oblivious.
The first door we pass is wide open, but Sharon moves straight past it so I know it’s not her room.
When I’m standing outside that open door, I only have to look in briefly to know it’s Danny’s.
Firstly, it’s a mess. Danny is not the tidiest patient I’ve looked after and thinks nothing of dropping clothes on the floor when he has to take them off due to a hot flush, and there is always a collection of half-full mugs and glasses by his bedside, like there are here next to an unmade bed.
A pang of bitterness pierces my insides when, in the shadows, I notice the kind of clothes discarded around the bed and rugs in his room – white jeans, silk shirts, a sequinned beret, all party clothes – and I realise I will never know this version of Danny.
The guy who dances around his bedroom getting ready for a night out.
The guy who no doubt has countless stories to tell the morning after.
The guy who wakes up with a lover kissing his shoulder before they share secret smiles about what they did the night before.
Maybe that’s what pulls me further into his room and makes me turn on the light.
I suddenly want to know more about Danny.
I want to gather more pieces of his jigsaw puzzle.
I want him to be more than a patient on my ward.
I want to see him as the fully-formed person he is.
I want to see him how Sharon sees him, how Sharon loves him.
Which is all highly unprofessional, especially when I’m literally completely naked, and yet I can’t seem to stop myself as I walk into the room and switch the light on.
I’m standing beside Danny’s bed, taking in a sprawling collage of photos on the wall above his headboard, when Sharon comes to stand next to me.
“Every day I walk past his room and tell myself I should make his bed, or change his sheets. And pick up his dirty clothes. But I can’t bring myself to do it.”
Not saying anything, I turn to look at her. She’s staring straight ahead at the wardrobe that is open on the other side of the room. A pair of sequin-covered blue Elton John-esque platform boots are spilling out of it, as well as a feather boa.
“When I see his room looking like this I can pretend he’s still here. That he’s just gone out to work, or on a weekend-long bender. That he’s coming home soon.”
A single tear slips out of the corner of Sharon’s eye.
At work, when patients’ friends and families cry, I have to dig deep to find the right words to say, to comfort them. I’m not at work right now. I don’t have words. But I can reach for Sharon’s hand and I can hold it, tightly. So I do.
We stand like that at the side of Danny’s bed for many long minutes, mostly naked and holding hands.
After a brisk sniff, Sharon speaks. “Oh God, he’d be mortified if he knew we were standing in his room naked together.”
“Mortified?”
“No, I guess not. More delighted. Fascinated. And wondering why we’re not in my bed.”
“To be honest, I’m starting to wonder why we’re not.”
“Well, you came in here first.” Sharon’s voice has an edge but it’s a shadow of the sharpness her tone normally has.
“I wanted to see Danny. Really see him. The real him.”
“Won’t that make it harder?” Sharon asks and I blink at her, confused by her question. Until I’m not.
“I like to think I care for all my patients equally,” I say flatly. “But Danny is…”
I don’t say anything else, and it’s a great relief when I don’t have to because Sharon is turning and pulling my body against hers and she’s still just as warm and soft and comfortable as she was on her sofa.
When she kisses me, I feel my body become slack.
With her inexperienced but eager tongue, she is loosening knots I didn’t even know I had as well as the many I was already aware of.
It feels divine… and completely unnecessary.
I didn’t come here to melt for Sharon Goldblatt. I came here to make her melt for me. At least physically.
So I take back control. I bring my hands to her face and spin us around so she’s walking backwards out of the room.
I slam the light off with a flat palm and then lead us down the corridor towards what I hope will be Sharon’s room.
We’re mumbling and moaning and grunting and groaning as our kiss deepens and the hunger returns.
Thank fuck. Arousal is a feeling I can deal with. Being turned on is familiar and manageable and functional. Feeling like my bones were melting and my heart was trying to beat out of my chest so it could touch Sharon’s… no. Just no.
At some point, Sharon starts to lead, taking us through the door on our right, rather than the one straight ahead which I deduce is the bathroom from the tiles on the floor that the slightly ajar door reveals.
It’s her hand that reaches out and fumbles to switch the light on as we walk into her bedroom, and I smile to myself at how she’s as reluctant to break this kiss as I am.
But it does need to be broken, because I have questions and Sharon needs to answer them.
I push her off me, hard and sudden enough that she stumbles back and falls onto the bed behind her.
Looking around very briefly, it strikes me that Sharon’s room is smaller than Danny’s, but much neater, with a crisply made bed and organised trinkets on top of a chest of drawers.
There is nothing on the floor that shouldn’t be there apart from a small stack of comic books under the bedside table.
I don’t need to look at them for long to know they’re all Lady Phantom.
“Can I fuck you?” I ask as Sharon looks up at me, her lips red and swollen from our kiss.
“Didn’t we… wasn’t that…” She’s flustered and I don’t think it’s just because of the kiss.
“I want to put my fingers inside you,” I explain. “I want to make you come while I’m inside you.”
Her eyes seem to change both shape and colour. “Oh.”
“Yes,” I take a step closer. “Do you ever do that? Use your fingers to fuck yourself?”
Colour rushes to Sharon’s cheeks and I could become addicted to this blushing, embarrassed version of the tightly-strung woman who walked into my ward for the first time a month or so ago. But I won’t. I won’t because I can’t.
“I have, yes,” she mumbles.
“How many?”
“What?”
“How many fingers did you use?”
“Oh. Two, I think.”
I narrow my eyes on her. “You think?”
“Fine, three. I like three fingers.”
I step closer, close enough that her bedclothes brush against the front of my legs.
I reach over her body and find her right hand.
Bringing it to my mouth, I hold her eye contact as I arrange three of her fingers together – all of them but her little finger – and I then slide them into my mouth, and suck.
The noise Sharon makes is muffled but the desperation in it is crystal clear.
“Show me,” I say, when I release her fingers.
“What?” Sharon holds her hand up in the air between us, like she’s afraid of it.
“Fuck yourself,” I tell her. “Then I’ll know how to do it.”
“You want to watch?”
“I want to watch, and learn.”
“Oh. Okay.”
Sharon moves slowly as she brings her hand into her underwear.
I’m about to demand she take them off so I can look at her properly, study every single slick fold and furrow of her, but I can already tell I’m pushing her close to an edge she’s barely clinging onto.
I’ll look at her later. When it’s my turn.
I know the moment her fingers slide inside her cunt because her eyes roll back in her head.
Her arm is pushing her breasts closer together and it takes what feels like superhuman strength to not reach out and play with her nipples, to take them in my mouth again.
But I meant what I said. I want to watch, and learn.