The Edge of Reason, page 13
“Do it, Margot. I want to know how wet you are for me, and I want you to feel me without the barrier of your panties between us.”
She lets out a tremulous laugh, her eyes rolling up and away from me while she steels her nerves. She squirms on her bed, her cheeks flaming.
“Have you ever done this before? Had phone sex?” Her teeth sink into her bottom lip and she shakes her head. “Me neither,” I admit. I’ve been with a lot of women over the years, but I’ve never had phone sex before. For some reason, something about that honesty, this first between us, makes her brave.
“I’ve um…” She swallows so hard and I swear, for a fleeting second, pure tortured agony creases her expression before it’s just as soon gone. “I’ve never had an orgasm with a man before.”
“What?”
That expression is back and my fist inadvertently clenches. “Yeah. Um. You already know about all those awful one-night stands, but I um…I never told you that I haven’t. Ever.”
“Margot?” Something raw and painful is strangling me. Something is so very wrong. How could I not have known this sooner? I know Margot has a darkness. I just never assumed… Never fathomed… Fuck, I can’t even…
Her eyes cast back down to mine and the image changes. Suddenly I’m no longer hovering over her, but now she’s propped up, similar to me, and I’m staring up at her from a lower angle.
Because she just put the phone on the bed against something so her hands can be free.
“But you’re not actually here with me. You’re on the phone.”
“I’m on the phone.”
“So…” Another hard swallow. “Maybe…” She trails off.
“Definitely,” I promise. Now it’s my turn to swallow. “Take off your panties.”
She nods. Jesus Christ. This is happening. She’s going to touch herself and I’m going to watch and say the filthiest things I can think of to make her come so hard. Me. I’ll be the first and the only man to ever do this for her. Because I know there is something she’s never told me. I can sense it. And the potential of what that something could be shakes my very foundation. But until I can figure that out, her trust in me to do this with her will have to be enough. For now.
My cock is straining, leaking with precum and begging for my hand. I can’t touch myself yet. If I do, I’ll lose focus, and this is not a moment to mess up.
“Are they off?” I ask, because she’s completely silent, breathing heavily and barely able to meet my eyes on the screen.
“Yes,” she says slowly, her voice silky soft.
“Run your middle finger down your slit before you push it inside your pussy. But I don’t want you to rub your clit yet. Just skim over it. Understand?”
“Oh God,” she hisses under her breath, likely hoping I didn’t hear, but I’m so attuned to everything Margot, I can practically smell her arousal. Taste it.
“Are you wet?”
Her eyes blaze into mine. “Yes.”
Fuck! I can’t stop my groan, my hand now stuck to my lower abdomen, hovering so near the hem of my briefs that my fingers twitch with the need to take myself in hand.
“Good girl. Slip two fingers inside, pumping them in and out slowly. I want the butt of your palm to rub your clit as you do. Put your other hand on your breasts and play with your hard nipples under your shirt.” I pause. Lick my lips. “If you’re quiet, Margot, I won’t put my tongue where you need me to.”
She lets out a breathy moan, her eyes falling back in her head as she finger fucks herself to my command. She’s moving on the bed, grinding against her hand and I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything sexier in my entire life.
“Does that feel good, sweetheart? My fingers in your warm, tight pussy, stroking you just the way you like it?”
“Yes.”
That’s all she’s been saying. Yes. But that’s the one word I want to hear most of all.
“What do you want? My cock or my mouth?” She lets out that breathy hum again, and I swear, that’s my favorite sound ever. “I’m dying to taste you. I’ll need to give you both. I’m going to fuck you slow. So slow you’ll claw at my back, wild with desperation. And just when I start to get you so worked up and needy, my cock will slip out and I’ll bury my face into you, licking you, devouring your sweet pussy in a way no one ever has before. Your fingers are in my hair, trying to pull me back and closer in all at the same time because it’s almost too much. Feels too good.”
Her eyes pinch shut as she bites her lip, trying to hide her sounds from me. But I can’t have that.
“That’s right, sweetheart. Let me hear it. Let me hear how good I make you feel.” She moans loudly, her face turning away from me, pressing into her pillow. Even though I’m dying to watch her face, I’ll let her have that if she feels she needs it. If it gets her to come with me. “And just when you get close…”
I trail off and she groans, her back arching and her tits peeking high into the air under her too-thin shirt. “I’m close,” she cries. “Drew, I’m so close. Oh God. I can’t believe–”
My teeth skim across my bottom lip, my hand no longer able to hold back as I rub myself over my briefs, up and down.
“And just as you get so close to coming all over my face, I’m going to slip my big fat cock back into you and fuck you so hard all you can do is hold onto me while you cry out my name. I’m going to make you come, Margot. Over and over again.” She falters. Her movements slow and her confidence shifts. Her darkness creeps in, I can see it. “Hear my voice. Listen to me. You’re going to come. Relax and let go.”
She can’t and I will kill the man who did this to her. Who took this piece from her. Who hurt her. There is no other explanation.
“Trust me. Trust me because this is us. Me. I’m your Drew. That’s all you need to know. It’s me, sweetheart.” She nods. She hears me. “Good girl.” She hisses out a curse of pleasure that sends sparks straight through me. “Your screams will pierce the air. Your pussy will suck my cock dry. Do you feel me? Do you feel how hard I am for you? How good I fuck you? How perfect we are together?”
“Yes. Yes. Drew!” comes out on the scream I promised her, the phone falling back so all I’m able to see is her white popcorn ceiling. But I don’t care. I can hear her. I’m the one she’s picturing. I’m the one doing this to her. A surge of caveman quality pride roars through me.
She’s desperately trying to catch her breath, moving on the bed, and then suddenly, she lifts up the phone, and her flushed, beautiful face is back. She stares at me in total bewilderment. Her features snaked with a touch of embarrassment and a whole hell of a lot of uncertainty.
And awe.
She’s staring at me in awe. Like she can’t believe I just did that with her. Got her there. I’m like fucking Star Trek. I just went where no man has gone before. It’s a sensational high. She doesn’t know what to say, and neither do I because like I said, I’ve never done that before. And even if I had, never with my best friend. Never like this.
“So that happened.”
A laugh bursts forth from my chest. “It won’t be the last time it does either. Next time, we’ll do that together. In the same room.”
“Um. I think…”
“Stop thinking. I’m going to hang up and take care of myself with thoughts of you on my mind.” I narrow my eyes. “But don’t get weird on me, freckles. I don’t regret it for a second and you better not either.” She stares at me, her expression unmoved. “Goodnight?”
Yes, it comes out as a question because the possibility that she’s too weirded out and I lost her is real. She blinks at me, as if coming out of a coma, her hair all over the place, her eyes still dark. “Okay. Um. Goodnight?”
There’s a question there too.
“Do you want me to come over?” I ask; because I’ll fly out of this bed and get to her place so fucking fast I’ll make her head spin. If she’s ready, if she’s in this, I’m there in seconds and hell, I’ll never leave. I’d never have to.
“No.” My chest caves in. “We have to work tomorrow. Together,” she adds like that makes all the difference, and my world shatters apart. She let me get her off, but she doesn’t want me. Not really. I’m still Drew to her. “So, goodnight.”
She disconnects the call and all I can think is, holy shit. Did I just mess everything up?
Fifteen
Margot
* * *
If you don’t call me back, I’m going to have to take drastic measures.
I practically laugh out loud when I read that text from Julien. What the hell are drastic measures? For a man who is hell-bent on explaining himself to me, he hasn’t done it yet. Not by voicemail or text. You’d think if he had this amazing point that would shred the knowledge that he’s a lying cheating bastard, he would have already put it out there for me to gobble up.
But he hasn’t.
Which means he’s a man who likes to play with his cake while eating out his wife. Or however the saying goes.
Regardless, I’m not interested. And I’m afraid that if I text him back again, I’ll make this worse. Not a smart idea. Especially with a guy like Julien. I already told him to leave me alone and that I was done. End of story.
Then there were the weird texts I received from him last week saying, ‘I’ve read everything.’ Then, shortly after, asking who I was. I didn’t respond. They made no sense to me, so I assumed he sent those messages to the wrong person. But part of me wondered if he was baiting me, trying to get me to respond to him in another way. If he keeps up this madness, soon we’ll be at restraining order territory.
“Who’s that?” Rina asks. I glance up, raising a ‘who do you think it is’ eyebrow at her. “Still? You need to get a restraining order on him.”
“It’s funny you say that, I was literally just thinking the same thing. I don’t get his persistence.”
“You poked at his giant ego. Wounded his pride. Or he’s just obsessed with you.” She shrugs like it’s that simple when it’s really anything but.
“The man has no heart. No pulse. He’s like a cold-blooded reptile. Who cheats like that and then continues to contact the woman he cheated with?”
“An obsessed asshole. Hence you needing a restraining order,” Rina states firmly, standing in the middle of the hall of the ER, her arms folded over her chest. “Speaking of hearts and men who don’t have one, have you ever checked yours?” she asks, eyeing my stethoscope. “You know, to listen for murmurs and things?”
“Um. No.” I tuck my phone back into my scrub top, tilting my head at my friend. “Should I be worried? Do we need to hook you up to an EKG or anything?”
“So, an OB nurse who was super pregnant floated up to the ICU the other day.” I scrunch up my nose. “I know. We gave her patients not infested with MRSA or anything else that would impact her unborn fetus. Anyway, she admitted to continuously checking her baby’s fetal heart rate, and it got me thinking about how our heart rates are something we easily take for granted and constantly overlook unless we’re treating a patient or dealing with a guy.”
She has a point. Julien aside, because I seriously hate thinking of him, lately I’m so hyper aware of my heart rate that I don’t need my stethoscope to tell me what a fluctuating mess it is. Drew. At least I made it five whole minutes without that man crashing into the forefront of my mind. That’s some kind of new record.
It’s been like four days since I screamed out his name while having a best-ever orgasm after he dirty talked me into it. A man made me come. I still can’t get my head around that. I assumed I was forever ruined. Incapable and irrevocably broken. I want to keep going. Keep pushing those boundaries and testing those waters.
It’s why, since that night on the phone, I’ve reverted to only seeing him at work.
I am not a friends with benefits girl. At least not with him. So if that’s all he’s looking for from that night he can go fuck himself sideways. All he said was that he didn’t regret it and he didn’t want me to get weird. Because we’re friends.
Friends who have phone sex with their other friend are likely to get weird, right? Not one single feeling other than lust was mentioned. And in this last week, he hasn’t made a real effort to seek me out. It’s like he’s perfectly content with the space I’m giving him.
It sorta sucks, if I’m being honest. Because again, friends. That’s what we were and now? Now I don’t know. Now we’re stuck in some gray area abyss people never make it back from.
“You wanna know what else is crazy?”
I stare at her, cocking an eyebrow. “Rina, what’s your deal tonight?”
“Just hear me out.” I wave for her to go ahead because my head is too full to fight her. “Nurses and doctors who smoke get smoke breaks. We, health-conscious healthcare providers who practice what we preach, don’t get nearly as many breaks as the hypocritical asshole smokers do.”
Again, another valid point.
“Are we staging a coup or are you suggesting we take up smoking to receive equal rights?”
“No. I’m just pointing out that everyone here seems to be beyond the edge of reason.”
The edge of reason? Reason left me long ago. It ran off to join up forces with sanity and consequences. “I need a night out.”
“Uh-oh. I know what that means. Who did you one-night?”
“No one,” I squeal indignantly, a bit louder than I should. “I swear. No boys have entered my vagina in forever. Am I not entitled to want a girls’ night without having had bad sex?”
“Usually not,” Rina cackles. “But I have a guy I’d like to set you up with.”
“No.”
Only, I didn’t say that. Drew did. “Margot is still in a self-proclaimed anti-men celibacy phase.”
“It’s true,” I acknowledge, staring solemnly at my friend. Clearly, that anti-men celibacy thing doesn’t extend to FaceTime. “But if he’s a sparkly vampire who feasts on animals and not humans, I might be willing to make an exception.”
“He’s not Edward Cullen.”
I snap my fingers. “Such a shame. Especially when said vampire is now Batman. It’s like porn specifically designed for my geeky lady parts.”
“Right. So. Are we still treating patients here, or is this comic book and story hour for geek pussies?”
“That’s kinda gross, Drew. And besides, Margot’s pretty kitty is not a geek. It’s just taken in the wrong stray cats.” And then she starts cackling again. Only louder this time. Nice. Ha, ha. Let’s all laugh at poor Margot’s pussy. She’s sad and lonely, and yes, she’s taken in the wrong men. Oh, and had hot phone sex with her best friend. Thanks for the reminder.
“You both suck at life. That’s seriously no joke.” I pivot towards Drew. “What do you need Doctor Albright? I’m on my smoke break.”
Drew stares at me like my hair suddenly decided to switch things up and turn orange before his eyes. “I have a patient in room three who needs MI (heart attack) protocol started asap. I have an aide in there getting an EKG and another nurse starting his IV. He’s a walk-in, but I’m concerned he’s a straight to cath lab guy. His vitals are stable enough, but after today, I’m not taking any chances.”
Today has been the shittiest shift in the history of shitty shifts. Five deaths. All stacked up at once. A husband, wife, and their three kids who were hit by a drunk driver at three in the afternoon. The kids were DOA–dead on arrival–though we did work on them some because they’re freaking children. The parents were in slightly better shape and we worked on them hard. We were down an attending earlier on so poor Drew had to run the traumas. Pronounce both parents and the children. Since then, it’s been a lot of complicated patients. A ten-month-old baby with pertussis. A woman with aspiration pneumonia. A new onset atrial fibrillation who was having a stroke as a result. Not good stuff.
Deaths come in sets of threes, so I get it. This dude would make six.
“Should we move him to trauma?”
Drew shakes his head. “No. I have a feeling we’ll be sending him straight up. I already notified cardiology and they should be down shortly.”
“What did I tell you about heart rates?” Rina states with a slight frown. “Have fun you two. I’m back up to the MICU.” She gives us wiggly fingers and then saunters off.
Drew grabs my arm and begins to drag me in the direction of room three. As if I don’t know the way. “Why do you need me if you already have another nurse on his case?”
“I don’t know her all that well. She’s new here. And besides, I only want you on my team.”
“Aww. That’s so sweet it makes me want to vomit all that sugar in my mouth.” I get another sideways glance that tells me Drew is in no mood to be trifled with. “Has the patient been given any po (that means oral) meds yet?”
“Yes. We gave him Aspirin and he took his beta blocker at home before coming in, but he doesn’t look right to me.”
No sooner are the words spoken before we hear, ‘Code blue. Emergency Department. Curtain three. Code blue. Emergency Department. Curtain three,’ blaring over the loudspeaker.
“Fuck,” Drew hisses. We both take off into a sprint. Dragging back the curtain we find the patient on his back and the nurse who must have been starting his IV doing chest compressions. Drew runs in, just as two other doctors and three other nurses come barreling in.
“He just went down,” she says miserably, her face as white as the patient’s. “He was talking and doing okay, telling me he didn’t feel well, and then he just slumped over, and his vitals tanked.”
I’m checking the IV that’s already in the patient’s arm, but we’re going to need central access immediately and that’s what another doctor starts to work on. Drew intubates the patient in record time, hooking up an ambu bag and delivering oxygen to the patient as chest compressions continue.
“Where is cardiology?” Drew yells in a biting tone. “They should be here by now. If we can stabilize him, he’s going to need the cath lab.”
“Central access is in place. High-dose epi and first round of code meds on board,” Doctor Maddison says, stepping back, hands in the air.
