Use Somebody Read online

  An inferno burned in her cheeks as Eve busied herself suddenly with a stack of paperwork. She’d never considered herself shy by any means, but she wore her lust for him in the quirk of her lips and flutter of her lashes. No secrets. She didn’t want him to see it.

  “Here’s your problem.” He pointed to her monitor. “Someone’s been playing around online.”

  “It wasn’t me,” she said a second before his teasing smile told her he hadn’t meant her. “Must be the night shift.”

  “I know. I can tell who it is,” he said with a lift of his chin at the long list of files. “The time they logged in, what sites they’re surfing. All of it.”

  Eve thought of the day he’d brought her coffee and was very glad she’d resisted blogging at work over the past week. “The night shift must have a lot of free time.”

  “Yeah.” Lane bent to peer at the screen. “And someone likes to hit the personals sites.”

  “Is that what’s screwing up my computer?” Not that she cared, actually, because as long as her chat connections kept dropping she’d be paid to watch Lane work.

  “Yep. But don’t worry. I can fix it.” He shot her another grin and heat flared again…this time, much lower down. “Just call me Dr. DeMarco.”

  He was killing her. Absolutely killing, she thought as he bent back to work, fingers caressing her keyboard with as much intimacy as if he were touching her body.

  And he didn’t even know it.

  Chapter 8

  This is what I want.

  The lines around your eyes and mouth should make you look haggard, but they only remind me of how beautiful you are. Even exhausted, rumpled, smelling of bad cafeteria coffee and clad in crumpled scrubs, you are lovely.

  You lean over the desk to hand the charge nurse your clipboard. She smiles at you and bats her lashes, and I want to laugh. She thinks she has a chance at you, her own personal Dr. McDreamy, but she has no idea. Not a clue.

  You are mine.

  You are weary from hours on your feet, hours in the operating room. You’ve put on clean scrubs but I know you want to shower and shave, sleep for a few hours, maybe grab another cup of disgusting coffee. I know that’s what you want, but instead you’ll have me.

  You look up from your place on the hard cot they give the on-call staff to use when I close the door behind me. When I lock it. When I smile, you smile, too.

  I don’t ask you how long we have. At any moment the black box clipped to your waistband can bleat. People will need you. You fix them with your scalpel and your knowledge. At any moment someone could need you more than I do…but for now there is only me.

  I don’t like the smells of antiseptic and despair that fill the air here, or the metallic scent of blood we can’t seem to escape. I miss your clean scent, soap and hot water, but there’s no time for that.

  Your head tips back when I thread my fingers through it and pull, and you moan. You might be a god to that nurse at the desk and the people who you heal by cutting, but I know you’re no god.

  You’re a man.

  I know you’re bare beneath the scrubs, a habit surgeons have to prevent their personal clothes from becoming soiled. I know if I reach between us I’ll find your cock half-hard already beneath the thin, soft cloth. I know if I slid onto your lap I’ll feel that heat against me, that hardness, and my body clenches at the thought of you filling me. My nipples tighten.

  I brush your lips with mine, the barest hint of a kiss. When your mouth reaches for mine I pull back. I’d like to make you beg for me, to hear you say my name in that low, deep, grumble-growly voice, but I know we don’t really have time for those sorts of games.

  “Touch me,” I say into your ear.

  You do.

  One of those hands, those big, strong hands, slides between my thighs, up high, against my heat. I push forward, into your touch. It takes only seconds to lift my dress, push down my panties, to ease your scrubs off. To straddle you. We rock together, your cock sliding against me without friction or effort. I’m so wet for you it takes only one small shift of hips and limbs to settle you inside me.

  “Fuck me,” I say again, and you do that, too.

  It’s slow and easy, the way you roll your hips to push your prick up inside me. You slide a one of your hands that make so many miracles between us and use your knuckles on my clit. Your other holds my ass as we move, silent, biting our lips. I clench your shoulder so hard my nails leave half-moons in your flesh, but neither of us cry out.

  Someone might know we’re fucking in here, and I don’t care, but there’s pleasure to be had from pretending we do.

  Your throat works as you swallow your groan. I lick you and bite you softly. Beneath my lips I feel your pulse, beat, beat, beat. The steady throb is echoed between my legs.

  I come forever and you follow me with an intake of breath and a murmured curse. We rock together slowly, finishing, and the bed under us creaks.

  From the puddle of clothes on the floor, your beeper buzzes. You close your eyes, briefly, though your lips open under mine when I kiss them.

  “I have to go,” you say without moving.

  I’m the one who gets up, who gathers the clothes, who lifts the small black box and places it in your hands. “You go,” I say. “Someone needs you.”

  They all need you.

  But you’re still always mine.

  Chapter 9

  Why would anyone want to be anything else?

  Tell_me had replied even before Puppetboy. The thought he’d been waiting for her to post caused Eve’s heart to skip a couple beats. Eve would’ve made a self-deprecating comment, but it wasn’t Eve who answered.

  I can be a demanding mistress.

  Endless minutes passed while she refreshed her browser and replied to a few other comments. When the familiar user icon – a hundred-by-hundred pixel square photo of a single red rose – appeared, she actually clapped and bounced a little in her seat.

  Please. Demand.

  This time, she laughed aloud. Puppetboy might have offered to be her slave, but tell_me’s genuine sense of humor only added to his appeal. Puppetboy, perhaps sensing he was losing his place in line, had graduated from sending her shots of his cock to attaching photos of his entire body, each including a small hand-drawn sign with PUPPETBOY BELONGS TO ERIS inside a lop-sided heart to prove it was really him and not some stolen shot of an abs and pecs model.

  Eve didn’t care what tell_me looked like…well, okay, maybe she did, a little, but only because in her mind he looked like every single one of her fantasies, and she couldn’t pretend that every one of them didn’t look quite a lot like a certain IT guy from work. Still, while Puppetboy’s body was impressive and his willingness to debase himself for her pleasure intriguing…tell_me had stolen her heart.

  They’d only been corresponding for a week but it felt like a lifetime. He commented to her blog; he emailed her privately. Their conversations in public had been light and flirty, the way she was with everyone who left a response to her entries, but in private he dug deeper. He didn’t just fawn over her. He asked her questions about what she wanted and why. He answered them, too. He’d managed to give her a clear picture of himself without ever resorting to sending a blurry snapshot of his erection.

  They’d graduated to instant messaging, a privilege she’d granted to so few commenters she could count them on one hand. His conversations in real-time were as easy and sexy as his emailed replies had been.

  Now, though the hour had once again grown late, her fingers flew over the keys as her eyes locked on the computer screen, watching for his next words.

  You like fantasies, he said.

  Who doesn’t?

  But not everyone can express them as well as you can. Or else they stick with clichés.

  You don’t think a doctor fantasy is a cliché? She’d had a record-high number of comments after that one. They were still trickling in. Some people want me to write about a cop, next. Or a fireman.

 
Are you going to?

  Eve paused. I don’t think so.

  Because it isn’t what you want?

  Because I don’t take requests.

  She imagined a bright smile and the low rumble of laughter, a pair of dark blue eyes.

  I don’t think you should write about a cop or a fireman.

  What do you think I should write about?

  Surprise me.

  Chapter 10

  This is what I want.

  At the base of my throat, where my pulse throbs in unsteady rhythm, blood pools. The wound is fresh, but numb. The monster’s kind in that way. It doesn’t hurt when he comes to suck my life from me.

  I don’t know how long I’ve been in this hole. Time has ceased all meaning. I stopped counting the minutes against the steady, slow, drip-drip of water from an unseen pipe long ago. My eyes stare, wide, into darkness, but I see nothing. The cold has raised gooseflesh on my arms and legs, but I don’t feel that, either.

  When your light shines on me, I don’t even throw up a hand to block it even though it stings my eyes worse than anything else has, lately. I look at you, a dark silhouette behind the golden circle from your flashlight, and my mouth forms the shape of your name. I’m not sure I’ve even spoken. I’m not sure if I remember how.

  I thought I’d forgotten the strength of your arms but when you gather me into your embrace, your breath warm on my cold flesh, I remember all of it. You. Me. The promises you made, and broke, and the one you’ve finally kept.

  You take me home, to the house in which you refuse to live but visit often. You bathe me. You dress me. You put me into bed and stand guard at my door until I sleep.

  I think you’re afraid I won’t wake, but I do. I open my eyes and wince at the sudden stabbing sensation in my wounds, but I welcome the pain. It means I’m still alive.

  You open your eyes at once when I touch your face. The chair jerks as you do, and your hand comes up to catch my wrist, hard, not quite flinging it away. You see it’s me within a second and the embrace softens. I frown when you let me go.

  “Go back to sleep,” you say, as if I could. As if all that happened can be put behind me the way you so often have done.

  But I’m not you.

  Days pass this way. I wait for you to leave, and one day you do. You come back stinking of blood and garbage, your hands in fists, and I know you’ve killed it. Hunted it down and taken its life the way it tried to steal mine.

  I would be happy but for the fact that this means, at last, you’ll go for good.

  “Stay.” It’s the first time I’ve ever asked. I know the score, the rules, what to expect from you. Your life circles mine and only sometimes intersects.

  You shake your head, your back to me, the duffel bag I’ve grown to hate thrown over your shoulder. Outside, your car awaits. I don’t want to see the taillights. I hate them, too.

  “I can’t.”

  “You can. If you want to.”

  Your shoulders hunch. I want to touch you. To offer comfort. But you don’t want my comfort, do you? You don’t want me…And too late, I realized I’ve spoken aloud.

  I’d be frightened at the way you turn and the fire in your gaze except now I’ve faced much, much worse. You grip my arms and I love your touch, even as it bruises. I can see you want to shake me, but you stop yourself. You let me go. You step back.

  I step forward. “Stay. Please. I want you.”

  I open the buttons of my shirt and offer myself. Shameless, ready to be embarrassed when you refuse me, but not caring. I want you so badly I shake. I need you.

  “I can’t.” But I see in your eyes that you can.

  I touch myself as if my hands were yours. Your gaze follows my fingers as they caress my body. Your hands are shaking.

  “I promised to keep you safe.” Your voice is thick with loathing.

  “You promised to find me,” I remind you and let my shirt fall to the ground. “And you did. You came for me. You saved me. Please don’t go. I need you.”

  You shake your head. “It’s my fault you were in danger.”

  I know you think this, and maybe you’re right, but I would not trade the safety of being insignificant to those who stalk the night for one single moment in your arms. A year ago I wouldn’t have believed the monster under the bed was real; now I know better. And I know that you’re the man who keeps us safe.

  You keep me safe.

  “Stay,” I say, and hold out my hand.

  You are a man, after all, and you take it. When I kiss you, your sigh shudders out of you like the wind through trees. I undress you carefully but without hesitation, and I trace the pattern of your scars with my hands and mouth until your breath comes fast and harsh in your throat, and you wind your fingers in my hair to pull my mouth from your cock.

  “No,” you say, and pull me from my knees. “Not like this.”

  We’ve fucked on my kitchen floor before. We’ve done it in my bed, too, and in the shower, on the counter, in the backseat of your car. This time, you take me out into the grass of my back yard, under the stars, and you spread out the faded quilt I keep on the porch for picnics. You lay me down and follow my lines and curves with your hands and your tongue, your lips reading the entire story of my body as easily as if I were made of words.

  I’m already coming by the time you slide inside me, and it’s as if the stars themselves have come down to hover around us. Dancing. They fill me with fire. I lift my hips to take you in deeper, eager to hold onto you as long as I can. You thrust into me. Your mouth finds the scar at the base of my throat, and you whisper against it.

  “I’m sorry…”

  Your voice breaks. Your head dips to press against me. I hold you tight as your body shakes and mine shudders beneath you. I don’t have to forgive you. I know you won’t forgive yourself.

  You give me the night, and when the morning comes you’re gone.

  But I know you’ll be back.

  Chapter 11

  “Eve?

  She turned with a smile on her mouth, lost in thoughts of what story she would tell when she got home tonight and what tell_me would say. When she saw who’d said her name, she smiled. “Well, hello.”

  Lane held up his cup. “Mocha Mint?”

  She nodded and held up her own. The new place next door to Digiquest had become something of a tradition for her over the past few weeks. “Yes. Thanks for turning me on to it.”

  “My pleasure.” Lane gave her his slow, easy grin. “I’m glad you were turned on.”

  Sweet, holy mother of pearl, his voice really did dip low and growly. Eve took a sip of hot, sweet coffee and watched him over her cup. She’d spent the night revealing her most intimate sexual fantasies in intricate detail, but far from being sated, her body only wanted a real-life taste of what she’d put on the screen. He was flirting with her, which wasn’t new. She was flirting with him, which was.

  There was no reason not to walk with him to the building next door, nor to hold back when the elevator opened as if by magic as they arrived. The door slid shut, enclosing them together once again in that tiny space.

  It would take only two steps for him to cross to her, she mused. To push her against the mirrored wall. Her skirt today was long but loose, and he could easily get both hands beneath it. Those big, strong hands…

  “I’m sorry?” He’d said something she’d missed, lost in her erotic musings.

  “I asked if you watched the monster marathon last night.”

  Eve paused with her coffee halfway to her mouth. “No. I don’t watch much television.”

  “Really?” Lane cocked his head to give her one of those slow damned smiles. “Too bad.”

  The elevator shuddered to a stop. The door opened with a creak. Lane held it open for her and she stepped through. All normal, nothing different than any other of a hundred days.

  Except it was.

  Lane DeMarco no longer seemed so unattainable.

  Chapter 12

  You haven
’t demanded anything from me.

  I wasn’t sure you were ready for it.

  I’m ready.

  Eve paused, watching the cursor blinking as fast as her heart was beating. She shifted in her chair, her thighs rubbing. She’d played the part of mistress, and of slave, but those had been stories. She’d never taken Puppetboy up on any of his offers of subservience. This, with tell_me, was something new, uncharted. Delicious, but frightening.

  She could log out now and blame computer problems, or make no excuses, simply refuse to answer his private messages any longer. She could, but she wasn’t going to. She was going to do as he’d said, to tell him what she wanted, only this time it would be for him alone and nobody else. She typed quickly, not in her blog but in a private email to him.

  This is what I want.

  You, in the shower. Steam wreathes your body. The sound of rushing water is almost loud enough to cover the sound of your groan. Almost.

  You lean forward one hand on the tiles. The other’s on your cock. You close your eyes, lean into the spray. Head down, water streams over your back. Your muscles work as you fuck into your hand.

  You’re thinking of me.

  I want you to be thinking of me.

  Your knees bend slightly as you rock forward. Your fingers curl on the tile. Your hand strokes, strokes, twisting around the head of your prick and down. Over and over you stroke yourself.

  What are you thinking of? Am I on my knees in front of you? Do I take you inside my mouth, use my tongue, my teeth, my lips? Do I swallow your cock? Are you wishing your hand was mine, jerking you? Are you imagining me on my hands and knees as you fuck me from behind?

  You know best how to touch yourself. How to hold off the pleasure building from the base of your gut. Your balls tighten. You push forward, harder. Faster. Your head ducks lower until the water pounds the place between your shoulders I like to kiss.