Hot Bodies Boxed Set: The Complete Vital Signs Erotic Romance Trilogy (37 page)

To Billy, sex wasn’t just a physical thing. It was an emotional thing. Deeply emotional. You might even say that Billy Hartzell was old-fashioned.

And yet, Billy Hartzell was human, too. He was a redblooded twenty-two-year-old man, and he had needs. Needs that were becoming quite a distraction the longer he left them unfulfilled. He had itches to scratch, just like any other redblooded twenty-two-year-old did. And with every female in Statesville between the ages of eighteen and eighty all drooling over him at once, it was getting pretty damned hard not to scratch those itches. Something had to give, and soon.

Billy was well aware that he was good-looking.
Very
good-looking. But he wasn’t the vain type—never had been. He didn’t go to any real effort to look the way he did—his personal-care regimen consisted only of shaving and showering, and a cheap six-dollar haircut once a month. That was it. No metrosexual primping, no hardcore gym routines. His perfect body and gorgeous face were the result of nothing more than good genes.

Billy never tried to make light of his looks or to flaunt them. If anything, his looks were an inconvenience. They got in the way of the regular business of living and working. Like today, for instance.

As he pushed his cart of bedpans down the hall, almost every woman he encountered stopped to stare. Nurses, physical therapists, secretaries, phlebotomists all stopped dead in their tracks as he passed by. He could feel their eyes on him like sharp tacks.

You’d think they never laid eyes on a man before
, he thought to himself as he turned the corner and headed for the Geriatrics ward.

And in a way, they hadn’t. Because no redblooded female in Statesville, North Carolina—be she eighteen or eighty—had never seen such a fine specimen of manhood as Billy Hartzell in their lives. And they all knew that when Billy left town, they never would again. Men like Billy Hartzell came along only so often, after all. When God formed him in the womb, He broke the mold.

Billy didn’t get very far before Starla Berring blocked his path. “Hi, Billy,” she said. “Do you remember me?”

“Yes, Starla, of course I remember you. We just met an hour ago.”

Starla gave him a crooked little smile, and her blue-green eyes twinkled. “Well, I was just making sure,” she said. “I know it must be hard for you, being the new guy in town and everything.”

“Well, I get by okay, I guess,” he said, shoving his hands in his pockets. Suddenly his palms seemed very sweaty. He had no idea why.

“Well, if you’re ever looking for someone to show you around town, or whatever, I’m your girl.” She batted her ridiculously long eyelashes at him. Eyelashes like that really ought to be illegal, or something. Seriously.

Billy squeezed his eyes shut hard, shook his head back and forth. What the hell was going on? Why was he so focused on this woman’s eyelashes? He never noticed things like that. When it came to women, he’d never been that detail-oriented. Something was definitely out of whack.

Like his crotch.

Billy slumped over, hid the growing bulge under his scrubs behind a stack of bedpans. This was unacceptable. Billy Hartzell did not get wood on the job. Ever. Not even when he was looking at a tall, curvaceous, mondo-hot blonde who was now standing just two inches away from him, close enough that he could smell her perfume, even the lingering notes of baby powder and Dove soap. . . .

Oh good Christ. Now he was smelling things. Things he had no business smelling. And he was thinking things he had no business thinking. Like what it would feel like to sink his cock deep inside this sweet-smelling, blonde, small-town hottie.

Jesus H. Christ.

Billy shook his head rapidly back and forth, squeezed his eyes shut, hard. This would not stand. He was thinking about sex on the job—something he knew no good nurse, male or female, should ever do. He needed to get a hold of himself, pronto.

“Umm, excuse me, umm, Starla,” he stammered. “I ahhh, I really gotta go change some bedpans right now. See ya!” He sprinted off towards Geriatrics, moving so fast that the bedpan cart left skidmarks.

Starla watched him go, smiling and chuckling to herself. She’d gotten under Billy Hartzell’s skin, all right. And she knew at that moment she had him—hook, line and sinker. They’d be fucking before she knew it, that was for damn sure. It was only a question of when.

Because whenever Starla Berring set her sights on a man, she always got exactly what she wanted.

Two

Starla stood at the scrub trough, elbow-deep in PhisoDerm while her stomach tied itself in knots. She might have hooked Billy Hartzell with a wink and a smile, but when it came to managing her career, that was another thing entirely.

Starla wished she could go back to college, start over, and choose a different major. She’d chosen nursing as a career mostly for the job security, had chosen surgical nursing as a specialty mostly for the higher pay. She’d never made any personal career decisions that didn’t involve money or security—mostly because she’d grown up without either. Her mother, who had raised her alone after her truck-driver father left them high and dry when she was six, had always told her that no matter what she did, never to depend on a man. “Men are only good for one thing,” her mom had always told her. “Sperm. The rest you don’t want nothin’ to do with.”

Over the years Starla had decided that when it came to men, her mother was mostly right. There was just one thing her mom had missed out on, though. While it was true men were only good for sperm, it was a hell of a lot of fun getting that sperm out of them. And when it came to parting men from their essence, Starla Berring was master of her domain.

When it came to everything else in her life, though, not so much. Especially when it came to her job. Starla hated her job.
Really
hated it. Hated it to the point that sometimes she’d rather eat glass than come to work. Hated it to the point that the prospect of screwing Billy Hartzell (along with any other redblooded male that crossed her path) was the only thing that kept her coming in every day. It sure as hell wasn’t the hours, or even the paycheck—Starla had enough money saved to give up her job for a while if she wanted, though she wasn’t sure it was a good idea to go without health insurance. She’d just had her appendix out last year, and she’d come down with certain unmentionable infections a couple of times, too—more than enough to teach her to always practice safe sex.

No, if Starla had it to do all over again, she’d never have become a nurse. She had absolutely no idea what she’d have become instead, but one thing was for sure—she loathed every minute of nursing. Except for the minutes that she spent having standup sex in the supply closet with whoever was willing, of course.

But right now she wasn’t in the supply closet. She was in the scrub trough, about to embark on her most hated of all her hated tasks—OR duty with Dr. Harlan Wilkinson.

Dr. Harlan Wilkinson was hot.
Very
hot. If circumstances were different, he’d be at the top of Starla’s list of possible fuckbuddies. But not only was Dr. Wilkinson married to Starla’s boss, Dr. Wilkinson was the biggest asshole ever to walk the earth. The hospital staff didn’t call him Darth Vader behind his back for nothing. And it seemed that ever since he and Starla’s boss Joanna Watson got married, he’d just become even more of an asshole. The old Darth Vader nickname hardly suited him anymore. These days, he was more along the lines of Emperor Palpatine, Supreme Evil Dark Lord of the Sith.

Darth Vader had at least turned out to be a little bit good in the end, after all. And Starla doubted there was anything remotely good about Dr. Harlan Wilkinson.

“Berring, you aren’t scrubbing hard enough,” Darth Vader yelled at her as he lumbered into the scrub room, fifteen minutes late for the scheduled OR prep. “If there’s anything I can’t stand in a nurse, it’s a sloppy scrub-in.”

Well, if there’s anything I can’t stand in a doctor, it’s pretty much everything about you,
Starla thought to herself. She didn’t dare say it aloud. That would just get her fired. Not that losing her job would upset her that much at this point. But if she lost her job, she’d lose contact with Billy Hartzell. And that was the one thing in the world she couldn’t risk losing at this moment in time. The prospect of fucking Billy nice and slow up against a wall was the only thing keeping her going right now.

Starla scrubbed at her hands and forearms harder, to the point that her skin was rubbed raw and stinging. She rinsed off, held her hands out in front of her for Dr. Wilkinson to inspect. His eyes narrowed and he frowned as he looked at her hands. “Well, that’s better, Berring. But you should be able to scrub in like this in five minutes, not ten.”

“How the hell do you know how long I’ve been scrubbing?” she hissed. “You just got here.”

He didn’t respond to that, which surprised her. Dr.Wilkinson was hardly the type to ignore a backtalking nurse. Instead he just muttered something unintelligible and started scrubbing himself in.

Charming. What a laugh riot it must be to be married to this guy. Starla felt a twinge of sympathy for her boss. How on earth did Joanna live day in, day out with such a rude, inconsiderate asshole? No wonder their marriage was on the rocks.

Under normal circumstances, Starla would view that as an opportunity. Hot men facing the breakup of their marriages were an easy lay, after all. But easy lay or not, Starla wasn’t going to touch Dr. Wilkinson with a ten-foot pole. That was one patch of brambles she didn’t want to sink herself into.

Dr. Wilkinson finished scrubbing and emitted another Neanderthal grunt—her signal to suit up and follow him into the OR, Starla supposed. So she did, even if it made her feel sick to her stomach.

Their patient—an overweight, middle-aged woman with gallbladder disease—was already unconscious on the table. The timid young nurse-anesthetist—a staffer who was even newer at Covington Community Hosptial than Starla was—stood behind the woman’s blue-bonneted head, monitoring her vital signs. The new nurse was thin and petite—barely five feet tall, and even underneath her layers and layers of baggy blue surgical gear, it was obvious that this shy young woman was still a force to be reckoned with. “Good morning, Dr. Wilkinson, Miss Berring,” the woman said. “I’m Dana Johnson. I’m the new nurse-anesthetist, just hired two weeks ago. I’ve been assigned to assist you on this operation. The patient is already fully sedated—"

Dr. Wilkinson cut her off. “I don’t care if the patient is sedated or not, damn it,” he boomed. “I want to know what the hell
you’re
doing here. Nobody told me there was a new anesthetist on staff! Nobody even consulted me on it! I’m supposed to have final say on all new OR hires! It’s in my contract! What the hell is going on around here?”

Dana inched backward as if she’d been struck. “I-I’m sorry, Doctor. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You’re right, you
don’t
know what you’re talking about,” Dr. Wilkinson retorted. “No nurse has any business running anesthesia, anyway. So at least we’re on the same page about that.”

Now, Dana was almost in tears. “I’m just trying to do my job, sir,” she cried.

“Yeah, whatever,” he shot back. “Just make sure this lady doesn’t wake up, OK? I already got enough problems, the last thing I need is some incompetent nurse making my patient wake up in the middle of an operation. I’ve seen it happen, toots, and it ain’t pretty.”

Dana nodded meekly and fiddled with the controls on her anesthesia machine.

Starla shuddered and uncovered the instrument tray. Jesus H. Christ. Talk about getting up on the wrong side of the bed. Dr. Wilkinson was on his absolute worst behavior today. And that was really saying something, when you considered that even on his best day, he was still Darth Fucking Vader.

What on earth did Joanna Watson see in this jerk? Starla would never know.

She handed Dr. Wilkinson a scalpel, then started counting the seconds until the operation was over.

****

Billy finished his bedpan rounds and headed for the break room. He’d been at his rounds for almost three hours straight, and his feet were killing him. He was entitled to two fifteen-minute breaks a shift in addition to lunch, though he rarely took them, and often worked straight through lunch, besides. Billy had learned very early on that it was best to give both the cafeteria and the break room a wide berth, since both places were riddled with desperate women looking to score with him. But he needed a break right now, in a big way. More than a break, in fact—he needed a cold shower. He hadn’t been this horny in, well—never.

Goddamn that Starla Berring. Who the hell did she think she was, anyway? That kind of sex appeal should be illegal. Especially on the job. Billy wasn’t even sure he
liked
Starla all that much. She definitely wasn’t his type. He didn’t think he’d ever want to take her out to dinner, or even have a five-minute conversation with her. But he
did
want to fuck her—that was for damn sure.

Good God, this was embarrassing. Of all the small Southern towns to be stuck in, why did he have to be stuck in the same one that contained Starla Berring? Not to mention all the
other
horny women of all ages that were throwing themselves at him here. When he’d finished dropping off his batch of bedpans, he’d reached for the clipboard that held his duty sheet—and found at least four different random women’s phone numbers scrawled across the top. And then there was the attractive forty-something woman who was checking him out in the break room. She was an attractive redhead, mature and sexy in a Marcia Cross,
Desperate Housewives
kind of way. He was tempted for the slightest of moments, then managed to get a hold of himself.

Mark one up for the cougar crowd
, he mused. For a moment he wondered if all he’d heard about sex with older women being hotter was true. The cougar chick, a flame-haired hospital administrator from Human Resources, shot him a wink. Billy almost winked back, but stopped himself at the last minute.

Oh no
, he thought to himself.
We are
not
gonna go there.
Billy spun around, took a deep breath, and tried to focus on the soda machine. Just on the soda machine. As long as he just stared at the soda machine, his overheated cock would calm down. Or so he tried to convince himself.

Billy was used to turning women’s heads, but this was ridiculous. He was losing control of his body and mind.
Especially
his mind. A few more days of this, and his brain would turn to oatmeal.

I will not think about sex.
I will not think about sex.
I will not think about sex.
He repeated that sentence silently over and over in his mind. But all that did was make his cock even harder. The more he tried not to think about sex, the hornier and hornier he got.

The fact remained that Billy Hartzell was a redblooded twenty-two-year old who hadn’t had sex in almost six months. He was fighting a losing battle here. Maybe he should just admit defeat before it was too late.

He popped three quarters into the soda machine and bought a Mountain Dew. He guzzled the whole thing in almost one swallow. Billy didn’t drink alcohol or smoke, and Mountain Dew was the closest thing he had to a vice.
Liquid courage
, he thought as the sugar and caffeine hit his system.

He’d need plenty of courage to do what he was about to do.

He glanced at the clock. He still had eleven minutes left on his break; he could probably even fudge a little and get himself an extra five or ten minutes on top of that, if he played his cards right. After all, he was the local golden boy. With half the local population trying to get into his pants, what were the chances he’d get into trouble for taking an extra-long break? Probably close to zero.

He tossed the empty Mountain Dew can in the trash bin and set off in search of Starla Berring.

Starla thought the operation would never end. Dr. Wilkinson did everything in his power to make it unbearable for both her and that pathetic little nurse-anesthetist Dana, too. Starla knew if she confronted him about it he’d deny everything, but she’d seen enough surgeons close enough incisions enough times to know that Darth Vader had gone out of his way to take three times longer than normal to staple poor old Mrs. Van Der Housen’s abdomen shut. Not to mention all the time he’d spent verbally abusing both her and Dana. The man had uttered enough swear words in that OR to make a sailor drop dead.

Starla knew that almost all male surgeons were foul-mouthed and aggressive, but today Dr. Harlan Wilkinson really pushed the envelope. Whatever was eating away at him, it was serious. His home life was probably miserable, what with his marriage falling apart and God knew what else. For the briefest of moments, Starla felt a little sorry for him. But she nipped that right in the bud. She wasn’t going to waste any pity on that asshole, no siree. She had better things to do.

Starla shucked off her soiled surgical gown and headed straight for the women’s locker room. It was empty—or so she thought. She pulled off her scrubs in the middle of the room, not even bothering to duck into one of the changing stalls, since she figured nobody was there to see her. But she’d figured wrong.

There was someone in that locker room who could see every inch of her, someone who had absolutely no business in the women’s locker room whatsoever.

That someone was Billy Hartzell. He was waiting for her in the shower stall. Naked. And wet.

Billy’s heart was pounding and his knees were shaking. He’d never done anything like this before. He was putting pretty much his whole life on the line—his job, his future career, his reputation, and who knew what else—just to get a quickie standup fuck. Would it be worth it?