I found myself staring at Dr. M.
He’d changed out of the nondescript trousers and shirt he wore on the wards, and was wearing faded jeans and a T-shirt, looking completely fuckable as he leaned against a wall, pint in his hand, communing with some other doctor types.
Today’s bad mood seemed to have evaporated and he was smiling and waving his free hand in the air as he talked to a man who looked like a psychotic teddy bear in a suit. I guess if I had to face a troop of med students every morning as well as my usual workload, I’d be prone to bad moods, too.
He looked up at that moment, and I must have had an idiotic grin on my face because he smiled back at me, a particularly goofy smile that did great things to me.
Lin pushed another pint into my hands and followed my gaze. She said, “Oh,” under her breath and went pinker, then Nevins hugged her again, distracting her.
I turned back to the bar.
Chapter Six
F was in full flight, describing his close encounter of the obnoxious kind with Human Resources that day, and I felt the tension begin to ebb.
It had been a bad day, with a bad night before it. I couldn’t believe how close I’d come to blowing my career, or at least to blowing something else.
I’d walked onto the ward this morning absolutely determined to keep the barriers in place. They were students; I was a tutor and supervisor. The hospital would have my ass.
Okay, that wasn’t a good place to go in my head, and it certainly wasn’t helping things. F frowned a little and said,
“Andrew, you old bastard, what the fuck is wrong with you?
You look like shit.”
F was probably the closest friend I had on staff. He was hopelessly middle-class, with a full-blown chemical dependency or two, and he claimed he was only working until such time as THC became available on prescription. My sort of person, once I got past the fact he drove a BMW and sent his kids to boarding school.
“I want to ask you a personal question,” I said, leaning forward and dropping my voice.
“I’ve got half a bag in the car,” F said, leaning his head forward briefly, too, so our foreheads were touching.
I had to laugh. Maybe I was blowing this all out of proportion.
There I was again, thinking about blowing things.
“Have you ever fucked a med student?” I asked.
“A student in general, or one of my own?” F sounded far too entertained for my liking.
“One of your own.”
“Yeah, a few,” he said. “Is that what’s up your arse?”
I spluttered beer at him.
“Ah,” he said, wiping ineffectually at his suit jacket. “I prefer the girls myself, but whatever rolls your socks down.”
“So, on a scale of appallingly bad taste lechery, where does it fall?” I asked. “How many of us decide that a power imbalance is no barrier to a really good fuck?”
F surveyed the bar, chewing on his lip in thought. “I can see three registrars or consultants here that I know of.
Moronic residents don’t count; they’re just med students with the trainer wheels off. Say, a third of the quacks here.” He looked at me as I took another mouthful of beer. “Tempted, huh?”
“Yeah,” I said, grinning at F. I looked around the bar, trying to imagine which of my colleagues here had got down and dirty with a student.
Blake was leaning back against the bar, beer in his hand, smiling at me and looking utterly gorgeous.
F must have glanced across, too, because he gave a filthy chuckle. “I’m guessing it’s not the tubby guy giving serious tongue to that girl, but the babe with the curls beside him.
My, my, he is cute, isn’t he? I’d swing for him.”
Blake turned back to the bar as Nevins and Lin surfaced for air, and all I could think of was that I actually knew his cell phone number. It was in my wallet, along with his scrawled
‘Matthew Blake’.
“Buy me a beer.” F thrust his empty pint into my hand.
“Now, because you are being flirted with, you idiot.”
“Fuck off, Feargal,” I said, but I took his glass and headed for the bar.
I could have walked to any part of the bar. It was all equally crowded with hospital staff discussing who they’d sleep with if the world was about to end, but I found myself walking toward where Blake, Nevins, and Lin were.
I pushed through the clump of theatre staff, distinctively reeking of isopropyl alcohol and chlorhex sterlising solutions, and up to the bar beside Blake.
Lin smiled at me. “Hello, Dr. M.”
“Hi, kiddies,” I said, and kicked myself. Stupid thing to say.
“Hi, Dad,” Nevins said, giggling drunkenly.
Blake just grinned sideways at me.
I leaned across the bar and ordered two pints, pushing the empties across to the bartender, and nearly jumped out of my skin as a hand spread itself across my thigh, out of sight, where I was leaning against the bar.
Blake wasn’t looking at me; he was talking to Nevins, teasing him about being pissed, but there wasn’t anyone else’s hand it could be sliding across my jeans slowly.
Regardless of how young Blake might be, he was no innocent.
I paid the bartender, and the hand was firm as it eased between my thighs and pressed up against my balls.
Fuck, but I couldn’t believe how turned on I was by this, but I managed to stifle the moan I gave as Blake’s hand found my cock through the denim. I didn’t know whether to scream, beg for more, or just press Blake up against the bar and fuck him right then. What I really wanted to do was touch him back, but there wasn’t any way I could figure out to do it discreetly.
I squeezed his hand where it was touching me, making sure he could feel how turned on I was, then took the pints the bartender slid across the bar toward me and stepped back out of the touch.
It wasn’t easy getting back across the room holding two full glasses, but I managed it. I shoved F’s beer at him and drank my own down in three long gulps, making F crack up.
“What happened?” he asked once he’d stopped laughing.
“I’m in,” I said, and I took out my cell phone. I texted Blake a single word: ‘tonight.’
“Let me buy you another beer,” F said. “If you’re getting laid, we need to celebrate. Let’s see if I can pick someone up at the bar, too.”
F did pick someone up. He was a consultant, he was single, he bathed, and he wasn’t fussy; of course he picked someone up. He came back ten minutes later, holding the hand of a pretty young woman. “This is Lena,” he said. “She works in High Dependency. Lena, this is Andrew.”
“You’re cute,” she said, sliding her hand under my arm.
“Are you good friends with Feargal?”
Fucking hell. Two offers in one night? Obviously two doctors were better than one.
“Not that good a friend,” F said. He handed me both of the beers he was holding and left with Lena, squeezing her ass as they walked toward the door.
I could stay, drink the beers, and ogle Blake across the room. Or I could abandon the beers so I was still sober enough to drive, and go home and jerk off in the shower, then call Blake.
