Page 12 of Healing Her (Pulse Medical #1)
J en squirmed on the countertop as a nimble tongue traced patterns delicate as lace on her clit, teasing little flicks on the tender flesh sending sharp shocks all through her body.
Restlessly, her legs flexed in their position over smooth shoulders, her toes pointing as the relentless mouth between her thighs licked and tasted her.
Three fingers filled her pussy, sliding in and out of the wet heat.
Sometimes, the long middle finger pressed up, massaging her G-spot and making her gasp.
Jen’s arms reached up and she grabbed the handles of the cabinets she leaned against, her nipples were peaked hard, and she was so close, so close…
Her phone shrilled across the room with her morning alarm, ripping her out of her dreamworld and away from where Ashley Proctor had been on her knees in the surgical lounge, eating her out with the fervor Jen just knew lurked under that uptight demeanor.
“Ugh,” Jen groaned, sitting up and swinging her legs out from under the down comforter on her bed.
Clad only in a thin white tank top and black panties, she marched barefoot and grumpy to her bathroom, twisting the various handles in her shower to get the hot water going.
Between her legs, her panties were still warm and damp with arousal, and in the mirror, she saw her nipples still hard against her tank top as she brushed her teeth. When steam clouds filled the bathroom, she stripped off and stepped into the shower.
Hot water, just on the edge of being too hot, streamed down over Jen’s body and pinked up her fair skin. She picked up a bottle of rose-scented shower gel and poured a generous palmful into her hand, then rubbed them together to distribute it.
The cool gel made gooseflesh of her skin as she massaged her body. It slipped and lathered up, heady clouds of the rosy scent mingling with the steamy water, and Jen’s head fell back as the sensations began to overwhelm her. Her hand slipped between her legs and began to play with her clit.
She’d chosen this apartment mainly for the shower, which had an overhead rainfall and multiple nozzles jutting from the walls. There was also a powerful handheld nozzle that she pulled free from its hook now and took with her as she sat down on the ledge built into the back of the shower stall.
Legs spread wide, Jen twisted the lever on the handheld nozzle to adjust the spray and slowly, tantalizingly lowered it to her pussy.
The hot stream drilled into her clit, yanking a gasp out of her throat.
She adjusted her grip to ease up the pressure, shifting on the bench until she had the perfect, perfect angle and water pressure on her clit.
Jen’s moans filled the bathroom as waves of pleasure washed through her body. With her free hand, she alternated between her breasts, lifting and squeezing the soft warmth of one at a time, peaking a nipple with slippery fingers.
Water crashed around her as she came, back arching away from the shower wall. Her fingers spasmed around her right breast, holding it tight while her orgasm racked her body.
Slowly, she came back into herself, coming down from the sensual high on a cloud of satisfaction. She released her breast with care and dropped the shower nozzle onto the floor. Her chest heaved, her breaths deep.
Jen opened her eyes and blinked slowly, finally coming back to the whole of her senses. Her legs would remain weak for a bit, she knew, so she didn’t stand up right away.
In the week or so since she and Ashley had had that insanely hot and unexpected kiss in the surgical lounge, this is how she’d woken up in the morning.
Although today’s dream had been even more intense and graphic than its predecessors.
She wondered if yesterday’s confrontation outside of Maria’s room had contributed to that.
Maria . Jen grabbed the brass rail embedded in the shower wall and shot to her feet.
There was a meeting today, the one Ashley had referred to yesterday.
That was why her alarm had gone off a little earlier than usual.
All sexual desire gone, Jen rushed through the rest of her shower and hurried back to her room to check her phone.
“Damn it!” she yelped, racing to her closet.
She was definitely going to be late, and it was entirely her fault.
Well, and Ashley’s, but she doubted that explaining how would go over well as an excuse for her tardiness.
Jen skidded to a stop outside of the conference room, making sure to catch her breath before she eased the door open. There was no hope for her to make a professional entrance when she was ten minutes late, but she could at least look less like she was escaping some kind of catastrophe.
A dozen pairs of eyes focused on her as she slipped into the room, and she did wish she didn’t have quite so sensitive a blush reflex.
Standing by the projector screen, dressed in a sleek black pantsuit that Jen thought was probably designer, her hair tidied back into its usual sleek French twist, was Dr. Ashley Proctor.
One bold dark eyebrow lifted into a perfectly plucked arch, and her damn prissy mouth pinched for a brief moment before she addressed Jen’s entrance.
“So very, very kind of you to join us for the meeting, Doctor Colton.”
Jen slumped into a chair, wishing she’d dared to waste more precious minutes in the pursuit of a cup of tea. “I’m sorry, Doctor Proctor.”
“I’m sure.” Lifting her hand, Ashley clicked on the remote she held. A presentation filled the screen. “I’ll try to cover the entirety of my plan in the time we have left.”
Jen winced and slumped further into her chair.
Only to sit up straight as an arrow, her spine galvanized steel as her mouth dropped open. Ashley was proceeding through her minimalist PowerPoint slides briskly, with a plan she clearly thought was the most sensible approach to managing Maria’s heart condition.
They’d all read the same records, Jen was sure.
They’d all seen the state of Maria’s heart from the scans, that the management she had insisted on thus far had helped some but had gone on too long.
She should have been on a transplant list long, long ago, in Jen’s opinion.
And Jen had spent the last two days gently talking to Maria about it in between Maria’s efforts to squeeze more sexy gossip out of her.
Maria, predictably, had been resistant, but Jen knew it was just because she didn’t have the info she needed.
Jen did, and she’d shared it. Told Maria that most surgeons would have had a pacemaker or implantable defibrillator in her years ago but for her resistance.
Now, Jen felt, they were well past the time when those would be effective for long.
It was time for the radical approach, she’d explained.
Maria’s big heart had to go. Yes, it meant waiting for a while, and then medication for the rest of her life, but there’d be a rest of her life.
A fresh new heart beating in her chest and giving her a new lease on living.
She’d regain strength, her blood flow would improve, and she could get back to work.
A device would help for a while, but, Jen had pointed out, if Maria was going to have surgery anyway, why not get the big one and hopefully be done, rather than prolong things?
It had taken some doing, but Jen had eventually gotten Maria to understand. And now Maria was ready to hear that she was going on the transplant list.
But Ashley was breezily presenting a procedure to install an implantable cardioverter defibrillator. “The recovery time is four to six weeks, but the patient will be able to go home and resume her life, slowly and under frequent observation, the day after we complete the implantation.”
“And in a year or less, she’ll be back on your operating table under your scalpel,” Jen blurted out before she could stop herself.
Once again, all eyes were on her, with varying degrees of astonishment in them. Except for Ashley’s. Ashley’s brown eyes went dark with anger at the interruption, and Jen saw her grip on the presentation remote get white-knuckled. “Excuse me, Doctor Colton?”
In for a penny… “Well, I think you heard me. We’ve seen the records.
” Jen gestured to the fat pink folder on the table in front of Ashley.
“At this point, any kind of device is merely a Band-Aid. Ms. Rivera’s heart has deteriorated rapidly over the last months.
She’s had minor heart attacks already, the next one could be fatal.
She should have been on the transplant list a long time ago, we need to put her on there now . ”
“As you well know in your position of transplant director, Doctor Colton,” Ashley began through gritted teeth, “donor hearts are rare. So hard to obtain.”
“Yes, which is why time is of the essence.” Jen was amazed that she was having to fight for what, to her, seemed like the only sensible solution. “Get an LVAD on Ms. Rivera, get her on the list, and let’s get that bad heart out of her as soon as we can. I don’t see why this is even in question.”
“Why should we put her life on hold more than it already has been?” Ashley shook her head.
“The ICD will let her get back to work in a couple of months. A transplant will put her in a holding pattern while we hope to get a heart, and who knows how long that will take? Then the recovery time, assuming she’s lucky enough not to reject the donor organ, is significant. ”
The other doctors, nurses, and surgeons in the room glanced between the two surgeons as the clash went on.
Nobody volunteered an opinion. Jen could not believe what she was hearing.
Or not hearing, rather. She turned her astonished gaze back to Ashley.
“I don’t understand why you’d rather prolong her suffering with a quick-patch procedure that will just land her back here sooner rather than later. ”