Page 13 of Healing Her (Pulse Medical #1)

“Perhaps,” Ashley began, her voice silky, “you’re too close to the patient to see the rationality of my decision to help her get her life back as soon as possible.”

Jen was left speechless. Ashley was so intent on being right and in charge that she had actually decided to call Jen emotionally overinvolved in front of their colleagues. Was the presentation a decoy, another tactic to get Jen either thrown off the team or given no choice but to recuse herself?

No. No, Jen couldn’t believe the cardio surgeon was quite so conniving. She genuinely believed this conservatism was the best solution for Maria and that Jen was being too radical in wanting to go for a transplant. She just wasn’t going to pass up an opportunity to undermine Jen.

Fortunately, Steve Sundstrom finally spoke up. Clearing his throat, he got to his feet. “Let’s table the best course conversation for now. Doctor Proctor has the floor. Please, Doctor, complete your presentation.”

Ashley smiled tightly and turned back to the projector screen, clicking to advance to the next slide. “Now, here’s the team I want with me in the OR, plus Doctor Colton…”

The little jab didn’t get past Jen, but she did ignore it in favor of trying to control her temper for the rest of the meeting.

When it finally ended, she didn’t wait for Steve to waylay her.

She was first out the door and making a beeline for a distant supply room at the far end of the surgical wing.

Closing the door behind her, Jen crossed over to a plastic-sheathed stack of thermal surgical blankets and face planted into it. The pile neatly muffled the primal scream of rage she howled into it, a scream she found so entirely satisfying that she let out another one. And then another.

The door squealed open behind her and she stood up, whirling to see who was disturbing her. Ugh. You.

“I thought I’d give you a moment to collect your thoughts,” Ashley said, inspecting her fingernails with a studied casualness.

“And to ask you again if you could please remove yourself from my surgical team. You’re welcome to visit the patient as much as you like, of course, but you’re too close to actually be involved. ”

“She has a name !” The words exploded out of Jen with a force that made Ashley step back in surprise.

Jen strode forward and poked her finger right into Ashley’s puffed-up chest. “Her name is Maria! She’s a human being, not a surgical practice dummy.

That’s flesh and blood you want to cut into.

Stop calling her ‘the patient,’ damn it! ”

Ashley brushed Jen’s hand away, eyes narrowing. “I’m aware that Ms. Rivera is a human being. The problem is that you are too aware, and I am trying to remind you that she may be your friend, but she is also a cardiac patient, and her care comes before your emotions.”

“My emotions are because you’re proposing a course of action that’s going to see her under the knife again and again when it’s unnecessary at this late stage.

” Jen spun around and paced the room. “Yes, Maria is my friend. But I would advocate this hard for transplantation for any patient at her stage of heart failure. I see no need to waste the hospital’s resources or her precious time by subjecting her to surgery after surgery. ”

“And I am not wasting her time,” Ashley snapped impatiently.

“I’m allowing her to get back to doing what she loves sooner.

That is giving her time now . I implant the ICD, and she’s sitting at home reading scripts by next week.

She’ll be ready to go back to work, with some limitations, in two or three months. ”

“Limitations—argh! Why don’t you hear yourself? Why are you such a workaholic that getting back to work is more important than dramatically improving quality of life?” Jen tangled her hands into her hair and pulled, frustrated. “What is with your need to be right at any cost?”

“Why am I wrong? ” Ashley threw her hands into the air. “Why are you so intent on pushing radical surgeries before they’re needed? God, if you’re this much of a pain in my ass now, I definitely want you off my team before you can so much as critique the suture method I intend to use.”

“Oh, I’m not going anywhere, Doctor Proctor,” Jen scoffed. “You can’t make me.”

And then, just like the night in the surgical lounge, Jen’s declaration of defiance seemed to entirely change the energy in the supply room.

Ashley’s eyes grew even darker and she strode forward to back Jen up against the table with the stacks of surgical blankets.

She stared down at Jen for a moment, face unreadable, before her mouth once again claimed Jen’s in a fiery, wet kiss.

Jen, still wound up from her morning dream and shower session, was immediately primed, her pussy going soft and warm as Ashley’s hands slid into her hair and gripped tight. She arched her hips forward, trying to press herself against Ashley’s thigh.

“No,” Ashley snarled into her mouth. “You have to wait.”

Jen hadn’t known that she could be so susceptible to a domineering presence. No one had ever been like this with her before. A thrill went through her at the idea of contradicting her usual egalitarian sexual nature and allowing herself to be directed. Ordered. Commanded.

Without a word, Ashley pulled back and turned Jen around to face the table, stretching Jen’s arms out over the blanket stack.

She leaned forward, over Jen’s back, reaching with one hand to pin Jen’s wrists down.

Her other hand moved Jen’s lab coat back and slid under the waistband of her skirt, then her panties.

Jen gasped when long, cool fingers touched the hot, soft folds of her pussy, the unexpected temperature play nearly taking her legs out from beneath her. “Oh, fuck.”

“Shh.” Ashley’s fingers surrounded her clit, sliding up and down on either side.

Jen squirmed and pressed her ass back against Ashley, biting her lip.

Ashley pressed her fingers together and rubbed the root of Jen’s clit between them, a firm, deft massage that did nothing to quell the rising heat and everything to stoke the flames higher.

Pressed against the blankets, Jen’s nipples hardened. Pleasure rippled in the pit of her stomach, undulating waves all through her insides. She felt warm, liquid, boneless, melting with desire.

“I’m so mad, I’m going to make you come so fucking hard,” Ashley whispered, nipping briefly at the shell of Jen’s ear. “Do you want to?”

Jen had never wanted anything more. She nodded, her cheek rubbing against the plastic wrap over the blankets. “Yes,” she whispered.

“You want me to make you come?”

“Please,” Jen groaned, as Ashley’s fingers slipped through the wet heat.

One slight adjustment, and Ashley’s slender middle finger was pressed directly over Jen’s clit. “Come,” she said, and the rasped demand went straight to Jen’s core.

Everything she knew was focused on that working fingertip.

Ashley’s hand on her wrist gripped more tightly, pressed her hands down more into the blanket stack.

Behind her, Ashley was curved snugly over Jen, holding her completely still.

Jen was utterly pinned down, a complete prisoner to her own lust and Ashley’s dominance.

Nothing had ever excited her so much in her entire sexual experience. She hadn’t known anything could .

Jen bit down on her lip to keep her moans and sighs firmly held back. Rhythmic waves of pleasure were overtaking her completely, making her legs shake the closer she inched to climax. Ashley’s fingers were the center of her entire world, rubbing, pressing, sliding, hot, wet, unrelenting?—

Jen pressed her face down into the blankets as the most earthshaking orgasm of her life ripped through her, pulling a long and filthy groan out of her.

“Good girl,” Ashley was crooning into her ear, her hand still working between Jen’s thighs, but more slowly, carefully as Jen began to come down.

Gently, her hand eventually stilled, simply cupping Jen’s pussy as the last tumultuous aftershocks sent little shudders through her body.

“Good girl,” she repeated,” and Jen all but melted.

They stood, still joined together, still bent over the table, for a moment longer.

Then the noise outside the supply room door began to intrude, the sounds of people bustling around and talking, discussing the day’s surgical rota.

Ashley’s hand pulled slowly out of Jen’s panties and she released her wrists.

Jen turned around as the cardio surgeon backed off, standing up straight on still-weak legs as she rubbed her wrists, which clearly showed some red handprints. She was absolutely going to have to wait until they subsided before she went to see Maria.

Ashley’s face was unreadable again as she observed Jen. “I have to make rounds,” she said, a bit flatly, as if she hadn’t just wrenched a powerful orgasm out of Jen. “Will you be all right?”

“Yes,” Jen replied slowly, confusion over what had just happened beginning to set in. What was it between them? Arguing one minute, complete polar opposites, then… this. This thing that had come out of nowhere and was, alarmingly, escalating at a record-breaking pace.

She had questions, but before she could ask even one, Ashley had opened the supply room door and vanished into the corridor. Presumably she would be heading to the nearest bathroom to wash her hands and put herself back together.

It wouldn’t be a bad idea for her to get the hell out of Dodge as well, before anyone came in and caught her in a room that was filled with the scents of good sex. She had enough questions; she didn’t need anyone else to come in with any of their own.