Page 20 of Her Desire (Pulse Medical #3)

Holly exhaled, feeling lighter than ever. “I want this,” she murmured, surprised at how certain she sounded. “And I promise I’m not running away this time.”

“Good,” Gianna whispered, then dipped her hand inside Holly’s jeans.

She didn’t hesitate. She moved her hand right beneath the fabric of Holly’s panties and began exploring, gently at first, which frankly, Holly hadn’t expected at all.

Not after that kiss. She’d assumed they’d be out of their clothes by now, lying on the bed, possibly grinding their hips over each other’s.

But this, this slowness, was way more intoxicating, eliciting a tension in Holly’s lower belly that felt as if it might explode any minute.

With her free hand, Gianna tilted up Holly’s face and kissed her again, her teeth grazing Holly’s lower lip, while her fingers increased their pressure. Gianna slid two fingers from Holly’s clit to her entrance and slipped them in between her folds.

Holly shivered. Her legs felt like they were going to collapse beneath her, but Gianna was practically a mind reader. She wrapped her arm around Holly’s waist, holding her up while she kept her fingers sliding in and out through her already vet wet folds.

“Fuck,” Holly breathed against Gianna’s mouth. “If you keep this up, I’m going to come right now.” It couldn’t be closer to the truth.

Gianna smiled and stilled her fingers. But only for a second before she pulled her hand out from Holly’s pants and moved her fingers to her mouth.

She licked both of them, all while holding eye contact, which, frankly, was the hottest thing Holly had ever seen.

Gianna then pulled Holly’s top over her head and unhooked her bra, her fingers skimming softly across Holly’s shoulders before she tugged down her pants.

When Gianna’s clothes were lying in a pile beside her, Holly gripped her hips and pulled her flush against her.

She groaned at the skin-to-skin contact and immediately bent her knees slightly, moving her head down to lick a stripe between Gianna’s breasts.

But that wasn’t enough. Holly needed to feel all of her.

With one hand, she cupped Gianna’s ass and the other her right breast. Then Holly rolled Gianna’s nipple between her thumb and forefinger, bringing a whimper out of Gianna’s throat.

Holly found herself smiling. Not that she hadn’t stopped smiling since earlier.

“Let’s get on the bed,” Gianna said, already stepping forward to guide Holly down.

Which she let her do. But only until she was flat on her back before Holly muttered, “It’s my turn. I want to taste you.”

“I’m not going to say no,” Gianna replied, smiling softly from where she was lying beside Holly, her palm flat on Holly’s stomach.

Holly had no real idea what she was doing, but she wasn’t past relying on instinct. Besides, she could still remember every detail of Gianna going down on her the other day. And she’d also watched Ammonite the other evening, alone in her bed, and some of those scenes had been extremely educational.

“I want you to sit on my face,” Holly said, acting far braver than she was. She patted her chest and grinned when Gianna climbed on top of her, straddling her stomach.

She was soaking wet. Holly could feel it against her skin. She reached out and slid a finger across Gianna’s glistening folds and that tension from before, that feeling in her stomach, amplified. By a hundred.

Gianna was staring at her, watching her, which should’ve made it all the more nerve-wracking but for some reason didn’t.

For some reason, Holly experienced a sort of calm wash over her.

Not enough to drive the hum between her legs away, on the contrary, but enough for her to be able to instruct, “Move up,” without feeling like her face was going to turn strawberry red.

Gianna did as she was told, shuffling forward while Holly gripped her ass and tugged her up all the way to her face. Soon enough Gianna was straddling Holly’s shoulders, her one hand holding onto the backrest of the bed.

“If I do something wrong, you need to let me know,” Holly muttered.

“You can’t ever do anything wrong,” Gianna said, shaking her head.

With that, Holly closed her mouth over Gianna’s vulva and stuck out her tongue, dipping it between those slick folds.

Gianna gasped, and that gasp was all Holly needed to carry on, to find her clit and close her lips around it, to suck that little bud of nerves that would no doubt have Gianna squirming.

There was a moment—Gianna began rocking her hips, moving them over Holly’s face while she lapped at her, dipping her tongue in and out, moving up the length of her over and over again—that had Holly battling her own war.

It was all so fucking hot. The way Gianna moaned.

The way Gianna braced one hand against her hip, her nails digging into Holly’s skin.

Holly was sure that in a minute or so she’d come in a serendipitous twist. So, why not speed things up a little?

And so, while she kept sucking on Gianna’s clit, Holly let go of Gianna’s right hip and slid her hand down to between her own thighs.

She found her clit easily and applied just the right amount of pressure.

Holly couldn’t help it, the need to pleasure herself while she was pleasuring Gianna, it was a sort of primal instinct she couldn’t stop. Her orgasm was building. Gianna’s too. The surgeon kept rocking her hips faster and faster over Holly’s face until…

“Fuck!” Gianna called out first, her thighs shaking, her body leaning backward, away from Holly’s mouth.

Holly finished right after, that orgasm sweeping through her like a stormy breeze until she felt exhausted and boneless but also entirely satisfied and happy.

Gianna collapsed beside her, breathing loudly. “Where the hell did you learn to do that?”

Holly laughed, not caring that she had her legs splayed open, her entire body exposed. She didn’t even bother reaching for the sheet when she turned to her side to face Gianna. “My little secret.”

The surgical ward was quiet this morning, a rare thing, really.

Not that Holly would mention it out loud since it would be both silly and irresponsible to jinx the calm.

She was standing at the nurses’ station, scrawling a few final notes in a patient’s chart, her mind only half on the task.

The rest of it was caught up in Gianna. In how easy it had been to fall in bed with her again.

How much sense it had made in a way that nothing ever had before.

Kissing Gianna, sleeping with her again, letting herself want.

Well, it should’ve left Holly panicked, spiraling, trying to convince herself that it had been a mistake like that first time.

Except it hadn’t been.

And that was the only part that scared her.

It wasn’t that Holly felt wrong about it.

It wasn’t some earth-shattering disaster.

She wasn’t questioning everything about herself or the life she’d lived up until this point.

She just didn’t know how to be this person yet.

The one who had to accept that love wasn’t what she thought it was.

Because up until now, Holly had always assumed she knew what attraction felt like.

She’d dated men and been in relationships that were good, that made sense.

She’d never really questioned herself. But nothing had ever felt like this.

Nothing had ever pulled at something deep in her chest like Gianna did.

Besides, there were other things far more terrifying than these newfound feelings she was experiencing, like receiving a voicemail from her mother that morning.

“ Holly, sweetheart. I booked my flight. I’ll be in town Friday morning, and I’d love to have lunch with you.

Maybe dinner. Maybe both! Call me when you have a moment. Love you.”

Holly had stared at her phone for a long time after listening to the message, a sinking feeling creeping into her chest. She wasn’t ready to sit across from her mother and pretend to be the same person Magda had always known.

She wasn’t ready for the subtle, disappointed sighs or the comments disguised as concern.

Why do you work so hard, Holly dear? When are you going to settle down and start a family?

Whatever happened to that nice boy Charlie from your residency?

Holly wasn’t ready to tell her mother the truth.

That maybe she was never going to settle down with a nice boy.

Maybe she’d always known that a part of her was different, that she’d just been so good at ignoring it, convincing herself that hyper-focusing on Rebecca Ferguson in Silo , on those slim sweaty biceps, was nothing more than admiration and she’d buried that attraction so deep she didn’t even know it existed.

And maybe, just maybe, her mother had handed her the shovel?—

“You look like you’re completely lost in your thoughts,” a voice interrupted. A sweet, lovely voice that belonged only to Gianna.

Holly turned away from the half-finished notes toward Gianna, who was standing next to her, wearing turquoise scrubs with a smiling dolphin embroidered into the pocket. “I guess I was,” she said, realizing only then how tightly she was gripping the pen in her hand. She loosened her grip.

“Penny for your thoughts,” Gianna said, tilting her head slightly, a small smile sitting on those lips. Lips that had already ruined Holly twice, that had completely obliterated whatever sense of self-control she thought she had.

“Um….” Holly started, even though what she wanted to say—to ask—was a terrible idea. Yet she heard herself say, “I actually wanted to ask you something.”

Gianna raised an eyebrow. “Okay.”

Holly cleared her throat, suddenly feeling very stupid for bringing this up, especially considering just the other day they were just friends, and now, they were… Well, she wasn’t even sure what to call it. “My mom’s coming to town on Friday.”

“And you need me to perform a last-minute emergency surgery on her,” Gianna teased, folding her arms over her chest and smiling like she knew where this was going but was doing her best to lighten the mood. Holly would thank her later.

“No,” Holly huffed out a laugh. “But that might be less painful…for both of us.”

“What’s going on?” Gianna asked, her expression softening

And there it was. The moment where Holly could back out, where she could shake her head and say never mind, and suggest they head down to the cafeteria for a poppy seed muffin and a coffee.

But instead of doing that, Holly forced the words out.

“I was thinking of telling her about…” she gestured between them, not sure what word to use.

Us? This thing? The fact that I’m into women now and probably always was I just never let myself accept it.

“I was wondering if…if you’d come with me,” Holly went on.

For a second, Gianna didn’t say anything and Holly thought for sure Gianna was going to tell her that it was too soon, that Holly should do this on her own, and that it wasn’t her job to hold her hand through it.

Which only made Holly feel somewhat dizzy with regret for asking in the first place.

“I know it might be too soon,” Holly added quickly. “But it’s more a moral support kind of thing, you know. I won’t even tell her about you specifically, just that I am…you know. You can just be there, maybe?”

Gianna reached over and squeezed her wrist, tightly, reassuringly.

“Of course I’ll be there. And I don’t mind if you tell her about me.

” She smiled and Holly’s heart melted. “Don’t worry, I’ll even mention that I’m a pediatric surgeon and I save tiny lives for a living.

Every mother wants their daughter to date a surgeon, don’t they? ”

Feeling entirely relieved, Holly laughed. “Magda isn’t like every mother. But if anyone can win her over, it’s you.”