Page 9 of Resist Me Not (Bloody Desires #4)

“You mean like the one who got away? No. I had one serious relationship in undergrad, but long distance did not work once I moved on to med school. Everything was all about ending up at St. Vincent’s, and if the person I was with couldn’t get that, I couldn’t waste my time on them.

I wasted too much on Curtis, who I thought understood.

I guess a travel writer has to do long-distance, huh?

” His foot bumps mine beneath the table.

I am not immediately convinced it’s an accident, but the flush to his face that follows proves it might be.

I bump my foot against his with clearer intent. “Like I said, when I want to end up back somewhere, I find a way.”

The man receives his drink and downs most of it with an angry swig. The waiter brought the check with it and discreetly slips it to the woman.

“You didn’t tell me why St. Vincent’s was so important to you,” I shift gears, sensing Walker doesn’t want to keep focusing on Curtis, which is good. There’s no love lost there. “I’m guessing it’s more than just a good immunology department.”

“They treated me as a kid,” Walker says. “It sort of feels like destiny to pay it forward at the same hospital.”

“Destiny? A man of science believes in fate?”

“Why not? We’re allowed to believe in both—science and the unexplained.”

“By that logic, you were meant to end up with Curtis.” Just as Walker’s nose scrunches in distaste, I continue, “If you hadn’t, we wouldn’t have met.”

His almost sneer turns into a charmed giggle. “Wow. Saying this is fate? You’re either a hopeless romantic or a complete sap. Good thing you’re hot.”

I have him smitten, and for however long it lasts, he has me too.

The man downs the rest of his cocktail and barks something too slurred to make out. He roughly pushes his chair back to storm toward the entrance, leaving the woman to pay. She does in cash, which is a hefty amount, but she waves away any change so she can chase after her burden.

“Hold that thought.” I lift Walker’s hand to my lips and kiss it.

“This hot hopeless romantic needs to use the facilities. But next we’re going to visit some lighter topics.

” I get up but pause at the side of Walker’s chair to bend down to his ear and whisper, “Like what hot doctors do in their spare time.”

Then I’m gone, hopefully leaving Walker wanting more with my absence, while I hasten after the retreating couple.

The man is stumbling enough to slow his steps, and the pair thankfully chose to use the valet.

Since the woman caught up to him and took his arm—much to his reluctance—it’s no huge feat to pickpocket his wallet undetected.

I have nearly flawless recollection and memorize the man’s name and address from his ID.

Then I return it to the wallet that I promptly let slip from my fingers.

“Excuse me, sir? Did you drop this?” I retrieve the wallet from the floor like a Good Samaritan and hold it out to him when he looks back.

“Hm? Oh, um… thanks,” he grumbles and snatches it back from me.

The woman passes me a tense smile, focused more on getting him out of here without incident.

The real incident in the making is going home with her, but his day will come.

I do not need to use the facilities, but I wait an appropriate amount of time out of view before returning to our table. While I count the minutes, I clandestinely watch Walker waiting on my return. Like a parody of my pickpocketing and fake Good Samaritan act, he enacts the real thing.

A little girl walks by with her family, one hand clinging to Mom. The other hand clutches two small stuffed animals like lifelines she probably doesn’t go anywhere without. One of them, a pink cat—no, bat—no, vampire cat with bat wings—slips to the floor unnoticed.

Walker rescues it. He calls the little girl back and doesn’t just hand it to her but flies it over flapping its wings. He is also waiting to eat, even though the appetizers arrived while I was gone. A genuinely good person amid all the filth is the most pleasant surprise of all.

Waiting until the fourth date to make Walker come undone beneath my touch is going to be a challenge, but I owe him the slow burn payoff I promised.

I am going to plan it all perfectly, so he is a stuttering, quivering mess by the end who will be just enough out of breath to need a puff from his inhaler and then will let me take care of him as I bring him down from the heights we’ll ascend to.

He is all smiles when I sit back down.

“Let’s see if the food here holds up to the drinks and hype.” I motion for him to dig in.

It’s a practically perfect evening. The restaurant is a seven, but on my strict 1-10 scale, that’s being generous. Perhaps I am swayed by the company.

By the time I am bringing Walker home—on foot since he lives nearby, like an added temptation from the universe—I have learned quite a bit about him. He doesn’t tell me everything. He is keeping a few shadows close to the chest, but I am confident he will reveal them to me in time.

His parents are alive, and he has a younger sister and brother, but he isn’t especially close with his family.

Not estranged but not close. More the text occasionally, see each other at major holidays and big events sort.

He doesn’t have close friends either, other than fellow residents.

He is so naturally personable, this would surprise me if it wasn’t obvious that he saves his focus for his career, his patients, and those he thinks need him rather than forming relationships for his own sake.

He has a hero complex, but he knows it. Even though he tells himself he can’t save everyone, he takes every loss extra hard.

He's me if I wasn’t… what I am. And I find it fascinating to see my light-side reflection.

“I’ve been talking your ear off, and I still don’t feel like I know you that well,” Walker says.

“You can rest assured I enjoy hearing you talk.”

“You’re the one with the panty-dropping voice.” He pales. “And I just said that out loud. Oh my God. If I swallow any more of my foot around you, I’m going to lose it up to the knee.”

Even I laugh then. “You have yet to say anything I haven’t enjoyed hearing, doctor.”

Walker comes to an anxious, fidgety stop, and the shift of his eyes to the nearby stoop tells me this is his building.

I wonder if the gears turning in his head are thinking about him calling me Daddy in response to me calling him doctor as much as I am thinking about it.

“Feeling like a nightcap?” he asks with a nod up the few steps to the door.

“I thought you didn’t overindulge?”

“I can make exceptions.” We only had two cocktails each, and the offer is tempting. “Did I go over your per diem and owe you a price?”

Oh, he is making restraint very difficult. “You did actually, so I suppose you do owe me something. Are you willing to pay right now?”

He shifts on his feet like an expectant teenager. “I think so.”

I raise an eyebrow, hinting I need more commitment than that.

“Yes,” he corrects.

Good. Enthusiastic consent is important to me, especially considering I plan to push the envelope a bit.

This street is a little busier than the one between my hotel and Curtis’s apartment, with cameras and just enough passersby that we will definitely have witnesses.

I don’t let that stop me as I step closer, tilt my head up for my lips to brush his ear, and whisper, “Repeat after me.”

“O-okay.” He shudders from my proximity.

“I had a lovely evening,” I say.

“I had a lovely evening,” he repeats with a smile in his voice.

“I was a polite, good-natured, and delightful dinner guest.”

“I was, um…” he chuckles a little, recalling what I said, “a polite, good-natured, and delightful dinner guest.”

“Now, may I have a kiss… Daddy ?”

Walker snaps his head back, gray eyes darkening with oncoming clouds. Welcome clouds, like summer heat needing a cooling rain. “U-um… m-may I… have a kiss… Daddy?” he finishes softly.

Oh yes .

He is embarrassed, caught off guard, but he likes saying it. He can’t hide that from me.

I slide my fingers around the back of his neck and into the trimmed hair at his nape.

He is broader and bigger than me in almost every way save my height, but he shrinks under my touch like a relieved sag to get closer.

I pull him to me, slow, deliberate, and just before our lips touch, I say, “How could I refuse such a good boy .”

I swallow the whimper the endearment causes and hold his lips to mine with the assuring presence of my hand.

Once Walker moves past his embarrassment and potential surprise at how much he enjoys our wordplay and building dynamic, he leans his head just subtly left, parts his lips, and slides his tongue past my teeth.

The taste of his tongue, his lips, the way we slot together, banishes everything else from my mind.

I reach for the edge of his cardigan with my free hand, pulling him even closer in sync with stepping forward into his body, until I feel resistance as Walker’s back meets the stone railing of the stoop.

The anchoring makes it even easier to sink against him, licking deeper into his mouth and nibbling at his plump lips when we pause for breath.

Walker, in turn, kisses as if he hasn’t embraced someone like this in months, years.

Maybe he hasn’t. Maybe with Curtis and past lovers it was never quite right, the recipient of his passions never truly one he wanted.

It’s a nice thought, that there might be only a meager few who have ever held him like this and had him under their spell.

I feel Walker’s quickening heartbeat through my knuckles, which are pressed to his chest with me gripping his cardigan.

The erratic, pounding rhythm urges me on, and I want to grind my hips forward.

I can feel that even just this has made Walker half-hard with the heavy, telling presence against my hip.

I will have to reward my good boy, my good doctor for his stalwart behavior and enticing reactions. Eventually.

But not tonight.

I nibble his lips a little more and end with a light flick of my tongue in the same moment that I press my hip harder against the steel in his slacks. Then I whisper just as low and quiet as when I called him a good boy.

“If you want to get to date four, doctor, you’ll have to agree to date two.”

Walker shudders again both visibly and audibly in the shakiness to his laugh. “Wh-what are you doing Saturday?”

“Wide open. I’ll call you.”

“Okay.”

When I pull away, I wonder if Walker would have stumbled without the stoop railing behind him. He’s panting, as if the moment I walk out of view, he’ll be reaching for his inhaler. I don’t want him so breathless as to be a concern, but it’s a bolstering triumph to truly take someone’s breath away.

Walker waves as I head down the street. I’ll find a cab or call a rideshare after a block or two.

The evening’s successes have left me abuzz.

I couldn’t possibly head straight to the hotel to rest. I’ll write while some of my ideas are fresh, but I can multitask with a little extra reconnaissance tonight.

After all, I have a new target to check up on.

Rude dinner dates really are the worst.

But polite, good-natured, and delightful ones are worth a date two.