Red Light (18 page)

I still came and so did she, before I did, anyway, something which left me both glad and relieved. Coming before she did always made me feel…wrong…but despite that relief, something was…off.

“You’ll like that even better next time,” she promised as she lay on top of me, my cock still inside her as she ground slowly against me.

I didn’t mind the break because this had been our third or fourth time; I was starting to get sore. “Yeah?” I was still enjoying the aftershocks and the rebuild of the tension, the slick ride of her skin on mine, and the renewed tightening in my groin that hardened my clit.

“Yeah.” She kissed me, her mouth tasting of my blood as her fingertips scratched up, along the sensitive skin of my arm. “I want to
fuck
you,” she said in my ear as she held my wrist firmly.

“What?” I wasn’t sure I’d heard her, because the easy glide and the embers it sparked had already blazed, had become a burn, an almost urgent thrust, the red heat threatening to become something I couldn’t control, while the pain that shot through me equaled the thrill.

“Fuck, Tori,” she whispered hoarsely, “I want to
fuck
you, fuck you until—”

I’d never been so relieved to hear my cell phone ring.

“I’ve got to get that,” I breathed, and twisted to reach for my pants. That’s when I realized she’d tied my wrist. My first instinct was to panic, but instead, I forced myself to breathe.

“Trace, I have to answer that.” I kept my voice steady as my phone chimed again. “This late at night it can only be my family or work.”

“Can’t you call whoever it is back in a little while?”

All I could feel now was the discomfort deep inside, and a rising sense of frustration. “No. I can’t.” I clipped my words so I could control them, contain the emotion. “If it’s my family, someone’s ill. If it’s work, I’m still per diem—I have to answer.”

Trace kissed me, the metallic iron taste still on her tongue.

“All right,” she sighed, grabbed my phone, and held it up to my face.

“Scotty.”

“Hey, Scotty, it’s Marco. I need you to come in as soon as you can. We’re down a medic on the overnight team, and we can still ride them with an EMT. Figure you’ll end about eight or nine a.m.”

“Sure, give me an hour to get there.”

“Great,” was the last thing I heard him say as Trace took the phone back and snapped it shut.

“You’ve got to go.”

“Yep.”

Her nipples brushed past my face as she untied me, and we exchanged no words as I stumbled for the shower. While part of me couldn’t believe I had to go back to work, because my muscles screamed with exhaustion, I was also more relieved than I can ever remember being that I could leave without making any excuses.

As I washed off, I could really feel how sore everything was. Parts of me were too sensitive to even touch, and when I did I noticed a red smear.

Blood. She’d left me bloody. I should have stopped hours ago, I thought, angry with myself as I painfully rinsed.

I dressed quickly because I had an extra shirt there and walked out into the living room, ready to go.

“Hey, this is for you,” Trace said as she came out of the kitchen and handed me a paper bag, “because you can’t find anyplace to eat this late.” She kissed my cheek tenderly.

I’d been ready to say good-bye, to find a reason to maybe not see her again quite so soon because whenever the sex twisted like that I always felt so odd, but the kiss, the considerate lunch, and the hug she wrapped me in softened my edges, muted my emotions to a hazy confusion.

I kissed the top of her head and hugged her back. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”

It was cold outside, and I was glad my uniform jacket had a lining when I got into my car and keyed the ignition. Fuck. My car wouldn’t start. I tried again, and after some hopeful sounds, it died again.

Trace knocked on my window. “I’ll drive you.”

“Fuck,” was all I said, shaking my head in disgust at my car. I checked the dummy lights on the dashboard. Nothing. My battery had probably died.

“Come on,” Trace urged, “we’ve got twenty minutes to get there.”

I checked my watch: she was right. I had no other option.

“Thanks, thanks a lot,” I said as we pulled up.

“Don’t mention it.” She patted my thigh.

I hefted my orange tech bag from the backseat and got out, slinging that familiar weight behind me.

“Don’t forget your food,” Trace said as she came around the car, once again handed me the paper bag, then caressed my neck and shoulders.

“Be careful?” Her face was pale, almost ethereal, in the streetlight, her eyes dark, dark pewter and her mouth a bruise against her skin.

“I’ll be fine. We don’t get a lot of flag-downs or things like that.” Irresistibly drawn, impelled, I kissed her, I couldn’t help it, and her lips were baby soft against mine, her tongue tender and sensual in my mouth.

“Hey, hey, hey, if you’re gonna do that, you have to share,” Marco’s voice cut in.

I waved him away behind my back.

“Marco, this is Trace,” I said when we finally stopped for air. “Trace, Marco.”

Trace held her hand out. “Pleased.”

Marco took it in his and, instead of shaking it, he bent over and kissed it. “Pleasure’s all mine.”

I backhanded his shoulder. “Hey! I don’t share!”

I glanced at Trace, who seemed amused as Marco rubbed his arm.

“Hope lives on.” He smirked. “Hope lives on. Okay,” he clapped his hands, “say good night and get your ass in here, Scotty. You’re riding with Jean. Nice meeting you, Trace.” He grinned at her and disappeared into the garage. “Jean!” he bellowed. “Where the hell are you?”

Trace pulled my collar up around my neck to keep me warm. “You don’t have to share, not if you don’t want to,” she murmured into my ear, “but I can. Do whatever you want.” Then she kissed me again.

“I’ve got to go,” I said finally. “I’ll pick up my car later.”

“Want me to pick you up after your shift? I can call in late.”

I considered her offer for about half a second. No, as much as I enjoyed kissing her, I knew that if she picked me up, we’d end up fucking, and I wasn’t ready to go through another round just yet, which in some ways was really strange, because I was almost always up for sex. Kerry and I had gotten along so well mainly because we’d matched each other in appetite.

“I’ll get a ride with one of the rigs. I’ll be fine.”

“All right.”

“I’ll phone you after I get off,” I called as she opened her car door.

Trace flashed me a smile, that wicked gleam of white I liked so much. “Just think of me when you do!”

I shook my head and went inside.

Jean, who was a medic, had already completed the “one hundred.” Those who provided ALS, advanced life support, used the same general equipment as those who gave BLS, basic life support. But medics carried additional machinery, needles and IV fluids, and, more importantly as well as dangerously, drugs. Occasionally someone jumped and rolled a crew in a rough neighborhood, hoping to find morphine for recreational use.

However, as an EMT I just had to sign in, jump aboard, and tuck my tech bag in the back. I stowed the snack Trace had made for me in the front console.

“You don’t mind if I drive as long as everything’s quiet or the calls are all BLS, do you?” Jean asked before we climbed into the cab.

“No, not at all, works fine for me.” I got into the passenger seat. “I prefer to tech anyway.” That was true. I preferred patient care. If I’d wanted to drive all the time, I could have gone for a commercial truck license.

“Cool, cool.” Jean nodded and keyed the mic. “Hey, Marco, we’re gonna go sit off the Belt Parkway, under the Narrows Bridge, okay?”

“Yeah, cool. Bring me coffee when you come back to base.”

“With or without sugar?”

Marco grumbled something. “Light and sweet, please, just like you in the morning.”

Jean laughed. “Yeah, right. Ten-four.”

The ambulance swung out of the garage into the night.

We didn’t get many calls, but the ones we did get were strange. An elderly female patient, approximately eighty, from a nursing home had a prolapsed uterus. She’d borne eight children, and she was old, nothing else.

Transporting her was a bit difficult because we had to find her a comfortable position, well, that and we had to cover the exposed organ with dressings moistened with sterile saline so it wouldn’t be abraded by contact with anything. Apparently, that sort of prolapse wasn’t uncommon in women past a certain age, especially not in those who’d had four or more children, but it was still strange to see.

Next a male patient had somehow managed to fall out of his bed in the hospital and fracture his hip; his family understandably wanted him transferred to another facility and were so upset by the mishap that they wouldn’t let anyone, not the nurses, not the doctors, care for the patient, aged fifty-three. His left hip bulged, he writhed in pain and cursed while his wife and someone we assumed was his son wrung their hands and looked on. They wanted him out, and they wanted him out now.

Since this was a hospital transfer, neither Jean nor I had expected to do anything other than evaluate vitals and monitor them, and had brought up only our tech bags and portable oxygen. Jean ran back down to the rig for the appropriate splints while I performed the initial evaluation.

The way this relatively young man cursed everything and everyone, we knew his airway was fine, but I checked everything in case I discovered something overlooked or hidden. He’d fallen hard enough to break a bone, and he could have hit his head and didn’t remember, could have cracked a rib, or anything else.

When Jean returned we immobilized the fracture, and as Jean took tension from me on the injured site so I could fasten the first tie-down, I noticed,
good hands
. Jean had good hands.

That call took us almost two hours because the family wanted to go to a New Jersey hospital.

Jean decided we’d stay on Staten Island on the way back; most of our calls were from there, anyway.

“Mind if I eat?” I asked as we parked under the other side of the bridge, ironically almost directly across from where we’d been earlier.

“Nah, go ahead. You worked day today too, right?”

“Yeah, I did,” I pulled the sack out of the spot I’d stuck it in, “so bio fuel is not a bad idea.”

Jean snorted as I dug into the bag. An apple, a bottle of Gatorade, and a plastic container. Trace had included a fork and napkins and, underneath, two cookies. Chocolate chip, very cool, and among my favorites.

“Want one?”

“I’m all right.” She laughed. “You probably need it more than I do.”

“What?” I asked as I opened the container. Oh, awesome. Chicken cutlet and pasta. I was starving and done in moments, while Jean occasionally chuckled in my general direction.

“What’s so funny?” I asked again as I uncapped the Gatorade.

“You.” Jean smirked as she flicked the hair away from my neck. “That.” She touched a spot with a gentle fingertip, then leaned back against the door and regarded me smugly.

I touched the spot and reached for the rearview. Dammit, large and fresh. I hadn’t even noticed when Trace had done it, and I hadn’t worn a turtleneck despite the cold because I’d forgotten, I’d been in such a rush.

I settled back down in my seat. “So…what?”

“So…that thing is so fresh you must have come up on the downstroke to answer the phone.”

That was so close to the truth, as grateful as I had been for the phone to ring, that I could feel the heat rush to my face. But it was absolutely none of Jean’s business, and something about the casualness of her tone pissed me off.

“Whatever,” I answered. I hunkered down in my seat and closed my eyes. I was tired and had already started to learn to catch a nap whenever I could.

“Ah, come on,” Jean cajoled, “you can tell me about it. We’ve got hours of nothing ahead of us. She have her legs wrapped tight around your waist while you fucked her and got called in to work with me? Or better, was she blowing you, lips nice, fast, and firm on your hard-on while you picked up the phone? No, no, not to leave a mark that fresh there…”

Every word she said brought a very visceral memory to the forefront of my brain, with an accompanying rush of blood to my groin. I hoped to hell the silence meant she’d stopped. I was wrong.

“I know! She was riding you, her lips on your neck and her pussy nice and snug on your cock, and you had to go and answer the phone.”

I couldn’t take it anymore. “Will you please shut the fuck up?” I opened my eyes and sat up straight. Now that was just wrong—respect for myself, respect for the woman I was sleeping with, and Jean’s commentary lacked both.

She laughed at me. “Are you fucking stupid? No, wait, you were fucking
and
you were stupid.”

I was wide-awake now, and the heat that blossomed in my neck had nothing to do with embarrassment or sex. It was anger, pure and simple.

“I’m serious, Jean, just shut up.”