The Apartment (Apartment #1) (20 page)

Lily was breathing deeply, adjusting to the feeling of having him so deep inside her. It was uncomfortable, but she wouldn’t say it hurt. He was being so slow and gentle with her that it was nothing more than a warm, stretching fullness. Yes… full. She could feel him everywhere inside her at once, like the blood that pounded through her veins. He was consuming her.

“I want you to bend down farther,” he gritted through his teeth, breaking the silence. “Move slowly, we’ll go together. You can prop up on your elbows and knees, but I need to lean forward on my arms.” When she looked back at him, she was startled to see that every vein was standing out on his face and neck, and he was squeezing his eyes shut and biting his bottom lip. It was breathtaking to behold. Feeling her gaze on him, he opened his eyes, scorching her with their heat. “It’s just so fucking intense. I need more leverage, and I’m afraid I’m going to lose my balance and hurt you.”

Lily nodded quickly, touched by his honesty. She slowly moved forward until she was stretched out beneath him, braced on her forearms with her knees bent under her hips, thrilling to the sensation of his warm body covering hers. He propped himself up on his elbows on each side of her arms, kissing her shoulder a few times before she felt his shallow hot breath puffing at her ear.

“Alright, I’m going to move now,” he whispered. She felt him shifting his hips, pulling himself out of her slightly. He slid fairly easily, but her body still gripped at him so tightly that he whimpered as he moved. “Fuck,” he groaned, biting her shoulder as he pushed back inside. He moved his hands closer until they were covering her own, lacing through the backs of her fingers, holding them tightly.

It didn’t hurt nearly as bad as she had feared, and hearing him come undone was arousing her all over again. She lay there for a while, feeling the steady drag and slide of him as he flexed his hips back and forth slowly, and it didn’t take long before his sultry voice was back at her ear.

“You’re doing so good, baby,” he panted, his voice shaking. “You are so fucking beautiful… you feel so amazing… God!” His entire body shivered above her. She felt his left hand release her fingers, sliding back up her arm and down her side, until he slipped it around her hip and settled it between her legs. The next time he thrust forward, she felt his fingers rubbing and circling her swollen clit.

“Oh!” she gasped. The dual stimulation was becoming interesting.

Ethan was barely holding on. “Please,” he begged, sounding desperate. “Please come for me, baby… I need to make this good for you… do you think you can?”

He kept up his swirling patterns on her throbbing bundle of nerves, and before long Lily was grinding herself against him, trapping his hand between her thighs for added friction. After only a few seconds they had built up an amazing rhythm together; Lily would rock forward into his hand and he would rock forward into her, over and over again.

“Oh… oh God…” Her body was shaking. He was everywhere… everywhere around her… everywhere inside her… and she was falling… falling into oblivion. “Oh
fuck
!” she screamed, her body convulsing as she rode out her release.

“Yes baby, that’s it… oh fuck yes, that’s it… I can feel you squeezing me even tighter… oh… oh God… FUCK!” He threw his head back and cried out, finally losing control. His body tensed up painfully before exploding in the most intense, blinding pleasure he had ever felt. Between his ears ringing and his vision blurring, he wondered if anyone had ever died from an orgasm.

Gently shifting to the side and slowly pulling out of her, Ethan wrapped himself around her tightly, almost protectively. “Are you alright?” he whispered against her neck.

“Mm,” she nodded, exhausted. “Better than alright.” He had been so gentle with her; she had never felt so precious to anyone.

He wanted to take her into the shower and spend his time cleaning her and helping her wind down, but he was suddenly so sleepy that he hoped she didn’t mind resting for just a moment or two first.

Burying his face in her hair and inhaling deeply, he barely had the energy to whisper one last thing to her before closing his eyes and drifting to sleep.

“Thank you for trusting me.”

The next few days were full of more pleasure than Lily could have ever imagined in her wildest dreams.

By some great miracle, the Gods of Infidelity had been smiling down on her when she returned home Sunday evening. She had been all ready to go home and put on a brave face, making dinner while she suffered through the piercing agony of being away from her beautiful stranger yet again, only to find out that not only was her fiancé going out of town for the entire week, but so was her father. He was being sent to Springfield by the high school to help chaperone a student government field trip because the American History teacher had fallen ill and wouldn’t be able to go. He was less than thrilled by the news.

She almost hadn’t been able to contain herself when George told her over their bowls of venison stew. After she fought through the initial urge to jump up and down and do cartwheels around the living room, she still had trouble paying attention to him for the rest of the night. Her mind could only think selfish, joyous thoughts from that point on. No more dinners. No more excuses. No more rushing to the apartment and leaving within an hour or two just to go where she didn’t even want to be.

Lily could get used to that.

From the next day on, the week had turned into one giant orgasmic blur, separated only by brief intermissions so that she could go to work and go home to sleep. She was sorely tempted to stay over for the night, but she was paranoid George would call the house while she was gone or that she might find her bored cats ripping the house apart in protest of being ignored. Spoiled rotten brats that they were.

It didn’t help that her beautiful stranger’s hints for her to stay were becoming less than subtle. Every time she would get ready to leave, he would find a new way to distract her into staying longer. Whenever they would nod off afterward out of exhaustion, which was pretty much every time, he would hold her tightly to him as soon as he felt her stirring. One time the bastard had even begun stroking her hair and humming softly in her ear, trying to lull her back to sleep. And that’s not to mention the bed, which felt like like lying on a cloud. It was getting increasingly difficult to say no when it was the last thing in the world she really wanted to say.

Lily sighed to herself, unable to concentrate on the buzz of office activities going on around her. Although she was supposed to be updating a patient’s chart, she was letting her mind wander back yet again to the previous afternoon.

“I don’t know the first thing about painting,” Lily admitted, watching him apply broad strokes of color across the pristine canvas. “But I certainly do love to watch you do it.” It didn’t hurt that he was shirtless again
.

“Care for a demonstration?” he smirked
.

“Yes!” she squeaked. After the last demonstration he’d given her, she knew that the answer was always yes
.

What she had assumed would be a silly lesson about doodling stick figures in a notebook quickly took a turn for the erotic. Before she knew what was happening, her stranger had rolled out a drop cloth across the floor and stripped her bare, laying her down right in the middle of it. With palette in hand, he slowly began painting lazy, sensual strokes of color along her fair skin.

He went through every brush in his case, explaining the difference in each width and texture. When he ran out of brushes he smirked again, telling her that it was time to explore the sorely underrated art of finger painting. Dipping his long, slender fingers into a freshly mixed dollop of a lovely shade of aquamarine, he proceeded to smear the oils around her nipples and down her stomach. Before long, single finger strokes were replaced with whole handprints across her flesh, and the entire effect was mirrored onto his own torso once he covered her body with his.

The amount of scrubbing and touching that was needed to clean each other off later only served to ignite another heated sex fest in the shower. It had been so steamy, and slippery,
and—

“Yoo-hoo, Earth to Lily!”

“Huh?” She was startled back from dreamland, jerking upright when she realized that Becky was sitting right next to her and waving her hand in front of her face.

“Where were you just now? You looked like you were about to start drooling any second.”

“Oh… I, uh, I guess I just zoned out there for a minute.” Hazy images of her stranger standing under the spray with water streaming down his back were still clinging to her conscious mind. They refused to be shoved away for later, and who could blame them, really?

“I’ll say. I was trying to get your attention forever.”

“I’m sorry, Becky. What did you need?”

“Oh, I didn’t need anything, really,” she said, laughing lightly. “I just came to tell you that I had to help that weird old lady again. You know, the one with the Yoda forehead?”

“Ugh, yeah. That is the creepiest forehead I’ve ever seen on anyone, especially a woman. It’s even creepier than Mare Winningham’s.”

“Oh my God, isn’t that the frumpy chick in St. Elmo’s Fire? Man, I never thought about it before. Her forehead
is
creepy!” They both erupted in a fit of laughter that was interrupted by the loud beep on Lily’s phone.

“What now?” Lily sighed before picking up the receiver. She didn’t want to deal with Kim and her bad attitude today—she wanted to escape back into fantasies of her stranger.

Becky gestured that she was going back to work as Lily pushed the flashing page button. “Yeah?”

“Lily, you have a patient call on line four,” Kim snapped. “They asked for you specifically.”

“Okay, thanks.” She clicked over to the other line. “Thanks for holding, this is Lily. How can I help you?”

“Lily?!” a panicked voice croaked. “It’s Maggie Foster. Can you help me? I’m freaking out a little bit.”

“Hi, Maggie. I’ll certainly try to help. What seems to be the problem?”

“I’m spotting,” she whispered, as if merely saying it out loud was painful. “And please don’t give me the spiel about how this happens to most women. Nothing about my pregnancies has been what happens to most women.”

“No, no, I wasn’t about to say that. When did it start?”

“Overnight I think. It’s not heavy, but it’s there.”

“Alright, have you been doing anything strenuous? Have you had sex in the last twenty-four hours?”

“No! I’ve been too scared to!” she cried.

“Okay, okay, are you having any cramping?”

“No, not yet. Is there any way that you could squeeze me in for an ultrasound today? I’m not due for my next one for two more weeks, but this is exactly how all of the others started. I won’t be able to calm down until I know the heart is still beating.”

“I understand, but don’t you live in Chicago? Wouldn’t you rather go to a local hospital to be seen quicker? I can try to call in the order.”

“I’m already in Aledo. My mother-in-law had me over for the weekend since Eric is out of town again.”

“Let me see what I can do, alright? I’m going to put you on hold for a minute.” Lily ran down the hall toward the ultrasound room, grateful to see the technician just dismissing a patient.

“Hey Lily, what’s up?” she asked her after handing off a series of blurry pictures to a beaming woman.

“Heidi, I need a really big favor. I know you’re overbooked today, but I’ve got a majorly important red sticker chart that needs an emergency scan. Can I have her come in?”

“I don’t know,” she huffed. “I’m never going to get out of here as it is.”

“I know, and I’m sorry for making it worse. Believe me, though, Natalie will be insanely pissed if we don’t jump for this one.”

“Alright, fine,” she sighed, glancing down at her watch. “But she needs to get here as soon as possible.”

“I don’t think that is going to be a problem. Thank you so much.” Lily spun on her heels and dashed back to her desk, already grabbing for the phone as she sat down. “Are you still there?”

“Of course!” Maggie replied with a shaky breath.

“Okay, I was able to work you in, but I need you to get here as soon as possible.”

“I’ll be there in ten minutes.” The call went dead. She had already hung up.

* * *

Less than twenty minutes later, Maggie Foster was having a clear, warm gel applied to her abdomen by Heidi. She was joined by her mother-in-law, Barbara, who had refused to let Maggie drive herself to the office, and, strangely enough, Lily.

It was not customary for the nurses to be in the room with patients during this procedure, but when Lily had attempted to excuse herself after taking her into the room, Maggie had grabbed her hand.

“Please don’t go,” she whispered. “Barbara is going to cry in a minute. Eric is usually here to be strong for me, but he won’t be able to get here for a few more hours.”

“Uh, alright,” Lily replied, unable to hide the completely baffled tone in her voice. “Just let me tell someone that I’m going to be in here.” She walked back to her phone and paged the front desk.

“Reception,” a sharp voice barked on the other end.

“Kim, it’s Lily. You’re going to have to shuffle some charts around up there. Natalie is going to be down a nurse for a while.”

“What?” she snapped. “You’ve got to be kidding me! We’re swamped!”

“Well, deal with it,” Lily shot back. “If Natalie has a problem with it, just remind her that I am helping a red chart.” She went to hang up but stopped the motion in mid-air, bringing the receiver back to her ear. “And if you have a problem with it, you can just kiss my ass.”
Click
.

Now Lily was in the ultrasound room, standing next to the table where Maggie was laying, holding her hand. She noticed that the elder Mrs. Foster had already migrated to the back of the room and was hunched over in a chair, repeating a quiet prayer to herself under her breath.

“Okay, I’m going to start now,” Heidi announced, dimming the lights slightly and sitting down in front of the machine. She fiddled with a few controls on the keyboard and held out the ultrasound wand, placing it in the middle of the gel on Maggie’s skin. They all held their breath as they watched her moving it around, turning it in different directions and stopping frequently to enter data into the computer. At one point she switched on the volume only to turn it back off again quickly, but she hadn’t been able to hide the sound in time. There had been nothing but static.