"You alright?" Nancy stopped by my office just before ten, her face pale and eyes so weary.

"Yes. You?" I stood and moved around my desk as tears filled her eyes.

"No." She started to cry.

"Nancy, what's wrong?" I pulled her into my arms and held her. I wasn't close to anyone at the hospital on purpose, but she'd been beside me since the beginning of my career. We were a dynamic duo of sorts.

"I got pulled into the ER tonight, and we lost a little boy from an accident." She leaned against me and shook as she cried. "I'll never get calloused enough to be down there. I just can't stand the sight of a child in pain."

"It's okay." I ran my hand over her silver hair and closed my eyes. Feeling her pain left me alive and wanting to make a change again. "You want to grab a bite to eat before you head home? We can talk about it."

She nodded and moved back. "I'd like that. The food. I don't want to rehash what just happened. It was horrible."

"You should have called me down there. I might have been able to-"

"No, Ansley. You couldn't." She shook her head as if reliving a nightmare and reached up to wipe her tears away. "Doctor York did all he could. Honestly."

"Tom is excellent at what he does." I walked around my desk to grab my keys and jacket. "They have broccoli cheese soup today. Come on. My treat?"

She nodded and wrapped her arm around the back of my waist as I wrapped mine around her shoulders. We walked down the hall that way, and I could honestly not care what anyone thought. I had a cold, hard persona that I usually kept up, but Nancy was hurting. Personas be damned.

"Do you mind if I ask you something?" She glanced up at me as we walked into the cafeteria and released our hold on each other.

"You can ask me anything." I moved up to the soup station and grabbed two cups, handing her one.

"Do you have a history with Jacob Parks?"

"It's actually Jacob Parker. He just goes by Parks for some odd reason, but no. I don't." I poured an oversized ladle of soup into my cup and reached for hers. "Why do you ask?"

"There's so much emotion between the two of you. He sets you off like no one I've ever seen before." She rubbed my back as I worked on her soup. "More than Nolan, Ans."

I nodded. "I don't know what it is. Maybe that I'm insanely attracted to him, and I know he's a wolf?"

"Maybe so." She took her soup from me and walked to the checkout, holding the conversation until we were seated at a quiet table just for the two of us. "Just be careful. You don't want everyone noticing. It's a little explosive."

I nodded. "I'll be careful. I need to figure out what it is about him. I'm thirty-five fucking years old. A young doctor shouldn't affect me as much as he does, but something about him sets me on the defensive."

"Maybe because he's attracted to you, and his reputation is the love 'em and leave 'em type?" She took a tentative bite of her soup and sighed. "So good. Thanks for doing this."

"I would do anything for you." I chuckled. "A cup of soup is the least I can do after you having to put up with me all the time." I took a bite of my soup and thought of Parks. My body ached for a long night beneath him, but at the same time, fury danced in the center of my chest. Odd.

"What are you thinking?" She tilted her head to the side.

"That I need to figure out what it is about Parks that makes me crazy." I shrugged. "You're right. I think about him and am instantly turned on and pissed. I feel like I'm sixteen again."

She laughed. "Well, that might not be such a bad thing."

"Yeah, except for the fact that I'm not sixteen. I'm grown." I glanced around to see Nolan walking out the front door. "And the man I loved and thought I was going to spend forever with turned out to be a liar. One that stole my youth and my child bearing years."

"What? Bullshit on that. You can still have a baby." She reached across the table and gripped my hand tightly. "Women can have babies up until menopause. You know this. You're a brilliant physician."

"The risk is too high. I'm too late." I pulled my hand from hers. "It's okay. I really don't want to go down this road again."

"Ans."

"No, seriously. Please, Nancy." I let my gaze move up to meet hers. It was hard to do, but I let my facade down for a moment, just long enough to let her see my pain. "It's too late, and no one is at fault for that but me. I let the devil in, and when I discovered who he was, I was too afraid to kick his ass out."

"And now Parks looks like another Devil?"

"Maybe so." I glanced down at my soup and tried to let my thoughts go. If I didn't, I'd be up all night long, pacing the floor, and that wasn't good for me or my patients the next day.

* * *

I took a sleeping pill the minute I got out of the shower at home and crawled into bed. The sheets were cold and soft against my heated skin. Turning on my side, I let out a long breath and closed my eyes. Parks upset me because of who I felt like he could be. Namely my next mistake, and I was so fucking weary of making them that I fought him back regardless of how unstable and immature it made me feel.

"I'll call Aiden in the morning and tell him to pull Parks back to New York." I let out a long yawn, fully ready to open my soul to my older brother and ask for help. He loved me and had been protecting me and Gwen since our parents passed. He wouldn't let me down. He couldn't.

Sleep rolled in, and I gracefully released myself to the security it offered.

Soft piano music played somewhere in the distance, and the sound of it drew me in. I glanced down and took in the light pink nightgown I had on. Silky and tight, I felt like a princess in it, the type of woman a man would desire.

"Ansley." The deep voice behind me scared me, and yet it was too familiar.

I turned in time to watch Parks close the gap between us and crash into me. He was in slacks and nothing else. His strong hand slid up my back and into my hair. The look in his eyes had me captivated. He was going to have me. He was sure of it.

So was I.

"Forgive me?" I lifted to my toes and pressed my lips to his, offering him a soft kiss. He tilted his head and deepened it, the taste of wine on his tongue as it rolled past mine.

I moaned, unable to help myself. He ran his hands down my back and cupped my ass, urging me to lift up and wrap my legs around him. I complied, knowing I was lost in the middle of a dreamscape and wanting to experience all it had to offer.

"Fuck me," I whimpered against his soft lips. I wrapped my arms around his neck and lifted up, wrapping my legs tightly around his waist and rolling my hips to rub myself against the thickness of his erection.

"I plan to. Naughty thing." He nipped at my lips and walked us to a bed that appeared out of the middle of nowhere.

The soft brushing of his fingers over the center of my panties to my ass left me whimpering like a needy whore. I wanted him inside of me, to experience something new, something incredible. To feel alive again.

"I thought you liked your girls naughty." I let out a soft yelp as he let me fall backward to the bed.

"Hush and enjoy us." He ran his hand between my breasts, over my stomach, and around my mound. "Fuck, you look good. Tell me you want me."

"You know that I want you." I opened my legs, acting out my fantasies of being bold and as slutty as I wanted to be. There, in the middle of my dreams, no one could judge me - not even me.

"Good girl." He smiled and moved to his knees as he tugged the pink panties I wore down my legs and leaned in to press his mouth to my wet center.

I groaned loudly and let my knees fall to the side as he worked his tongue around my clit before pressing it as far inside of me as it would go. I'd never let a man taste me. Not even Nolan. I wasn't even sure if he'd ever wanted to. He hadn't tried. No one had really.

"Fuck," I groaned and arched my back as a fire sparked in my stomach. "Put your fingers in me."

"Like this?" He pressed two thick fingers deep inside of me and pumped them.

Pleasure spread like wildfire through my veins, and I reached down and slid my fingers into his hair before gripping the dark strands tightly and forcing him back down. He chuckled before opening his mouth and sucking my swollen skin in.

I cried out his name and rode the orgasm for as long as it would last, my body jerking and twitching as the most delicious feeling I'd ever experience ripped me in two.

"My turn." He moved back, licking his lips and he unzipped his pants and stepped out of them. "I want you on your knees."

Eagerness raced through me, but something was off. The music had grown louder, more insistent. It wasn't a piano, but a buzzing.

My alarm.

I jerked up in the bed, my body covered in sweat, my heart racing.

"Shit." I reached for the clock, realizing that I'd set it for the wrong time. It was only four in the morning. "You gotta be kidding me."

After turning the alarm off, I dropped back to the bed and laid there with a million thoughts rushing through my head. Of all the people to dream about eating me out, it had to be Parks. There was no way I was going to get through the next month with him.

I ran my hand down my stomach and spread my pussy open with my fingers. It was sticky wet and pulsing with need. I hadn't fucked myself in a long time, but I made up for it the rest of the night, exhausting myself enough to fall back asleep.

Parks was a problem I didn't need, but something told me that I didn't have much of a choice. Aiden would shut me down, or Nolan would.

The universe was trying to teach me a lesson; I just wasn't sure what it was.