FOUR
Carly
After refreshing my lip gloss in the ladies’ room, I ducked out onto the balcony to take in the view. This terrace towered over some of the highest buildings in the city, and the dark shadows and cool wind made the entire landscape look like a haunted Gotham. Surrounded by red brick buildings, the main streets twinkled with lights, the entire sight completely magical. I needed a minute to take it all in.
How was it possible that I’d simply swiped right and found a man like this? A doctor, of all things, who had bought me a sparkly dress, taken me to a ball…had I fallen into a fairy tale?
“Thorn dating interns now?” A scratchy voice caused a shiver to run down my spine.
The faint smell of a cigar curled around my nostrils.
“I’m not an intern.” I turned to find the chief of staff of the hospital, the man Thorn and I had just been speaking to, standing entirely too close for comfort behind me.
“Would you like to be?” He leaned in, one thick eyebrow rising suggestively.
“Maybe…someday.” I backed away a few steps.
“I’m exactly the man who can make that happen. All applications go through me.” A heavy hand rested at the curve of my lower back, and I nearly shrieked.
My heartbeat kicked into high gear, every fight-or-flight nerve in my body raging at me to sock him straight in the balls and run.
But, Thorn… I couldn’t ruin whatever standing he had with his boss. I knew the politics of these hospitals, and who you knew mattered. Who you didn’t piss off mattered even more.
“Carly, was it? You’ve got the most gorgeous set of ti—”
“What the fuck were you saying?” The warm timbre of Thorn’s voice washed over me.
Oh, thank God.
“I was just telling the little lady here—”
“She’s not a little lady. She’s a woman, and you need to treat her that way.” I turned just in time to see Thorn’s swing land squarely in the chief of staff’s barrel of a chest, sending him stumbling backward. His cigar fell to the ground, and his face blazed red with embarrassment or rage. I couldn’t tell. I didn’t care. “If you even fucking look at her again, I’ll report you to the board. Got it, Chief?”
His face burned tomato red before he turned, stumbled, and burst through the balcony doors. We were alone again.
“You okay?” Thorn’s hands wound around my waist, pulling me into his protective body.
“Better now,” I mumbled into his chest.
“Christ, Carly. What happened?”
“I think this dress happened,” I quipped, pushing my hands beneath the fabric of his jacket, connecting with the warmth of his back. I needed his comfort. The safety only his strong and dominant presence could offer.
“Don’t blame it on the dress. He’s an asshole. I’m talking to Human Resources tomorrow. I’ll make sure he never talks to any woman that way again.”
The hard press of his hands at my back sent sparks rocketing through my veins. “Thank you for coming to my rescue.”
“I’ll always be there to rescue you, little one.” He kissed me on the top of the head. His hands cupped my cheeks as he trailed kisses down my hairline. “I can’t promise I’ll be this gentle later. You do crazy things to my sanity.”
My stomach twisted. My brain short-circuited with bolts of arousal. “What about friends?”
“Fuck friends.” His hands were suddenly everywhere. Trailing up my torso, swirling at the hollow of my back, gripping and kneading at the flesh of my ass cheeks through the dress. “I’m sick of this dress coming between us.”
I smiled, one finger catching in the strap of my dress and teasing it off a shoulder. He quirked an eyebrow, advancing on me as I continued to back up. I loved seeing him watch me as he advanced on me like a predator.
“Come here, Carly.” He hooked my wrist and slammed me against his chest. “Doctor’s orders.”
The next thing I knew, his hands were everywhere, our bodies crashing against a wall, before Thorn’s hand was feeling around for the doorknob behind my back.
He pushed us through a doorway where an empty stairwell stretched into darkness.
“Oh my God,” I breathed, words jagged as I crawled up his body, my lips attached to his, my hands in his hair.
“You’ve been teasing me in this dress all night. Everything in you draws me in and sets my blood on fire,” he murmured. “I’ve had a fucking raging hard-on for you since the second we met. The curve of these pretty lips.” He ran a thumb across the swollen flesh. “The way your eyes dart away and your cheeks turn red when you’re embarrassed. You intoxicate me, little one.”
His hands slid up my thighs, shoving the fabric of my dress up with it.
Fingertips made contact with bare, soaked flesh, and I felt him shudder. “Where the fuck are your panties, Carly?”
My blood thickened to hot lava with every word.
I loved him possessive.
“I left them at home.”
“I should bend you over my knee for that.” His hands gripped at the flesh of my bare ass cheeks, pulling me flush against every raw, hard inch of him.
“I was hoping I’d be rewarded.” I dropped to my knees, not waiting for his response before undoing the buckle on his belt and pulling down the zipper of his pants. His cock sprung out—hard, thick steel dripping with one delicious bead of pre-come.
“No underwear, Doctor?” A cocky grin spread my cheeks.
“Hush, you need rewarding, little one.” His hands pushed into my hair, consuming me, enveloping me, pulling me down onto his gorgeous dick.
I slid down his girth, hollowing my cheeks and fisting him at the root before sliding back up to the soft tip. I tongued the rim, flicking across the heavy vein that ran down its length, before sucking down his shaft and back up again. His fingers twitched, his grunts heavy, pummeling straight to my core as my thighs soaked with arousal.
Turning him on like this fueled my own passion, drove me insane with need, made me want to watch him come and then come again under my hands.
“Carly, fucking Christ, your lips are magic.” He pulled me up his body, lips attaching to mine in an all-consuming kiss. Our tongues twisted, our mouths fucking as we took and gave and forgot where he and I began and ended. “I need to be inside you.”
“God, yes, Thorn,” I breathed, clutching at his shoulders.
“But I have to tell you first, I don’t have a condom. I didn’t think this would happen here…but I’m clean, Carly. I’ve got the test results at home—you can see them in the morning if you want.”
“Results? Home? In the morning?” I hung suspended in his arms, legs hitched around his waist, my cunt throbbing between my thighs, thinking about him inside me.
“I want to fuck you, Carly. Badly. Right now.” He caught my lip with his teeth as he teased. “If you don’t want to fuck without a condom, I swear we’ll leave right now and run to the pharmacy and grab a box. But if you’re good—”
“I’m good.” I kissed him to shut his mouth. “I’m good. I’m fantastic. I’m clean. I’m yours. Fuck me, Thorn.”
A low growl emanating from somewhere deep in his chest was my only response.
The rest was all hands and tongue.
And then his dick.
Thorn’s gorgeous, talented, in-fucking-credible dick.