I let out a weak laugh against his neck, too spent to move. “You’re welcome.”
He snorts, fingers tracing slow lines up my spine. “Next time you want to go like this, you’re carrying me to the shower. My legs are done.”
“Deal,” I mumble, already drifting. “But only if you keep whining the whole way. It’s cute.”
He pinches my ass lightly and playfully, and I gasp, which makes him chuckle low in his chest.
Insatiable menace meets exhausted but satisfied bastard.
We’re both completely ruined, and neither of us would change a thing.
30
Lance
By nine-fifteen, I’ve seen six patients, handled a pharmacy callback, assisted in a foreign body removal, and walked approximately forty-seven miles inside this department. My gait is perfectly normal. Extremely casual. I’m walking exactly the way a person walks when nothing unusual has happened to them recently.
Charlie falls into step beside me near the supply room.
“You’re walking funny,” she notices, flat as an EKG reading.
“I pulled something,” I lie immediately.
“Where?”
I blank for half a second. “Lower back. Reached for something on a high shelf. Overextended.”
Charlie tilts her head, eyes doing a full forensic sweep of my body. “What were you reaching for?”
“A jar…of olives.”
“Olives.”
“Yeah. I had this intense olive craving last night—it was life-altering. I stretched too far, felt a pop. Classic olive jar injury.”
She studies me for a long, terrifying second, then nods solemnly. “Lower back strains are no joke. You should ice it.”
I actually need a cold pack for my asshole, but sure. “Will do.”
We keep walking. I think I’m in the clear until her eyes drop to my collar. I’d yanked it up like a nun this morning, but apparently not high enough. Charlie’s gaze locks onto the very obvious hickey George left on the side of my neck. Her eyes slide to my forearm where my scrub sleeve has betrayed me, revealing another mark.
“Lance,” she sings, delighted. “Those are hickeys.”
“Ant bites,” I say without missing a beat.
“Uh-huh.” She’s fighting a smile so hard. “Ant bites.”
“Yes,” I say, firmly. “Very, very aggressive.”
“Multiple ants?”
“One ant. Very committed. Dedicated, even.”
Charlie stops dead in the hallway, her hazel eyes glinting with mischief. “She sounds intense.”
I open my mouth, but I think about what George’s hands feel like on my hips and the situation I’m currently in that she has just accidentally identified.
“The ant,” finally deciding to say it out loud, “is not a she.”
