I turn back and spot Ruby coming at me. She doesn’t look happy.
“How’s your ankle?” I ask.
She hesitates a little, getting sidetracked. “It’s fine. Look, you can’t talk to my Grandmom like that.”
“Why not?” I arch an eyebrow at her.
“Because you’re being an asshole.”
I sense a few nurses look away, and at least one of them grins at that. I’m not surprised, most of these women hate me, when all I want is for them to do their damn jobs.
“I’m not being an asshole,” I say to Ruby. “I’m telling your grandmother what she needs to do to get better.”
Ruby crosses her arms. “You could be nicer about it.”
I turn to the girl and stare her down. She’s so fucking beautiful, for a second my anger almost completely evaporates. But just as I’m about to let it go, the anger flares back up.
I’m so tired of patients not trusting me. I’m tired of patients lying to me, pretending like their symptoms are worse than they are, misleading me. I’m trying to fucking help them, and yet all they do is make my job harder.
Of course, Ruby doesn’t know that. All she sees is me being short with her grandmother. She doesn’t stop to think that maybe I’m short because I care.
“No, I can’t,” I say softly, and turn away from her before I say something stupid.
She doesn’t let me go, though. She walks right alongside me, getting some looks from a few nurses.
“Bedside manner is important,” she says. “You’re supposed to make the patient feel comfortable.”
“Comfortable?” I snarl. “I’m supposed to make my patient feel alive. That’s all I care about.”
“These are people, Aiden. Not just numbers.”
I glance at her, frowning slightly. “I know that.”
“Do you? I think you just treat them like little puzzles or number games.”
“How the hell do you know?” I growl.
She shrugs. “The nurses talk. And I see how you are with my grandmother. She doesn’t mind it, but I do.”
“I don’t think I care if you mind.” We turn down another hallway into a relatively empty section of the hospital. We’re always saying how we don’t have any beds available, but that’s never true. There are always plenty of rooms.
We just never have the budget to staff them all. So there are constantly these empty wings with empty beds where sick people could be kept, but we never bother.
“You care,” she says. “Or at least I think you do.”
“I don’t.” I stop suddenly and turn to face her. “Don’t get me wrong, Ruby. You’re attractive and you make my dick hard, but I don’t care about anything.”
She stares at me, eyes wide. I start walking again, feeling fucking ashamed of myself, the self-loathing rising up all around me.
But she doesn’t let me go. I fully expect her to let me walk away, leave me alone, let me go back into my fucking self-loathing, but there she is, keeping pace again.
“You really are unbelievable,” she says, shaking her head. “Are you really such an asshole?”
I glare at her. “Probably.”
“Come on. I don’t buy it.”
I turn to her, but instead of stopping, I pull her forward and into a room. I push her toward the bed and slam the door shut behind me. I pull the curtain and stand over her as she leans back on the bed, staring up at me, lips parted slightly.
I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m angry, so fucking angry, and she looks… gorgeous. Sexy, unbelievable.
She should’ve let me walk away.
I loom over her for a moment. She doesn’t say a word. She’s breathing fast and her heart’s pounding. I can practically see it pulsing in her neck. I bend over her and she leans back on her elbows. I grab her hair, thick and full, pulling it into my fist.
“You don’t know me,” I whisper to her. “You don’t know anything at all.”
“You’re right,” she whispers. “But I don’t think you’re the asshole you pretend to be.”
I move to kiss her, but I don’t. Instead, I kiss her neck and she lets out this low, incredibly fucking sexy moan.
“I’m an asshole, don’t think otherwise,” I whisper into her ear. “I just happen to fucking want you.”
She gasps as I push her down onto the bed and grab her jeans. I unbutton and unzip her pants, pulling them off almost violently. She stares at me as I drop to my knees and pull her legs over my shoulders, getting her to the edge of the bed.
I push aside her panties. They’re black and frilly and useless based on how wet she is already. I kiss her inner thighs, above her cunt, around her belly button, before licking her top to bottom, tasting her juicy little pussy.
She groans, leaning back on her elbows. I start to suck and lick at her clit, completely losing myself. I shouldn’t be doing this, I know it’s fucked up. She’s a former patient and relative of a current patient, we’re in the damn hospital. If we get caught, I’ll lose my job or worse.