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Chapter 13
Jen stopped outside Shane’s door and wiped her hands on her scrubs. Today he was getting his catheter out bringing him one step farther on the road to recovery. Unfortunately, she was going to have to be the one to do it . . . and the task loomed before her like a giant . . . the thought of anything giant turned her thoughts in a decidedly unprofessional direction. She’d avoided Shane’s room for as long as possible, but now it was time.
She hadn’t been able to stop thinking about touching him. She’d woken abruptly last night from a dream about him. Bedpans and catheters were not, as a rule, sexy in any way, shape, or form. But in her dream, she’d lowered the sheet that covered his legs to find him aroused. And things had gone further than she’d ever dreamed of going in real life.
The thought of his penis in her hand had nothing at all to do with medicine and everything do to with Shane. She tried to think of it as a simple medical procedure. Except that it wasn’t just any penis. It was Shane’s penis she’d be holding. And she was going to have her real hands on his real flesh as soon as she stopped being a chicken and walked into his room.
She’d intubated him all those weeks ago, and hadn’t had any difficulty then. There was something more intense, more difficult about touching him now. She tried to relax, but her stomach kept twisting into knots as she walked into his room. Nerves and something else. Something more that she was afraid to acknowledge. His expression was tense even as his lips formed a pained half smile. She nodded in greeting as she set the catheter kit down and laid out the equipment. He was a big man, and she needed to get him positioned properly for the procedure. ‘After this, we’re going to start getting you outside for fresh air and regular exercise. The docs are reviewing your file, but you should be ready to go home in a few more days, tops.’ The muscles in his neck were corded tight, and his jaw was set. He turned his face toward the window. She deliberately avoided looking at his lap, but that didn’t stop the heat from crawling across her cheeks. Damn her subconscious for planting that suggestive seed in her mind.
‘Are you okay?’ He turned toward her, and something in his dark gaze made her breath hitch. He’d looked at her like that once before. Just once, when he’d held her palm to his chest.
She wanted him to touch her again. She could admit that to herself, even if she’d die before saying it out loud. She sighed softly, and her body trembled with awareness of Shane.
‘Is this going to hurt?’ His words were soft and thick, and they slid across Jen’s skin like warm cream. He cleared his throat.
‘It’ll probably hurt for a few days,’ she said. ‘Maybe a little burning. But we’ll manage it. Just like we have been.’ Small talk when she was edging dangerously close to a full-blown panic attack? Great. Her cheeks burned hot, and she sucked in a deep breath. She could do this.
Yeah, right.
‘Guess this would be a bad time for dick jokes?’ he said weakly.
Any words she might have said got stuck in her throat. She tried to smile, but didn’t quite manage. Instead she cleared her throat.
‘Okay, so here we go.’ She washed her hands in the sink, and refused to look at him as she snapped on first one blue latex glove, then the other.
She could have sworn he groaned as he covered his face with one hand and nodded. She placed a sterile pad on his lap, looking only as much as was necessary to get it into place. She positioned the second sterile pad that would encircle his genitals and unsnapped one side of his hospital gown. He may have started wearing T-shirts yesterday, but pants were still out of the question until . . . well, until the catheter was out. She pulled back the pad covering his lap, prepared to pull his penis through the opening, clean him, and remove the catheter.
Shane’s body had other ideas.
She cleared her throat and felt her cheeks flame even hotter. He’d been flaccid and barely conscious when she’d inserted the catheter. He was fully erect now. . . . The medical fact that this probably had nothing to do with her didn’t stop a slow burn of warm heat through her veins. A simple procedure had morphed into something else with so much more. . . .
His very real erection stood in the room between them, like an unwanted uncle at the family reunion.
‘Shit,’ he mumbled. His face was bright red. It must have matched hers.
She couldn’t do this with him erect, even though she knew it was medically possible. She couldn’t touch him. Not like this. Not with her dream pounding through her brain in time with the beat of her heart. She cleared her throat again and wondered why it was suddenly so hard to swallow.
‘We have a couple of options. We can wait. I can get some ice water, or you can, um, thump it a couple of times to make it stop.’
‘Can’t you just get it over with?’ The sheer horror on his face was almost enough to make her laugh. But the urge to touch him consumed every ounce of her willpower.
She nodded and bit both lips, hoping the pain would distract her from the desire singing in her blood. He covered his face again as she reached for him.
Heat pulsed through the thin material of her gloves. His erection was solid and heavy and her hand only covered a portion of him.
In her dream, she had slid her bare hand down his erection in a slow stroke. Liquid heat rushed between her thighs even as she stomped on the fantasy and focused on the task, ahem, at hand.
She’d never had so much trouble removing a catheter in her life. She drained the sterile fluid that kept the catheter in place. Then she peeled the tape from his abdomen that had secured the tube. She finally pulled the tube free and covered his lap. His erection forced the sterile cloth into a tent.
Jen left him to adjust his clothes. She didn’t think she’d be able to do that right now without torturing them both. She needed to put space between them before she burst into flames.
There was a medical explanation for his body’s reaction. It had nothing to do with her.
But a whisper of promise slid behind her as she left his room.
What if it did?
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