"Hey. Andrea?"

"You expecting someone else, baby?" Andrea murmured, nipping her way along Pearce's jaw as she pushed her hand inside Pearce's scrubs. "I couldn't wait until I got off work tonight. I am so hot for you."

"How about you slow down a lit--" Pearce gasped as Andrea's fingers dove between her thighs. "Jesus!"

"I knew you'd be wet." Andrea climbed onto the bed, her skirt hiked up to her hips, and threw one leg over Pearce's thighs. She rocked hard against her leg. "I have been dying to do this. Oh, you feel so good."

The shock of the sudden assault on her already overstimulated nerve endings catapulted Pearce's body into overdrive. She wanted Andrea to stop and she wanted to come all at once. Panting, hips heaving, she groaned, "Let up on me for a minute. Just wait, will you."

Andrea was moaning, pulling at her, writhing against her, already too far gone for reasoning. Pearce felt teeth against her neck, and before she had time to object or resist, she came in quick sharp spasms. She bit Andrea back, her mouth finding soft flesh, and Andrea screamed out in pleasure. Pearce's mind went blank as another orgasm rocketed through her.

"Oh God, baby," Andrea moaned, licking at the spot she had bruised on Pearce's neck. "I needed that. And I could tell that you did too." She squeezed between Pearce's thighs. "Didn't you."

"Sure," Pearce said tonelessly as Andrea sat up to rearrange her clothes. "That was just what I needed."

"You should change your pants, baby," Andrea said as she stood and fluffed her hair. "I left a wet spot on your leg."

Pearce closed her eyes to the sound of Andrea's laughter fading down the hall. When sleep eluded her, she got up and made her way to the roof. The sky was overcast, the night bitterly cold. The distant echoes of Andrea's attentions still twisted through her, but there was no trace of warmth left by her touch.


CHAPTER TEN

Wynter arrived in the cafeteria the next morning ten minutes before rounds. She was slightly annoyed, but not surprised, to see Pearce there before her, slouched in a chair, a Styrofoam cup of coffee in her hand. She checked the table, half expecting to see evidence of street dog detritus, but there was none. She assumed that the street vendors hadn't warmed the chili yet. She pulled out a chair next to Pearce. "Morning."

"Looks like it," Pearce grunted.

"Rough night?" Wynter sipped her own coffee and glanced at Pearce, then stared at her neck. A quarter-inch bruise marred the pale skin just above her collarbone. It was more than a hickey; it was an intentional bite mark. Someone had meant to mark her, and had succeeded. The idea that someone wanted to possess her that way, and that Pearce had allowed it, offended her. An image of the brunette in the utility room, crawling all over Pearce, flashed through her mind, and she reacted without thinking. "From the looks of things, I guess so."

Pearce frowned at the sarcastic note in Wynter's voice, then saw where her eyes were riveted. She rubbed her neck and felt the tenderness. Crap.

"I've got some cosmetics in my locker if you want to cover that up," Wynter said coolly. "Unless you don't mind that everyone knows what you were doing while you were...on call."

"I might have been on call," Pearce said with an edge to her voice, "but what I do while I'm waiting for something to happen is no one's business."

"Has it occurred to you that it sets a lousy precedent for the other residents?"

"You think so?" Pearce leaned forward, her nerves jangling.

Despite the fact that no emergencies had arisen after Andrea's middle of-the-night visit, she hadn't slept. She'd spent an hour on the roof, despite the frigid temperatures, then been propelled inside by the urgent desire to shower. She felt soiled, and wasn't sure why. It wasn't as if she'd never had a tryst in her on-call room before, and she usually enjoyed a woman who took what she wanted, because so did she. Plus, Andrea hadn't done anything she hadn't done half a dozen times in the last year. But for some reason, Pearce was angry. Angry that Andrea thought she could walk in uninvited and find Pearce willing. Angry that she hadn't said no and meant it. Angry that when it was finished, she'd felt nothing. Wynter's criticism now only underscored her own self loathing, and that was more than she could handle after thirty hours of no sleep. "Has it occurred to you that your job is to take care of patients and not offer your opinions on things that don't concern you?"

Wynter rocked back in her chair, stunned by the cutting tone of Pearce's voice and the flat, hard fury in her eyes. Belatedly, she realized that she was out of line. Pearce was not only her senior, she was a virtual stranger. They'd shared a dinner, but that didn't give her the right to pass judgment. Still, the anger--arising from where, she couldn't be certain--simmered. It was all she could do not to snap back. Instead, she did what she always did when her back was against the wall. She grew very still, damping her emotions with iron control. In a voice that revealed none of her feelings, she said, "I'm quite prepared to take care of my patients. Thank you."

Cursing under her breath, Pearce stood abruptly and walked back to the cafeteria line. When she returned with her second cup of coffee, the other members of the team were present. As she sat, she avoided Wynter's eyes and said curtly, "Let's take it from the top."

In a studied voice, Wynter said, "1222, Arnold. Four days post..."

When they'd finished updating the patients' status, Pearce gave everyone their instructions for the day. "Wynter, you're with the chief on that splenectomy he's doing later this morning."

"Great case," Bruce said enviously.

"Are you leaving?" Wynter asked Pearce as the junior residents left to take care of the work generated during rounds.

"In a while," Pearce said vaguely. By rights, she should be off call now and could go home. Should go home. But she very rarely did.

Wynter gave her an appraising glance, but decided not to mention the fact that Pearce looked worn out. As the senior resident had just pointed out quite succinctly, it was none of her business. "I'll see you tomorrow, then."

"Right," Pearce replied, waiting for some indication that Wynter wanted company on the way to the operating room. When Wynter turned and walked away, Pearce shrugged and let her go. Watching her disappear up the stairs, she wondered how they had gone from their friendly and relaxed dinner the night before to this uncomfortable silence. She wondered, too, if she had been a guy whether Wynter would have minded that little scene with Andrea quite so much. She'd never been sensitive about being gay, because she didn't care who had a problem with it. But it saddened her to think that Wynter might. Fuck.

With a sigh and a shake of her head, she tossed her empty coffee cup into the trash. She headed toward radiology to check on the X-rays that had not been officially read the night before. She wasn't going home. She would have nothing to do except lie around and think, and that was exactly what she did not want to do.

v "What changes can we expect to find in the patient's peripheral blood following this procedure, Dr. Thompson?" Ambrose Rifkin asked Wynter as he made a midline incision in the abdomen of a twenty three-year-old woman extending from the xiphoid at the lower end of the sternum, curving around the umbilicus, and stopping several inches below.

Wynter hadn't known which case she would be assigned to scrub on when she'd left the hospital the night before. Even though she'd taken a copy of the OR schedule home with her to review the upcoming cases, she had never looked at it. She'd fallen asleep instantly and, despite her plans, slept through the alarm she had set an hour earlier than usual. She had awakened with barely enough time to shower and kiss her daughter goodbye.

Ronnie, wide awake, had greeted her with a smile and upheld arms. Despite the little time she had, Wynter sat on the side of the bed as the three-year-old clambered into her lap. They had an animated conversation about something the child had seen on a video that Mina had apparently played for the kids. Wynter didn't recognize the names or the references, but she nodded excitedly and faked her way through the discourse. She scooped the little girl up and held her close, losing herself for a few moments in the unique smell of childhood, brushing away the sadness that consumed her when she realized how much of her daughter's life she was likely to miss in the next two years.

Now, she scrambled through her memory for the answers to a fairly esoteric question. If the chairman had asked her about the blood supply to the spleen or the differential diagnosis of hemolytic anemia, she might have fared better. However, the adage Better wrong than uncertain played through her mind, and she said with conviction, "An elevated white count and megakaryocytosis."

"Hmm. Pack that bleeder off back there, would you please,"

Rifkin said to Wynter.

As Wynter carefully placed a surgical sponge behind the spleen, she caught movement out of the corner of her eye and saw the OR door open. Pearce walked in. Surprised, Wynter quickly checked the plain faced wall clock. It was almost 1:00 p.m.--Pearce should've been gone hours ago. Wynter looked back to the surgical field, peripherally aware of Pearce quietly approaching until she stood next to the anesthesiologist and looked over the top of the sterile sheet.

Without taking his eyes off what he was doing, Rifkin said, "What can we do for you, Dr. Rifkin?"