The Store Room

CHAPTER ONE

It is the stabbing of the crutch handle in my shoulder that draws me from my trance of pleasure, reminding me that I am, in fact, squeezed into a hospital storage room. For a moment I lose focus on Jack's tongue assertively exploring my mouth and hands encircling my hips. I grab the crutches one handed and toss them across the floor. The metal clatters loudly across the concrete.

"Kat, too loud! You don't want to get caught up here, do you?" Jack is clearly joking, his eyes crinkling into a smile. "That would end all our fun."

He leans forward and pulls me towards him. Hooking his finger under my scrub top, he lifts it over my head, pens and alcohol swabs falling from the pockets -- a shower of things that don't matter. He propels his groin against mine with an urgency that makes me gasp, both at its suddenness and the fact he wants me this much. His hunger for me is palpable. I untie his pants and mine, readying to yank them off and toss them aside, when I feel a buzzing at my hip. My phone. Reluctantly I unwrap one arm from Jack's shoulders and grab the phone. Still pressed against him, I lift the phone behind his head to eye level. A new text message from Robert:

WILL BE HOME ON TIME FOR DINNER W/ U AND BABY GIRLS TONITE! LOVE U!

"Big news?" Jack asks teasingly. He knows my messages are universally mundane.

"Dinner plans."

"Am I invited?" he laughs.

"Most definitely not."

I slip the phone into my pocket and lower Jack's pants, and then mine. Turning my back to him, I stick my ass into the air. While he bends his knees to penetrate my pussy from behind, I lean my arms across boxes of IV supplies for support. As he thrusts deeper I find myself biting my lip to stop from crying out in ecstasy. Dinner with Robert and the kids is as forgotten as last week's newspaper.

CHAPTER TWO

I can't attribute fooling around with Jack to anything in particular. Robert works long hours at his law firm, to be sure, but he always has. He is generally a good husband, and I think faithful to me. I used to swear I would know if Robert cheated on me, and aver that there was an identifiable "cheating type," which Robert is not. Since I never considered myself the "cheating type," though, I see that my former theory isn't foolproof, and the best I can say is that Robert probably has never run around on me. He'd have to leave work for long enough to try, of course.

Truth be told, I'm weak willed. I think that's the main reason I started cheating on Robert. When Jack told me I looked pretty after a 12-hour shift of being bossed around by demanding patients and my nurse manager, I was flattered. I hadn't heard compliments for a long time, and I tittered like a school girl inside, while loudly decrying Jack's visual impairment and suggesting a visit to the optometrist. When Jack suggested breakfast after my night shift -- on a day he didn't work -- I knew why. I was just too feeble to resist the temptation.

So, now I find myself regularly having sex with Jack in the storage room, the type of behavior Robert and I used to mock. We laughed at couples who sneaked around as lame. After all, we could tell each other anything -- no secrets. Affairs seemed so out of fashion at the time, belonging to our parent's screwed up generation who married young and miserably and needed an escape. To this day, I don't know if Robert finds out about Jack if he'll be angry or more just disdainful of my tackiness.

"Katrina, really? The storage closet? Kind of trashy, don't you think?"

The found-out-about-you dialogue plays in my head occasionally, but I've never gotten to the punch line. I'm not sure if Robert will leave me.

CHAPTER THREE

I met Jack under serendipitous circumstances. I had noticed him, to be sure, not least because he looks like Robert did a few years prior. They share the same blond cropped hair and square jaw line. Robert is larger, bulkier. Without a doubt, he'd beat Jack in a fight, not that he would try. Jack's main asset is his perfect body tone. He looks like a physical therapist should, even down to his perfect posture. I half expected Jack to chastise me for shortening my Achilles tendon the first time that I wore heels to a work event after we started seeing one another. Not that we even acknowledged each other that night. Robert was glued to my arm, and I didn't dare approach Jack. He spent most of the night chatting to the nurses from the orthopedics floor, whose patients he sees all the time. I heard him laughing with them while I sipped my gin and tonic and accompanied Robert to make the requisite small talk with my nurse manager.

Jack is regularly on my ward to see his patients and flirt with the staff, and I'd be lying if I said he doesn't have a reputation among the nurses as a womanizer. He tells me it's exaggerated, though, and I believe him. I know how nurses gossip and most of the stories are almost total fabrications. Still, knowing Jack's reputation, we never talked from my transfer to this ward last year until a few months ago when one of his therapy patients needed help with a urinary catheter, of all things.

The patient, for all his multiple medical problems, was blessed with an extra-large penis requiring a three-floor search for a sufficiently roomy condom catheter. Jack and I combed the store rooms of adjacent wards, bumping into one another in the unfamiliar rooms. It was silly and jokey, and when Jack suggested we break for lunch at the same time, I acquiesced, although it felt conspiratorial, with a sexual vibe beneath the innocent suggestion. At home that night, I told Robert about the extra-large catheter search, thinking he would laugh with me.

"The poor guy has to pee in a bag and that's funny because he's got a big dick? Jesus, you nurses have a strange sense of humor, Kat. Makes me want to stay out of the hospital!"

I haven't shared any more stories from the ward with Robert since then.

CHAPTER FOUR

The first time Jack and I arranged to have breakfast, we met at 7:30 AM in the hospital parking garage. Jack mentioned meeting me up on the ward, but I suggested he spare himself the trouble. We both knew the nurses would gossip to see him there outside his shift. I don't know why we bothered with any pretense of innocence. Down in the fluorescent lit garage, I gave him an awkward hug. He kissed my cheek chastely as a virgin. I noticed his eyes survey my ass as I stood on tiptoe to wrap my arms around his shoulders, lifting my coat, though. He was no innocent.

We arranged to meet at a Bob Evans a few blocks away. Inside, we sat awkwardly across the table. I sipped decaf (since "I'll need to get home to sleep soon!") Jack slid his hand absent mindedly up and down a sweating glass of orange juice. Neither of us touched the meals we ordered, except to rearrange them on their respective plates. It was twenty minutes of near silence before Jack blurted out,

"So, do you want to come over to see my place before you go home and crash?"

"Sure, why not?"

And that was that.

CHAPTER FIVE

The drive from the restaurant to Jack's apartment was interminable, though in reality a mere mile or two, and hours seemed to pass before I pulled into a visitor's spot and followed Jack through the entrance doors. It was a second floor unit. We waited awkwardly for the elevator. Seeing both cars move up and down without approaching the lobby level, Jack suggested the stairs. In the stairwell, he offered me his hand, and I followed him up the single flight and down a short hallway. He fished in his coat pocket for his keys.

"This is home."

"Very nice." I had seen only the non-descript beige tone lobby. What was there to say? Glad there are no gang symbols? I'm impressed by the lack of broken glass in the parking lot?

Jack turned the deadbolt and lock and the door swung inward.

"After you."

I walked inside. The hallway was narrow and shadowy. Jack leaned across me and flipped a switch. A floor lamp with a fabric shade bathed the living room in a yellow glow. Without asking, Jack lowered my coat from my shoulders and hung it in the hallway closet. His he tossed on the closet floor, I noticed.

"Do you want the tour? Or something to drink?"

I couldn't speak. Suddenly I was paralyzed with nervousness, the fear of what was about to happen enveloping me. Jack looked at me inquisitively, awaiting a response.

"Kat, is something wrong?"

I summoned the words to explain I was just tired, had finished a 12-hour shift, and was dying for a shower. I knew I had to leave.

"Sorry, Kat, I should have thought. The bathroom's straight ahead. I'll bring you one of the good guest towels." He smiled as he said it, and a boyish dimple formed.

What harm was there, really, to taking a shower? Why not wash away the 12-hour accumulation of hospital germs? I followed Jack down the hallway to the bathroom. He grabbed a fluffy towel from the linen closet and tossed it in my hand.

"Feel free to use anything in there. No girly scents, I'm afraid."

He disappeared into the adjacent room -- perhaps his bedroom. I had not yet gotten the promised tour. I stripped and hopped into the shower. It felt amazing; Jack had invested in a fabulous shower head. I could use one like it at home for when Robert was working late, I thought. The sudsy water splashed around me, and even though the scent was indeed masculine, it smelled great. It smelled like Jack.

I closed my eyes, enveloped in the cascading water, and when I opened them, Jack was standing in the doorway. He was stripped down to a pair of black boxer briefs, and I saw for the first time how chiseled his body is. I inhaled sharply.

"Can I join you before all the hot water is gone?" It was clearly a rhetorical question.

He opened the shower door and stepped inside. There was nowhere to turn now. He was there, not twelve inches away, close enough to touch. The shower water soaked his underpants, and I could see the outline of his erection. He leaned me against the wall opposite the shower head and kissed me hard and urgently. I pressed my body to his, clumsily fingering the waistband of his underwear. All reluctance now forgotten, I wanted him to fuck me. I lowered to my knees and pulled down the boxer briefs. The shower spray was pelting me now, awkwardly spraying my mouth and nose. Jack's cock was close enough to taste, but I could only turn my head from the dousing water.

"Let's find something better, shall we?" Jack asked, laughing, and grasping both my hands to pull me up. He opened the shower door, stepped forward, and grabbed the fluffy guest towel, dropping it onto a nearby bath mat. "How's this?" He turned, encircled my waist, and pulled me to the dry bathroom. I took two steps onto the towel and lowered myself onto my back, shivering wet outside the steamy shower. When I turned my gaze upward, Jack was leaning over me, approaching closer and closer. Firmly but gently, he parted my thighs with his fingertips and slid inside me. I felt his heat as our bodies melded together. The shower water ran stone cold.

CHAPTER SIX

When I arrived hours later to pick up the girls from the babysitter after that first morning with Jack, I was still in my camisole and scrubs bottoms, and some scuffed snow boots I found in the trunk of my car. I hadn't slept and my hair was disheveled and damp with sweat. Dinner was not even conceived, much less prepared. My insides felt chafed from fucking Jack in the bathroom and on his bed, and minutes before, on the living room couch. When he suggested one last encounter before I left, I only half heartedly protested that I was late before grasping his engorged dick with my disobedient fingers and guiding it inside me to ride him as he sat with his legs spread wide.

Before I even fastened the children into their booster seats, they complained loudly that I was late. They'd already missed ballet practice and my hair looked funny. Where had I been? Why did I smell like Daddy? They fired off questions with machine gun rapidity. I sighed. They were their father's daughters, born to argue like miniature attorneys, intent to pry the truth from their cheating mother. But I still knew how to handle them.

Talking to the rearview mirror, I suggested as the mother of all distraction techniques, "Let's go to McDonald's!" The girls eyed me suspiciously, as if the offer were too good to be true. McDonalds? On a Tuesday? They rarely ate fast food, and never on a weekday.

"Don't tell Daddy, though, okay? You know he doesn't like you eating there. It's our little secret." Simple as that, I taught my daughters to cover for me, any recollection of Mommy's harried appearance forgotten with the contraband fast food. I'm lucky the girls aren't obese by now, I've bribed them with McDonald's so often since then.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Strangely, I have the reputation on the ward for being incorruptible -- a bit prissy perhaps. I never share in the good dirty jokes, or get invited to girls' night at the bar. When Jack joined me for coffee one afternoon a couple of months ago, one of the nurses admonished him to be gentle with me.

"Katrina can't handle your racy jokes like the rest of us, Jack! But maybe you can loosen her up a bit!"

As soon as we got to the stairwell, Jack produced the key to the store room from his pocket. I actually thought for a second he needed to pick up supplies before realizing his intentions. Sweet, naive, innocent Katrina. Despite meeting Jack regularly in his apartment, at the end of day or night shift, it hadn't occurred to me we might have sex at work. He put his hand around my waist and guided me to the step ahead of him. I could feel his eyes on my ass as I preceded him up the stairs. As soon as he turned the key in the lock, he had me pinned against the wall, his hands under my scrub top and onto my breasts. He slid his hands down my stomach to my hips.

"I love your body," Jack whimpered, as he dropped to his knees. He dropped my uniform bottoms to the floor and began kissing my thighs and groin. I breathed a sigh of relief that I had worn a lacy thong, nicer than my average work undergarments. I guess in retrospect I always dressed for Jack when I thought he'd be around. He lowered the thong and put his tongue directly on my clitoris. My entire body tingled. Jack moved quickly and efficiently, increasing pressure in just the right spots. I moaned with pleasure as I orgasmed, loud enough that Jack put his finger to his lips in a gesture to be quiet. He rose from the floor, pulling my thong and pants with him as a he arose. I grabbed his head and pulled him in for a kiss. He tasted irresistible.

Back on the ward, Lillian, the secretary at the nurses' station, eyed me curiously.

"You look a little flushed, Kat! Lay off the caffeine! Or maybe you've had too many of Jack's dirty jokes!" Jack took her hand and squeezed it with a smile. She gushed with pleasure at the gesture.

"Oh no, I save all the dirtiest ones for you, my darling." He turned his head. "Bye, Katrina. Gotta run."

My phone buzzed in my pocket as soon as Jack rounded the corner from the ward.

REALLY ENJOYED THE COFFEE BREAK. NEXT TIME YOU TREAT. ;) J

I giggled like a school girl as I walked to the nurses' station and grabbed my next chart.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Several weeks went by before Jack suggested going to my home -- Robert's and my home. I was dismissive from the outset, and it took a lot of convincing. Jack insisted with a suggestive smile that his apartment building was undergoing construction, though, and we would otherwise never meet except at the hospital for an indefinite period. He didn't want that: did I? Jack knew I couldn't wait to be with him until the inopportune construction project ended. The store room offered such limited time together.

It was agreed Jack would park around the corner and I would drive us home. I had arranged for the girls to be with a friend, and Robert wouldn't be home for hours. We were alone. It was safe. Yet when Jack started wandering from room to room, conducting his own informal tour, I wanted to scream, "What the fuck are you doing here?" My worlds were colliding in an unnatural trajectory. I was running unreasonable risks.

We arrived at the master bedroom. The sheets were still askew from when Robert and I got out of bed that morning. One of Robert's socks had missed the hamper and lay on the carpet like a limp grey animal. I stripped off my yoga pants and grabbed a t-shirt, heading for the bathroom. When I emerged in a t-shirt and thong, Jack was lying in a mock seductive side lying pose on the bed, stripped except for white boxer briefs. He joked, "Come join me on the bed of marital bliss, Kat!"

I felt panic and -- indignation? -- rise in my throat. What was he doing here in my husband's bed? I stood suspended in time a few feet from the bed.

"Kat, I'm just kidding! Come here." Jack had removed himself from the model pose and was seated at the edge of the bed, his legs planted in the carpet. I still couldn't move. He shouldn't be here.

"Katrina, come here," Jack ordered, more insistently now. I took a few steps. Jack grabbed my hands and pulled me down to the bed. He kissed my face and neck. He fingered my nipples through the t-shirt until they were erect, straining against the tight cotton fabric. He lifted the shirt over my head. My resistance wavered.

"I'm so hard for you, Kat. Feel me." He guided my hand under the smooth woven fabric of the boxer briefs. I felt his erection stiffen to my touch. My resistance collapsed. I hardly knew where I was anymore or whose bed I was in. All I could see was Jack.

Without speaking, I fell to my knees on the carpet and lowered Jack's underpants. I touched my tongue to his cock and felt it spring to my mouth. I closed my lips around his shaft and rhythmically moved my mouth back and forth, my tongue dancing over its rigid surface. Jack moaned and leaned back on his elbows. I removed my mouth and held his cock lightly with my fingers. Squeezing further beneath Jack's legs, I cupped his balls in my mouth, releasing them with smacking lips. Not satisfied, I returned to his dick, sucking its entire length, my throat open wide. I would have swallowed him whole if I could.

His cock was by now so wet I could rub it with ease, and as I held with my left hand, I moved my right up and down the shaft with increasing speed. I dove down to suck his balls again. I longed to make him cum, to feel and to taste it. I opened my mouth wide and sucked on his penis, pursing my lips tightly around the shaft as I slowly released it from my hold. I grasped his balls with a cupped hand and gently squeezed. With a gasp, Jack ejaculated, covering my neck and breasts. My nipples still stood at attention, stimulated from brushing his groin and thighs. His cum glistened white on my skin.

"Jesus, Kat, that was amazing! Now your turn." Jack pulled me onto the bed, still sticky from his cum, and rolled me onto my back. Teasing me, he kissed his way down from my breasts to my pelvis with excruciating slowness. I heard myself crying to please just fuck me, I can't wait, I can't wait. Jack smiled and lowered himself onto his elbows, his stomach on the bed. I splayed my legs wide and he crawled on all fours between them. I felt his wet tongue and covered my mouth with a pillow to muffle my shrieks of pleasure.

CHAPTER NINE

It is just a few weeks after Jack's visit to the house that Jack and I have our first argument. I am reviewing a chart at the nurses' station when Jack wanders over. Lillian, always looking for an excuse to escape her secretarial duties, engages him in conversation before I even notice his presence. She holds quite a flame for Jack, I have noticed, despite being at least twenty years his senior.

"How's that new girl of yours doing, Jack?" I startle to alertness. She couldn't mean me. My stomach twists into knots. "Has she settled into your place yet?"