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Dennis Whitaker didn’t pretend to understand women. He’d picked up some clues from his college girlfriends, but not enough to be an expert. What he was sure of was that he understood Trinity Santos less than any other woman he’d ever known.
The nastiness was a front. If she was actually that uncaring, she'd be working on Wall Street, not trying to help people. She certainly wouldn’t be taking in a homeless co-worker she’d only known a day for free.
He tried to earn his keep as a roommate. The floors were mopped and vacuumed. Dishes were washed (not that there’d been much cooking here). Light bulbs were replaced. The stuck drawer was rolling smoothly. He even did the laundry and started cooking meals.
Doing the laundry was a mistake. If he’d been a frat bro who lusted after supermodels, it might not have been a problem. But Trinity lounging about in her off time had a casual girl next door vibe which was far too appealing for their situation. He avoided paying too much attention to her. She was a co-worker, as well as his landlord.
He wasn’t the kind of pervert who got off on sniffing dirty panties. He didn’t think the laundry would be any problem. Unfortunately, while loading the washing machine he discovered a particular scent by-passed his conscience, his morals, and his common sense, going straight to his libido.
There was no escape. He’d taken on the chore as part of his rent. Saying, “I can’t do your laundry, it makes me too horny,” would send Dennis back to the empty wing of the hospital, dodging janitors and security guards for each night’s sleep.
He started taking longer showers. Frantically yanking his tool brought some temporary relief. He always inspected the wall of the shower stall to make sure he hadn’t left any evidence.
Cooking was a better idea. He’d accepted microwaved meals for their first week together. On the first day off she suggested ordering pizza for dinner. Dennis objected. After a brief argument, they wound up at the grocery store, Dennis shopping, Trinity paying. The local store was well stocked enough to let him pick up a couple of pots and pans to support his new efforts.
The menu took some debate. In one aisle she took a box off the shelf. “If you want to cook, how about this?”
Dennis took the box of Hamburger Helper and flipped it over. He read through the ingredients. Then he put it back on the shelf and pushed the cart away.
“Where are you going?” she demanded.
“Spice aisle.”
“But the box has all the spices.”
“It has all that other stuff we don’t need.”
“What? You’re opposed to preservatives?”
“No. Preservatives are great. If we’re scavenging the ruins after a nuclear holocaust, I’d be thrilled to find a box of Hamburger Helper. But we don’t need them for something we’re eating tonight.”
After eating his from scratch beef and pasta dish, Trinity grudgingly admitted it was good.
Dennis carefully let her decide the menu from then on. Pushing back on her control hadn’t been good for the relationship. But she was happy to let him do the cooking. She even admitted she was saving money, once past the initial spree for setting up the kitchen.
Watching him cook when they returned from a shift confused her. “Aren’t you tired?”
“Yeah. But this is a good way to unwind. I know the recipe, I know the ingredients. There’s no mystery. Not like the ER where we’re playing twenty questions with someone dying in front of us.”
She shook her head. “You do you, Huckleberry.” She hung around the kitchen and heckled. He shot back when he could spare attention from the stove.
Regular healthy meals were good for them. Dennis lost a little of his poverty skinniness. Trinity decided she needed to up the miles she jogged. And since this was his fault, Dennis had to go with her. Which meant shopping for shoes and jogging shorts.
“I feel like a Ken doll,” he muttered.
She cocked an eyebrow at him. “What the hell do you know about Ken dolls, Huckleberry?”
“Sisters. Cousins. Playtime at church. I know the whole Barbie lineup.”
That got a head-shake. She declared the red shorts acceptable and dragged him to the register.
Their work shifts didn’t always leave energy for exercise. One evening they both flopped onto the couch and lay unmoving. Dennis made no move toward the kitchen. They traded some snark over the day. It was a measure of how tired they were that there were so few insults.
Trinity managed to kick her shoes off. “God, my feet hurt. I don’t think I sat down once today. I should’ve been pushing to take some patient histories.”
“You could have the old lady who wanted to tell me her life story. Seven grandchildren.”
“Lucky you.” She waved her feet in the air, not even letting them touch the rug.
The wiggling drew his attention. “Want a foot rub? I had a class in it in undergrad.”
“Seriously? You have a degree in footrubs? And we let you be a doctor?”
“It was a PE credit.” Dennis sat on the floor in front of her. He took hold of the left foot and squeezed the heel with both hands. He gradually worked forward, pressing on the arch and massaging each spot on the sole.
She was making appreciative noises. Noises which reminded him of times with his girlfriends doing massages and other things. This was a bad idea. Almost as bad as volunteering to do laundry. He shifted his seat, hoping his erection wasn’t visible in his scrubs.
After working over each toe one by one, he shifted back to the ankle. Working up to the narrow point would relieve some tension.
“Oh, do the calves,” said Trinity. “They hurt like hell.”
Obediently, he squeezed the muscles with both hands. An approving “Mmmmm” told him he was doing it right. When he finished the calf, he switched to the right and started working from the calf down.
When he finished with the last toe, she sighed. “Oh, my. What else did they teach you?”
“The whole body. All the way up to scalp massages.”
“Huh.”
A week later, Dennis broke his rule of never pushing Trinity to do something. On their drive home from their shift, he said, “You’ve never seen it?”
“No.”
In an exaggerated tone, he said, “I’m not left-handed either.”
“I’ve heard people say that. Is that where it’s from?”
“Yes. Oh, God. You have to see it. This is essential culture.”
“Oh, fine.”
Once he’d made dinner for them—chicken cutlet and rice—they ate on the couch as the movie played. She enjoyed it as they were eating, but once he took the plates away, she leaned against his shoulder and closed her eyes. By the end of it she was snoring. His arm was wrapped around her.
Dennis didn’t take it as a rejection of the movie. It had been a hard shift for both of them. That she was willing to lean against him was more touch than they’d ever had before. It was an amazing display of trust, given how much of a control freak she was. And that she’d sleep was giving him even more trust.
He was trying to figure out how he could stand up without waking her when he fell asleep.
In the morning, his alarm woke him, still on the couch. She wasn’t there. He could hear her shower running. She hadn’t murdered him when she woke up. That was a good sign.
The next couple of shifts were easier. After work, they watched the movie in hour-long chunks until the end. “Okay, it’s good stuff,” admitted Trinity.
The next day Trinity turned in early. Dennis did some cleaning and studying before his own bedtime.
He had a wonderful dream. He woke to a wonderful reality—two warm, wet lips wrapped around his cock as it stuck out through the fly of his boxers. He moaned at the pleasure of it. He hadn’t had sex with anyone else since starting med school.
The mouth lifted off him. A finger pressed on his lips. In the dark, he heard Trinity’s voice. “This isn’t happening.”
Legs slid around him. She was straddling him. Then impaling herself. They moaned together as they began fucking. He matched her rhythm. Dennis grabbed her hips. He felt her hands press on his chest as she rode him.
The pressure built up. Her moans grew louder. Then she ground down on him, making low guttural pants. He felt her body pulsing. He exploded in response.
Trinity got off the bed. “That didn’t happen.” Then she was gone, closing the door to his room with a click.
He fell asleep before he could figure out what she meant.
The next morning he had two cups of coffee, his oatmeal, and her cereal ready before she came into the kitchen. She gave him her normal pre-coffee grunt, took a sip of the drink, and started scrolling r/emergencymedicine as she ate the cereal.
His cautious “Good morning,” received a nod.
Okay. A perfectly normal morning. As if they hadn’t just fucked last night. Which must be what she meant by ‘That didn’t happen.’
Dennis was familiar with people fucking and pretending they hadn’t. Back home, the youth pastor and organist had been carrying on for years, and everyone pretended to be surprised when they announced their engagement. He’d seen lots of that in college. And rumor had it there were three couples in the Emergency Department hiding affairs, one of them both married to other people.
This was his first experience of a couple fucking and pretending to each other they weren’t.
He’d gotten to know Trinity well enough to assume it was a control thing. Not a big insight. Just about everything with Trinity was a control thing.
Wearing a t-shirt and boxers in his sleep had been a concession to not wanting to flash her if he did a middle of the night bathroom run. He stopped. If he did need to pee, he could pull the boxers on before leaving his room.
Life went on as normal—their old normal. Dennis managed to treat his roommate as he always did. She wasn’t acting any differently toward him. No one in the Pitt made any comments. That meant they were hiding it, because if there’d been the slightest sign there’d be jokes. They’d gotten enough just from being roommates.
He did up the quality of their meals a bit. He was more motivated to do fancy cooking, somehow.
If she suspected his motives, she didn’t show it. Didn’t even bat an eye at paying a more expensive grocery bill.
Money was a bit of a tense issue. Dennis wasn’t totally broke. He could pay for groceries. But after an embarrassing conversation about his finances she refused to let him. “I thought farmers were usually millionaires.”
Dennis shrugged. “A farmer is somebody with three million in land, one million in equipment, two million in debt, and fifty cents in cash.”
She laughed at the joke. “So are they co-signing your loans, at least?”
“Some of them. Then we hit a point where that would make the financing worse.”
“Ouch.”
She was vague about her money, and he didn’t feel he had a right to pry. He’d given up his data willingly, since she had a right to know why he wasn’t paying rent.
After another grueling shift, Trinity asked for a back massage.
“Sure. Lay down on the couch.”
Once she was in position, he ran his hands lightly over her back. “Ah. The bra gets in the way.”
“Oh.” Her hands went underneath her scrub top. With some wiggling and thrashing, the bra was tossed over the back of the couch.
The sight of it shouldn’t affect him the way it did. He’d washed that bra a dozen times.
The massage worked down her back, covering the thoracic and lumbar vertebrae with all their surrounding muscles. The moans were lovely. Even stirring. Not as passionate as the moans she’d made while they were fucking, but they got to him.
Three cheers for loose scrubs.
When he finished working her sacrum, Dennis said, “Turn over.”
She did, with a relaxed “Huh?”
He’d gotten her very relaxed if she’d obeyed an order from him without even a quip.
The cervical vertebrae were best worked from underneath. He went up the neck and turned it into a scalp massage. She hadn’t asked for that, but she wasn’t objecting, and he liked to be thorough.
No, he should be honest with himself. He wanted to touch her as much as he could and he thought this is what he could get away with.
When he pulled his hands out of her silky hair her eyes were closed. He washed the dishes from dinner. She was still asleep. Carrying her to her bed might be romantic. Also might piss her off. He tossed a blanket over her and went to bed.
It took a long time for him to fall asleep. Even through the scrubs, he’d enjoyed the feel of her body. He’d been touching her neck and scalp for real. His body was keyed up with lust. Normally, he’d just deal with that manually, but he’d avoided masturbation lately. If she decided to visit him in the middle of the night, he wanted to be ready, not drained.
Three nights later, his self-discipline paid off. He woke to the feel of her mouth. When he reacted, she put a finger on his mouth again. He kept silent.
He did intervene as she climbed onto the bed, tugging on her hips. Rather than straddling his cock, she indulged him. A few pulls had her over his face. She placed her pussy on his mouth.
Opening wide, Dennis ate. The hunger he’d built up from uncounted laundry loads was unleashed on her. He sucked her lips into his mouth, first together, then one at a time. His tongue slid between them, tasting her juices. He almost spasmed right there. His hands pulled her down tighter against him.
She wiggled a bit, bringing her clit to his attention. He licked it, then circled it with the tip of his tongue. She pressed harder. He sucked it between his lips, placing the tip of his tongue and against his top.
Now she was grabbing the back of his head and pulling him into her hips as she pressed down. She was being loud. He was too focused on her pussy to listen, but he could hear her screaming with pleasure.
Then there was air on his wet face as she pulled away. She climbed off the bed.
His cock was rigidly hard, but he was fine if she left. He’d wanted that so badly. He was satisfied even if she didn’t touch him again for weeks.
He felt her hands on him. She was kneeling beside the bed. Her mouth closed on his cock again. The lips slid up and down. He burst almost at once. She kept him in her mouth, taking every drop. Once he went limp, she stood.
“It didn’t happen.” She walked out.
Drained, he went to sleep.
The pair of them went through another post-sex shift without any co-workers catching on.
Dennis spent the lulls brooding. He wasn’t a casual sex kind of guy. Even in his shortest relationships, there’d been affection and friendship. This was more like . . . he remembered someone who’d come in with a bite on his penis. When asked who’d done it, the guy said he didn’t know and explained the concept of a ‘glory hole.’
It was like he and Trinity had a glory hole in their apartment. Dennis Whitaker was not a glory hole kind of guy.
He wasn’t in a position to complain, though. If that’s how she wanted it, that’s how it had to be, or he’d be homeless again.
The brooding ended when he thought of his fifteen year old self. That desperately lonely and horny boy would be thrilled at the thought of random sex with a gorgeous doctor.
While not making any reference to their fucking, Trinity did have a suggestion as they were turning in that night. “Hey, homeslice? It might save you time in the morning if you shaved at night.”
It took him two seconds to parse that. “Good idea.”
Then he slashed his chin because he was thinking of Trinity climbing onto his face instead of focusing on his razor blade.
The schedule change did get noticed. While he was bandaging a patient, Dennis heard Princess say, “Your roomie has some serious five o’clock shadow today.”
Trinity replied, “Yeah. He must’ve hit puberty.”
The next time Dennis did laundry he broke out laughing when he pressed the START button on the washing machine. He glanced around and let out a sigh of relief when Trinity was nowhere in sight. He didn’t want to explain how amused he was by the fact that doing laundry no longer made him horny.
A few nights later massages came up over dinner. Dennis wound up explaining the preferred methods. “For a full body massage, the recipient would be naked, maybe with a towel over the bits, if it’s professional rather than friendly. You can use oil, though that depends on the masseuse. If his hands are rough, he’d definitely want the oil.”
She reached across the table and ran her fingertips over his palm. “For a farmboy, you have really soft hands.”
“That’s since I went to school. When I was throwing hay bales around all day, they were like leather.”
“So you don’t need oil now.”
“No.” He felt tense but tried to keep from showing it. He knew where he wanted this conversation to go.
“I’m feeling tense and tired from the past week. Would a massage help with that?”
“It might. Shall we find out?”
Trinity nodded, and walked into her bedroom.
By the time he caught up, she was naked and lying face down on the bed. He froze for a moment just staring at her. They’d been naked together, but the only light had been the gleam of his phone charger LED. Now she’d left a dim lamp on, enough to see her fully.
He began the massage. Shoulders down to the hips, rubbing the glutes with attention to the muscles, not the other bits, then down the backs of the legs to the toes. Left arm. Turn over. Shake off the fascination of seeing this side of her naked body. Right arm. Massage the front of the legs from top of the thighs down to the feet.
He moved to her other end. Massaging her neck from underneath. Then her scalp, running his fingers through her soft, silky hair.
Her eyes were closed, but the steady breathing showed she was awake. She was reacting to his actions, sighing or purring or wiggling.
Next was the face massage. Forehead, temples, around the eyes, upper and lower jaw. Moving down to the clavicles. The pectorals were muscles, and needed care as much as other muscles, but they were under her breasts. His instructor made a point that if you were messaging breasts, you’d better know her well enough to know she wanted it.
He didn’t know her well. But if she’d stripped down naked for this, he was pretty sure she was asking to be touched. So that was well enough. Dennis massaged the pectoral muscles. Past there he stroked the skin of the breasts in long curves. The belly didn’t get massaged with pressure. But long strokes soothed the skin.
Dennis touched the top of Trinity’s thighs. He lifted his hands. The massage was done.
Trinity opened her eyes. “You missed a spot.” Her thighs opened.
No ‘this isn’t happening’ this time.
His right hand pressed on her mons. Trinity took a deep breath. Anticipation.
The fingers slid down, pressing her thighs apart. They began to massage, rhythmically stroking the vulva, making no penetration.
Trinity softly protested, “Hey.”
“Shhh.” Dennis kept massaging. Then he stroked up and down. Then, teasingly, one finger parted her lips. She was soaked. He resisted the temptation to taste. The one finger inside slid up and down the length of the slit, the others pressing from outside. A second finger slid in. They found her clit and flanked it, sliding up and down, pressing deep against the root of the clit.
She moaned.
He added a third finger. Now they surrounded the clit, two stroking deep on the sides, one sliding over the top. He stroked faster now, listening to her moans, feeling her body shake.
Dennis’ left hand was on the bed, bracing him. She grabbed his wrist and squeezed as she thrashed about.
The two middle fingers slid down, down deep into her, forcing a low cry from Trinity. He reached into her, exploring, stroking the top of her vagina, until he found the corrugated patch he wanted. The two fingertips stroked that spot, only moving an inch at a time, back and forth in rhythm with her moans.
He rotated his hand to bring his thumb to bear on her clit. His hand moved as one, fingers stroking the g-spot and pad of the thumb on her clit. She was being loud now. He increased the pressure on her clit. The scream broke into gasps. He felt her vagina pulsing around his fingers, squeezing and releasing.
Lighter pressure now. Slower strokes. He matched her body’s fall. When she lay still, he just cupped his hand over her vulva and pressed.
Dennis looked up at her face. She was smiling at him. He leaned over, bringing his lips to her.
Before they touched, her face flinched away. He pulled back, abashed at his presumption.
Trinity looked at him. Her hand grasped his chin. “Huckleberry, I’m in charge. I decide when we kiss.”
“Okay.”
The hand on his chin slid to the back of his neck. She pulled him in. The kiss was aggressive, parting his mouth. Her tongue swirled around his.
He reached to hug her. She countered with a pull that put him on his back on the bed. Once atop, she kissed him again.
Monday morning they went into the Pitt holding hands.