Page 19 of Rules of the Heart

It was an assumption that wasn’t always correct, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t understandable.

Unfortunately, that didn’t help Ella much. Valerie seemed so entrenched in her ways that if nothing in her career so far had convinced her that she was wrong, Ella doubted that she would have much of a chance.

She sighed and looked at the booklet she was writing her answers in. She wasn’t going to lie, but she could still write what Valerie wanted. Anything to get Valerie to let her off this stupid course.

She thought for a moment before writingBy the rules answeras a heading, followed by what Valerie wanted to hear.She left out the part that she wouldn’t be acting on the by the rules answer.

Valerie would probably figure that much out for herself, but Ella hoped that this would be an acceptable compromise. Valerie would see that she knew how to apply the rules, even if she wasn’t going to be doing it when it came down to the rules or her patient.

At the end of an hour, Ella handed the booklet in to Penelope for what she fervently hoped would be the last time.

8

Valerie

Valerie glowered at the booklet she had spent so much time writing.By the rules answer—as if she would fall for that. She knew very well why Ella had put that heading. The question had called for an account of how Ella would react. The “by the rules answer” was very clearly stating that the answer was what Valerie wanted to hear and not how Ella would really react.

Valerie wondered if this was the best she was going to get. As much as she wanted Ella to learn the rules, she didn’t want to spur her into quitting. As she read through the answers, she was forced to admit that Ella did have a good understanding of how to work within the rules. If only she actually applied it to real situations.

She reluctantly sent an email to Penelope, telling her that Ella was to be allowed off her punishment course after the minimum set time of a month. Hopefully this whole experience would teach Ella a lesson. Somehow, Valerie doubted it, but she could hope, right?

As much as she hated that she was reduced to this, she continued to avoid Ella. This meant doing fewer surgeries andmore paperwork in her office, but Valerie still didn’t trust herself around Ella.

Just thinking about Ella’s enticing curves and the way her slim fingers moved a scalpel delicately through brain tissue made Valerie unbearably horny.

More than once, she had been tempted to use one of the hospital on-call rooms to get herself off to thoughts of Ella. It would have made her life a lot easier when she could focus on anything but how badly she wanted to have Ella’s tongue on her clit, but Valerie stubbornly refused to act on these urges.

Getting herself off at work would be entirely inappropriate, especially if she did it because a certain employee was looking so utterly irresistible, and she wouldn’t do it. Valerie even refused to masturbate at home, because she knew that thoughts of Ella would creep in while she did so.

She hadn’t come in weeks, which hardly helped matters. She was horny all the time, and the smallest interaction with Ella would send her pussy into overdrive. She found herself embarrassingly wet just from a simple conversation with Ella. And the one time their hands had accidentally brushed… Well, the urge to get herself off in the on-call room had never been stronger.

Valerie felt like she was a teenager again, unbearably horny and controlled by her urges, but she was an adult now and she wouldn’t let her urges get the better of her, no matter how much her clit ached to be touched, almost painful on some days the longer it was neglected.

It had been years since Valerie had felt like this about anyone, and she didn’t know what to do with it. Sure, she’d seen attractive women before, but the attraction had never taken hold of her mind and body the way it had with Ella.

There was a knock on her door, startling Valerie out of her internal dialogue, telling herself that she absolutely could notstick her hand into her pants and rub her clit to thoughts of Ella, even if it was just for a few moments.

“What!” she yelled.

Stephanie tentatively stuck her head in. “Sorry to bother you, Valerie, but there has been a plane crash a couple of miles out. They’re asking if we can spare some doctors to go to the site and do triage.”

Valerie forced herself to take a deep breath. Stephanie hadn’t done anything wrong and didn’t deserve to have her head bitten off just because Valerie had tied herself in knots.

“Of course. Get everyone we can muster at short notice, everyone who is willing to go to a potentially unstable situation. We’ll meet in the parking lot in ten minutes.”

Valerie spent the next ten minutes arranging a bus to take her team to the site. A part of her hoped that Ella would decline the invitation to help out, but she should have known better than that. Ella was first in line to get onto the bus. Of course she was.

Well, the scene was going to be chaos. Valerie shouldn’t have any time or brain power to focus on Ella.

She watched Ella take a seat at the front of the bus before walking to the very back, looking out of the window, forcing herself to ignore Ella altogether.

When they got to the scene, it was indeed chaos. Valerie dove right in, forgetting all about her frustrations as she scrambled to do the best she could for the horribly injured crash survivors.

Her attention was drawn by the shouts of one of the search-and-rescue guys.

“Ma’am, you can’t go in there! It’s too unstable.”

Valerie wasn’t at all surprised to hear Ella’s reply. “I think I can hear someone in there. Maybe they need my help. I’m going in to check.”

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