Vegas Girls E-Book

Sam L. Weiss

• Herausgeber: BookRix
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

What happens when four attractive thirty-something-year-old female emergency physicians move from New York to Las Vegas? 

A cross between "Sex in the City" and "50 Shades of Grey."

Based loosely on true stories, "Vegas Girls" are a series of one hundred novellas describing the misadventures of Dr. Jessica Kraft and her three friends from residency as they establish themselves in the Sin City.

Leseprobe

Sam L. Weiss

Vegas Girls

The Good Doctors

BookRix GmbH & Co. KG81371 Munich

Novella 1: Chapter 1

It was, she supposed, one of the hazards of relations with a medical student. They were caught up in themselves, hot and heavy on the table of his apartment's kitchenette, when the distinct rip of lined paper made them realize they had been making out on top of a study guide he had borrowed from a classmate, tearing it clean in half.

"Ugh, I'm gonna have to type up a copy for him..." At the very least, he put the ripped pages to the side, safely away from their entwining bodies. Nothing else, she hoped, would interrupt their last time together.

It made it sound so dramatic, phrasing it like that, but Jessica supposed it was accurate enough. She had been halfway through packing her final belongings (not that she had too many) when Daniel had called her up, asking if she wouldn't mind coming over. They hadn't spoken for a week, not since she'd told him that she was leaving town and, no, she was not very interested in trying out a "long-distance thing," as he'd desperately put it. She'd even considered deleting his contact information from her phone, hoping to make a clean break.

As his eager hands fumbled with the metal loops of her bra strap, she finally came to terms with the fact that there was going to be nothing clean about it.

For the past two years, Jessica had dated Daniel, and though they were at entirely different points in life (with several years of an age difference—she was just finishing her residency when he began his first year of medical school), it hadn't been a problem until very recently. They were in love—or, at least, Daniel was, with a youthful passion and dedication that had flattered and impressed her until she was in something very much close to love.

But, nothing good ever lasted, and she couldn't put her adult life on pause, even for the love of a good man. She had the opportunity to, alongside her closest friends, give her career a massive boost, setting herself up for the comfortable future she had always strived for. It was just that future did not, currently, seem to involve Daniel.

A sudden kiss broke her out of her reverie. "You're thinking again," he said, looking up at her with wide, dark eyes.

"I'm always thinking." She hitched her leg farther up around him, pulling him closer to her. "I thought you liked that about me."

"Maybe 'thinking' is the wrong word." His hands, calloused and warm, found their way to her hips, thumbs hooking into the waistband of her jeans to begin pulling them down. "You're worrying. That's what I don't like."

"Well, I have plenty of things to worry about," she said with a long sigh, followed by a short, breathy one as his lips pressed against her folds, his tongue taking a first few cautious licks of the wet flesh. Her arms spread back over the table, grasping the edges hard as he opened her up with his tongue. "Moving across the country is stressful... Starting a new job is stressful... Not knowing if everything is going to turn out okay in the end is stressful... Ah... Life is stressful."

At first, he tried to respond to her with his face still buried in her pussy, which made her laugh. She stopped in time to take in his very serious face, his lips pursed into a tight line.

"Daniel," she said, a warning tone to her voice, "don't start this again."

"You don't have to go."

"I do. You know that."

"You don't even want to go."

She had no good response to that, so she merely sighed and looked away from him.

"You don't,” he pressed on. “Why did you let Adriana talk you into this?"

"It's for the best. It's better for my career. I'll live paycheck to paycheck if I stay in New York. I hate this rat race. I don’t want to remain up to my eyeballs in debt when I enter my 40s."

"It's not like the salaries aren't basically equal. You'd still be making just as much money here than if you moved."

"Not even close. The salary in Las Vegas is twice that of New York. Plus, I won’t have to pay state tax. And the cost of living is so much cheaper. I can pay off my student loans in three years and make enough money to put a down payment on a condo."

“You’re sounding a lot like Elise.”

“Well,” Jessica shrugged, “she happens to make a lot of sense. She always does.”

Daniel started to hum out a sad, tuneless burst, his thumb idly rubbing circles against her throbbing clit. "There are more important things in the world than money," he said.

"Said like a true student." She looked down at him, taking in his beautiful face, his clear eyes. "This is what I mean, Daniel. We're at different stages in our lives. Sure, we love each other... But, sometimes that isn't enough. You'll find somebody else."

"I don't want somebody else," he said. "I want you."

"You're going to find someone amazing one day. Maybe she’ll be a fellow doctor or a nurse or maybe that hottie who’s always flirting with you at the indie coffee shop you like so much. Whoever you end up with… she'll be your own age, she'll have all your interests. She’ll probably want to have kids one day just like you. She'll be everything you've ever wanted."

"You're everything I've ever wanted."

Her frustrated sigh turned to a high whine as he pressed two of his fingers into her, curling them to rest right on her sweet spot. "Jess, let's not argue," he said softly. "I just want to make you feel good one last time. Is that too much to ask?"

"Fuck. You won't hear any complaints from me."

He smirked up at her a little. "I've never heard any before."

Finding a condom was a little bit of a challenge, as Daniel had to actually go searching for one when he realized the one he had been keeping in his pocket was expired, but it allowed Jessica a chance to move off the table and pick out a more comfortable surface. Jessica found it sweet that even though she was on the pill Daniel refused to have sex with her without a condom. He respected her desire not to have kids and didn’t want to take a chance getting her pregnant.

Not sure when Daniel's roommate was due to come home, she made her way to his room, a messy yet plainly decorated space of Ikea furniture and posters of scientists like Einstein, Newton, and Tesla. She flopped down onto his unmade bed, wrapping herself up in the mixed scents of lilac laundry detergent and Daniel's distinctive Cool Water cologne.

She felt his weight joining her on the bed before she heard him. "We're going to keep in touch, right?" he asked, resting on his elbows as he shuffled on top of her.

"Of course," she answered immediately, though she still felt very unsure about the whole thing. She had never been very good at the "staying friends" thing; in fact, she had always severed contact entirely after every breakup, no matter who had initiated it. But, Daniel claimed he found it easy enough to stay close with the small handful of exes he had, and he was a nice enough guy that she was willing to try it out for once.

He had already pulled off the entirety of his clothes by the time he joined her on the bed. She trailed a hand down his chest, stopping a moment to tweak a nipple and grin at the embarrassing squeak it brought out of him. After so many times together, she knew exactly what to do to his body, perhaps even better than she knew what to do to herself; the idea of having to figure it all out with someone new was every bit as nerve-wracking as it was thrilling.

He pushed himself inside of her slowly, kissing her deeply as he did so. He always waited before he began thrusting, letting her adjust to the intrusion on her own time, only starting to move once he got either a physical or verbal go-ahead from her. Once he began, though, there was very little that could stop him. His bed creaked and groaned under the stress, barely muffling their cries, but they hadn't broken it yet—the same could not be said about Jessica's own bed, which had a permanent crack in the frame from a particularly wild weekend.

The bed would be left behind in New York; there was already furniture waiting for her in Vegas. She found herself missing it already, even if it shuddered dangerously every time she got into it at night. The momentary feeling of nervousness, followed by relief as nothing happened, had always reminded her of Daniel.

With one arm pinned above her head, the other reached down to rub against her clit, his thrusting angled perfectly to find the spots he knew drove her wild. She could feel her climax building in the pit of her stomach, a sense of warmth and pleasure that spread throughout every nerve of her body and finally reached its peak, drawing a loud cry from deep within her. She could feel him come as she clenched around him, his thrusting losing its steady rhythm and becoming wild and rapid.

He very nearly collapsed on top of her, his muscles visibly twitching as he rode out his orgasm with a last few erratic thrusts into her overly sensitive hole. He managed to pull his softening cock out of her before finally falling into the bed, his head resting just below her collarbone.

"Will you sleep here tonight?" he asked. "We'll stop by your place and pick up your luggage before I drop you off at the airport tomorrow morning."

She made a light affirmative noise and snuggled deeper into his bed, pulling him and the blankets closer around her until she was encased within them. As she felt herself drifting off into sleep, she wondered if the start of her new life was going to go as well as her old one was ending.

Novella 1: Chapter 2

The plane was surprisingly empty for a morning flight from JFK to LAS, but that suited the girls just fine, particularly Jessica; while she loved them dearly, being crammed between Elise and Krista for about six hours was not her idea of a good time. The moment the seatbelt sign turned off, she left her cramped seat to claim the empty row across from them. They were nearly at the very back of the plane, close enough to make brief but awkward eye contact with every fellow traveler shuffling their way to the bathroom.

About half an hour into the flight, though they were all separately engrossed by their smartphones (Krista listening to a medical podcast, Elise reading another self-help book, and Jessica watching an old episode of “Breaking Bad” on Netflix), they immediately perked up at the familiar sound of Adriana making her way through a crowd. It was a distinctive noise, with a lot of sarcastic apologies and half-whispered Creole curses learned from a childhood spent at the side of an incredibly cool Haitian au pair, and it made them all grin knowingly at each other. They knew she was heading towards them a full three minutes before she actually called out to them.

"Ladies! How's life back here with the help?" Her feet were bare, her red pumps abandoned back in her business class seat, and she crawled into an empty aisle seat to kneel in front of Krista, clearly annoying the older woman sitting in the nearby window seat. "You know, you guys don't need to be cheap. We're not starving residents; we're rich, big shot attendings now."

Elise grimaced, and placed her smartphone back into her bulky carry-on. "We haven't even gotten our first paychecks yet, Ana," she said. "Besides, there's nothing wrong with flying coach. I've flown coach my whole life."

"We’re fine back here," Krista said, pausing her podcast but keeping her earbuds still in. "We can live without flying first class."

"God, you poor girls. You don't know any better." She gave Jessica a crooked little grin. "You do, though, Jess. We flew first class when we went down to Argentina to visit my parents sophomore year."

"Only because they paid for it," she said. "I'd never even been on an airplane before that."

Adriana Sanchez's parents were rich socialite types, the cream of Argentinian society, with a penthouse in Buenos Aires and a vacation chalet in Bariloche. It had been there that Adriana had taken Jessica that one winter vacation, her first time outside of America, to ski and eat fancy chocolate and meat, for the very briefest of moments, the most glamorous and beautiful couple she had ever seen and, she was very sure, ever would see in her entire life. At the time, she had thought it far too generous, spending an unspeakable amount of money on a girl who had only been her dorm mate for a year and a half, but she soon learned that thoughtlessly spending her parents' money on those around her was simply how Adriana lived, how she showed her affection. Even though she had declared her financial independence from them upon finishing her residency, their influence still lingered: she was the only one of them that wasn't suffocating under crushing student and personal debt, and the only one who had a sure safety net to fall back on should their Vegas gambit fail. That was why she had found herself alone in business class, probably struggling to contain her intense desire for social contact until the seatbelt light went off.

"You guys better get used to having money to burn, because that's going to be our lives now," she said. "With a cool half-mil paycheck every year, and a cost of living so dramatically lower than Manhattan that it's almost vulgar? We're going to be swimming in spending money."

"Until you spend it all on booze at the bar," Krista said.

"As if! I haven't paid for a drink since freshman year."

"Why is that the part you focus on?" Elise took out a different self-help book, this one on Essentialism, and placed it on her lap flattening it out to readability. "You know this isn't going to be all fun and games, right? Red Rock Hospital Physician Group isn't paying us to be glamor girls. They're paying us to ‘provide quality medical care with efficiency and...’"

“‘Compassion,’” Krista said flatly. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Another lame-ass mission statement. What they mean is ‘move the meat and make us lots of money.’”

“You’re probably right,” Adriana said. “But we are going to be filthy rich, so you girls better start getting used to a new lifestyle.”

“Haven’t you read Rich Dad, Poor Dad? Richest Man in Babylon? The White Coat Investor?” Elise asked.

Adriana stared blankly at her.

“We’re supposed to live like residents for the first few years of our careers,” Elise explained. “At least until we’ve paid off our school loans, paid for a house and car, and have some money in savings.”

“You know,” Krista exploded. “Maybe Adriana is right. We’ve all been working like dogs all these years. Living like rats. Eating ramen noodles and canned tuna…” She looked up and shrugged her shoulders. “Well, maybe not you, Ana… but the rest of us have. It’s time for us to live life the way we’ve always wanted to. Let’s party. Let’s travel. Let’s shop a lot and get fucked up.”

“I like your attitude, Krista.” Adriana smiled. “I don't have a little black dress in my carryon for nothing. And besides, isn't half the reason we're doing this move because Las Vegas is just crawling with rich, successful single men?"

“You’re definitely right about that,” Krista said. “We were outnumbered in New York. For every single man, there were three single women. The ratio is reversed in Las Vegas.”

"That may be the case," Elise said, as flat as her book. "But we need to think bigger than that. I joined you guys because I’m getting a chance to work in a state-of-the-art facility in an emerging market where I have the opportunity to make a name for myself, which I was not getting back home. Maybe I’ll rise up to director at the new Freestanding ER and move on to a leadership position at the main ER."

Adriana turned a crafty grin Jessica's way. Jessica wondered if Adriana had ever smiled in a way that didn't need to have an adjective attached. "What's your deal, Jess?" she asked, with a perfectly innocent curiosity. "Men, or work?"

"Or men at work?" Krista suggested.

"Jesus, Krista..." Elise waved a hand dismissively. "Jessica’s reasoning is just returning home. She's from Vegas—I mean, that's how we learned about how great the job market is in the first place, from that letter her brother sent her."

"I'm actually from Pahrump." Jessica frowned at their blank expressions. "Don't you guys remember me telling you this? I'm not actually from Vegas. Pahrump is just a little town an hour from the Strip. Our main export is Art Bell."

"I don't know what would make you admit to being from a place called Rump," Krista said.

"I'm not nearly drunk enough to deal with Krista's 'say literally the worst things in her cute little voice' shtick,” Adriana said. “I wonder if the guys broke open that bottle of bubbly yet..." Her eyes widened. "Oh, shit! I forgot to tell you guys something really important!"

"Oh no," Elise said, "how completely and utterly unlike you."

"Chill, Bernstein. Even you will like this news." She cleared her throat dramatically. "So, over there in civilization," she gestured towards business class, "I met these really cute guys—about our age, all wearing suits, and there's five of them, so if you don't like yours, you have your chance with the extra…"

"Adriana!"

"Right, Jess, thanks. Anyway, I struck up a conversation with one of them—Jeremy, he's so your type, Jess, a little Labrador of a man—and I learned that they all work together in some kind of business thing, maybe a startup or something. I told them all about us, and they would love it if we would join them for some dinner and clubbing tonight."

"That's nice," Elise said, "but we really have to unpack and get ready for orientation tomorrow…"

"So, of course, I RSVP'd yes for all of us, and they'll pick us up at our house at around 6:30." She frowned, but only slightly. "What's with the faces? You should be saying, 'Thank you for possibly setting us up with our future husbands, Adriana. You're always looking out for our best interests, Adriana. You're the best person in the whole wide world, Adriana."

"My best interest is getting eight hours of sleep before orientation," Elise said.

"Oh, come on! They're really nice guys, all of them. And I'm sure it won't be too late. I promise I'll have all you guys home before curfew."

"I wouldn't mind a little dancing," Krista said, though half of her reply was lost in Adriana's loud whoop of victory—she knew that where Krista went, Elise went as well, and Jessica would tag along just to make sure the rest of them didn't end up on a sidewalk using a slice of pizza as a pillow again.

It was at that point that a flight attendant finally worked up the nerve to step forward and ask Adriana to take her seat, as they had run into some turbulence—though that was only an excuse, as she had actually tired of the endless noise complaints from everyone around her. Though Adriana kept shouting assurances that they were going to have the best time in the world that night, and that none of them would regret putting their trust in her this time, until she had fallen behind the curtain separating the different classes of plane traveler, the cabin eventually fell silent again—or, at least, as silent as a metal tube crammed with people and hurtling through the air can ever be.

Elise exhaled through her nose and leaned back in her seat, closing her eyes. "Being near Adriana is like a marathon for your psyche," she said. "I don't know how I'm going to survive working with her, let alone living with her."

"You get used to it, trust me." Jessica kicked off her shoes and pulled her legs up onto the seat, trying to find the least uncomfortable way to be horizontal enough to nap properly. "She's still completely Type A, but once the novelty of the move and the job is over, she'll chill out a bit. Having a structure and a schedule grounds her."

"I'll just spend more time with Krista, my human NyQuil." She gave her a fond smile, which was returned even though they could audibly note that Krista had turned up her phone's volume loud enough to finally drown them all out.

They both fell silent, and Jessica could feel the exhaustion of travel settle over her body. She let her eyes drift close...

"So. How's Danny?"

Jessica cracked an eye open, taking in Elise's guileless expression. "He likes being called Daniel, now," she said. "Since he's starting medical school and all."

"Hilarious. Maybe he'll grow into it by the time he finishes his residency." She paused. "I heard you dumped him hard."

"Oh, hardly. You know how Adriana exaggerates."

"I got that from Krista, actually... who heard it from Adriana. It doesn't matter. How hard was it?"

"I was as gentle as I could be. He knows it doesn't have anything to do with him—hell, we did it one last time yesterday, just for old time's sake."

"Nice," she said. "I've always liked Danny. He's a good kid."

"I know. I just... You know how I feel."

Elise nodded. "Not everyone can do the whole 'long-distance' thing," she said. "I know I've never been good at it. That's why I wrapped everything up with my high school sweetheart before I left Palm Beach. I knew I'd never go back home."

"I'd known the same thing. And yet, here I am. Moving back to where I grew up—well, near there, anyway."

"I don't know why you're so beat up about it." Elise settled back against her seat, closing her eyes. "The desert climate is going to do wonders for my skin and hair. And all that nice, open space and fresh air? So much better than Manhattan."

She supposed Elise was right. There were plenty of objectively good reasons to be glad to be closer to home. She would finally be close enough to regularly visit her little brother, who was serving out the remainder of his sentence in a Clark County jail. She would be able to visit her mother's grave, once she learned where it actually was.

It was just that, to her, all of those very good reasons were the very good reasons she had never returned home in the first place.

Novella 1: Chapter 3

As they exited the taxi and took in the home they would be sharing for however long they would be staying together, Jessica felt a strange twinge of anxiety in her gut. It was almost a sense of agoraphobia; it was perhaps the largest house she had ever seen, let alone lived in. Going from a childhood of doublewide trailers and a young adulthood of cramped New York dorms and apartments to a proper adulthood in what could only be called a mansion.

The house was over five thousand square feet on a half-acre lot overlooking Red Rock National Park in Summerlin, a suburb located about a thirty-minute drive west of the Las Vegas Strip. The place had four bedrooms upstairs and three downstairs (one was a guest room, the other two had been converted to an office and a gym). Outside, there was a giant heated pool and hot tub. The place was nothing short of incredible…

"I can't believe this place is as cheap as you say it is," Krista said in a voice barely above a whisper, saying what everyone else was surely thinking. "Adriana, did you give any sexual favors to our landlord? Is that why rent is so cheap?"

"This is just how it is in Nevada, I swear," Adriana said. Though she was much more used to living in luxury than the others, even she sounded impressed by the home. "You can buy a home that even a Rockefeller couldn't afford back in the city."