The heat thrummed through me, pounding in my ears, blocking out all thought. I felt him grab the clip that held my hair up and pull it free, none too gently, and I didn’t care. He kissed down my throat and his stubble burned my cheek and I didn’t care about that, either. We were beyond politeness. We needed each other.
His fingers dug into the cheeks of my ass and his thumbs pressed into the creases at the tops of my thighs. I was captured, held fast for his kiss. His thumbs circled in those sensitive spots and I started to gasp and thrash, my panting lips stroking his.
Then he pushed my scrub top up to bunch under my arms. I had my eyes closed but I could feel the sudden warmth of his chest through only one flimsy layer of cloth. Then the seat either side of my head squished as he pushed himself up on his forearms and I knew he was looking at me. Our breathing filled the car: my tight, quick pants; his much bigger, deeper breaths as his eyes roamed over me. He suddenly scooped his hands under me, unclipped my black bra and pushed it up out of the way. I lay there, my skin warming under his gaze, my nipples tightening into aching peaks.
He fell on me, those big hands wrapping around my waist to pin me there as his mouth opened wide to engulf one breast. I clutched at his arms, his muscles rock hard under my fingers, as his tongue circled and lashed, pleasure twisting and spiraling outwards to fill me. Maybe scared of crushing me, he suddenly pulled me on top of him, lying back on the seat with me straddling him. He pulled my upper body down to meet his mouth, his hands stroking and squeezing my breasts as his tongue licked at them.
My thighs were clamped around his torso and I was practically grinding myself against the hard ridges of his abs. My breath came in shuddering pants. This man made me completely lose control. I groped for the bottom of his scrub top and pushed it up, letting my fingers rollercoaster over the peaks and valleys of his six pack. The more I touched him, the more I needed to touch him. My fingers pushed the material higher, higher, revealing his deep center line and the hard slabs of his chest. I ran my thumb over one nipple experimentally and he growled, his whole body stiffening beneath me. He wrapped his hand around the back of my head and tugged me down for a kiss.
My breasts, slick and shining from his mouth, pillowed and dragged along his chest as I sank down and flattened myself against him. He was too tall to lie completely flat along the seat so his knees were raised and I wound up with my ass in the air and pressed back against them. I felt him lift himself off the seat a little and heard the rasp of fabric as he pushed down his pants. And then his cock sprang free and slapped against my inner thigh, hot and hard and ready. I drew back from his kiss a little, our lips a few millimeters apart, and felt him hook his thumbs into my panties and shove them down my thighs. My eyes flew open and I drew back a little more. He was staring up at me and then his hand was on my thigh, sliding upward….
My eyes widened. He cupped me, stroked me. I could feel how slickly wet I was….
“I’ve been dreaming about doing this,” he murmured. The combination of the lust in his voice and the silver of his accent seared into my mind and just melted me. “Been thinking about it ever since you put your hands on my hands, that day in the ER. I wanted to know what you—”
Two fingers parted me and slid deep. I shuddered and gasped and he grinned, watching the pleasure in my eyes. His thumb found my clit and started to circle. “...what you sound like when you come,” he finished.
I stared down into those blue eyes, unable to speak. God, he was an expert, his fingers just the right combination of thick and strong, deft and quick. I started to rock atop him and he began to smooth his other hand over my bare ass cheek, enjoying the way it tensed as I moved. Waves of pleasure were rippling out from my groin, making me buck my hips and squeeze around him, my hair lashing his face. His fingers moved faster, fucking me, thumb circling and circling. My fingers dug hard into his biceps, my forehead lowering to press against his….
I came, arching my back and clenching and spasming around his fingers. I was planning to be silent, tried to bite my lip, but he was too good. It got loose, a rising cry that turned into a staccato burst of high little yells as the lust in his eyes overpowered my shyness. I didn’t need to hide anymore. Not with him.
I swayed atop him, dazed. He was pulling his wallet out of the pocket of his scrub pants, taking something out. His knuckles brushed my inner thigh as he rolled a condom on and then the head of his cock was nudging at my folds and—
He drove up into me, spreading me—God, stretching me deliciously. My world narrowed down to the glorious feeling of that hot hardness stroking into me and the press of his body between my knees. He put his hands on my shoulders and pushed me back until I was kneeling astride him, head lowered to clear the ceiling. He filled his hands with my breasts, squeezing them in time with our slow movements, smoothing my hair across them in a silken curtain and using it to caress my nipples. We were working together, him thrusting up as I pushed down and back and God, it was amazing. I’d always been passive, before, I’d never been with anyone I could unleash and be myself with. It went on for long minutes, every slow, silken thrust ratcheting the pleasure higher. My toes started to dance and curl against the seat, my fingers crushing his shoulders. Already, I was getting close again. And the look in his eyes only drove me closer. With every stroke into me, his eyes narrowed and his body hardened under my hands. He needed more, needed to fuck me faster, harder. But he couldn’t, not like this….
He suddenly pushed me off him, hooking my leg over him and sliding out from under me. Before I knew what was happening, he’d pushed me along the seat so that I was on hands and knees, my face close to the fogged-up window. I felt his knees push between mine, spreading my thighs, and gulped again as I realized what he was going to do. He pressed down on my naked back, making me arch my back and present myself to him. And then both of us cried out as he plunged inside me again.
He could go deeper, like this, and he slid inside me all the way to the hilt, until I felt the heat of his body against mine. He started to move and he was iron and silk inside me, filling me, every sweet backwards drag and quick, hard thrust making the pleasure spiral higher inside me. I pressed my cheek against the cold glass, the blizzard just a hazy blur outside. He began to slam me, his fingers curling around the crease of my hips to pull me back onto him.
His voice was ragged, the Irish raw and savage, nuggets of silver in freshly-broken rock. “Christ, Amy, you’re amazing.” He grabbed my rump, his fingers rough with need. “Always knew you would be.”
I was incapable of speech. With every thrust, the pleasure compressed, tightening and tightening towards the point of bursting. His thrusts were so strong, now, that I was being shifted along the seat and had to brace my hands against the door. My climax was like a living thing inside me, now, hurling itself back and forth, demanding release.
His thrusts got faster, faster, building to a peak. As he slammed into me, he slowly pulled me back against him until I was kneeling, my back pressed against his chest. He filled his hands with my breasts, pinching the nipples lightly, and the pleasure compressed and brightened: God, yes!
And then he pushed me forward, burying himself in me while pushing me up against the window. My breasts, still damp and super-sensitive, pressed against the cold glass, the chill shock of it against my hot flesh indescribable. I knew there was no one outside to see but the feeling of being so wantonly, filthily on show, coupled with the press of his hard body against me, the endless, silken stretch of him inside me—
I screamed my orgasm out into the snow, shuddering around him again and again. He put one hand under my chin and twisted my head around for his kiss, our lips meeting just as he growled and shot inside me.
35
Amy
WE LAY with him spooning me from behind, both of us naked. The rear seat was warm from our coupling and, with both coats layered over us as blankets, it was cozy. Him being so big, I was close to the edge of the seat, but he had both arms wrapped ar
ound me and it didn’t feel precarious at all. I felt warm in a way that went beyond simple temperature, protected in a way that went beyond being out of the snow. All my blankets and comforters and the log fire at my apartment, all of my burrowing...these arms were what I’d been searching for all along.
There was just enough moonlight to see by. I could see blurry movement through the fogged-up windows and hear the wind: the blizzard was still howling outside. But in here, all was safe and cozy.
I was wondering whether I needed to start calling him Dominic, now. Dom? I liked it, but I couldn’t get used to it after so much Corrigan. “Are you going to start calling me Amy now?” I thought aloud.
He hugged me even tighter to his chest. “No,” he said, and nipped my earlobe with his teeth. “I like Beckett too much.”
I sort of writhed against him. The way he said it, Beckett was like my sexy, sultry, alter-ego. I felt his cock harden against my ass. The man was insatiable.
I closed my eyes, comfortable and secure. He was a superb cuddler. It was the final proof that the cocky, womanizing Corrigan was a fake. This was his natural state, to be with someone. This must be what he was like when he was married, before he changed. Which reminded me of something I needed to broach, if we were together. “Do you see them often?”
He sounded genuinely confused. “Who?”
“Your ex.” I paused. “You’re divorced, right?”
He went completely still behind me. Had I got it wrong? I was so sure, all the signs had been there. I twisted around in his arms so that I could look at him….
When I saw the expression on his face, my stomach fell a thousand feet. Oh. Shit. My words echoed in my head: colorful baubles I’d tossed happily into the air, only to feel them explode like hand grenades. I knew I had no social skills, but how could I have gotten it so utterly, horrifically wrong? I searched his face, flailing for an escape hatch, a way to take it back—
Two words, drawn from somewhere unimaginably deep, hauled up to the surface in a process that was all fractured, razor-sharp edges and bitter, toxic pain. He didn’t say them, he cleared them from his mouth as quickly as possible. “Chrissy.” Then, even harder: “Rachel.” He swallowed. “They died two years ago. Rachel would be eight, now. Rebecca’s age.”
My mouth opened and closed silently. I could feel the tears in my eyes: the pain radiating off him was so immense it soaked through me, stealing my words. I’d done enough damage, I wasn’t going to ask how. But he must have seen the question on my face.
“They were murdered,” he said.
Dealing with death is part of my job. But no matter how hard it is, that sort of death can be broken down with logic. It’s lifestyle and disease and age, surgical complications, even mistakes. Murder?! That was something that happened in books and movies. Losing someone I could conceive of. Having them taken from you? Not just his wife, but his daughter, too?
I threw my arms around him and clutched him as tight as I could. The emotion was a hot swell of pressure inside me. I couldn’t form it into words so I kept my jaw clamped shut and it leaked out as tears. How could they, kept going through my head. How could anyone do that to this man?
He rubbed my back, gently trying to soothe me. But that was the wrong way around, I needed to be soothing him! I clung to him as if I could draw the poison from him if I only pressed myself close enough. I’m here, I kept thinking. I’m here now. I didn’t care that it was ridiculous, that he was the strong one who’d traveled the world and took everything in his stride and I was the one who usually hid away in the OR. I needed to help my man.
When I finally pushed back and looked up into his face, I shook my head in disbelief. “How do you cope?” I asked.
He stared right back at me. “I don’t.”
That didn’t make any sense to me because obviously he was coping, he’d filled the years since with women and travel. I just hugged him close again and, wrapped together, we eventually dozed.
I woke about an hour later. It was still dark, but something was different: I couldn’t figure out what, at first. Then I got it: the wind wasn’t howling. When I looked outside, the snow had stopped.
I realized he was awake, too. “We should try the engine again,” he said. I nodded dumbly as he pulled on his scrubs. I was still shell-shocked by what he’d told me, but I was taking my cues from him: we’d talk about it when and if he wanted to. Part of me was glad of the change of subject. I needed some time just to process.
He climbed into the front and tried the engine. It grumbled twice, then caught. He threw a grin at me over his shoulder. “I think we thawed it out.”
I blushed, remembering, and struggled into my own scrubs. Climbing into the passenger seat beside him, my mind was racing. Even without what he’d told me about his family, this would be an awkward moment. What now? Were we... together? What if that had just been a one-night stand for him after all? What if—
He grabbed me under the arms and pulled me into his lap. Before I knew what was happening, his lips were coming down on mine. I opened under him and it became a deep, slow kiss, full of reassurance and love. When he broke it, he looked down into my eyes. “Okay?” he asked.
“Mm-hmm,” I nodded breathlessly.
He pushed a lock of hair back from my face. His eyes were solemn... and determined. Acknowledging that making this work would be hard. Telling me he was damn well going to try.
We set off down the hill, crunching through thick snow. It took us a full hour to make it back to the hospital, but, when we did, Taylor and Krista met us at the door.
“Sophie’s going to be fine,” Krista told us, her eyes on Corrigan. “No other traumas came in. It’s been quiet. I even grabbed a nap.”
I let out a long sigh of relief and hugged her. “Thank you for holding the fort.”
Krista and Taylor high-fived, good friends already. “Meh,” said Krista. “This doctorin’ ain’t so hard.”
I’d always thought of the ER as cold and drafty but after the long walk through the snow, going inside was like climbing into a warm bath. Maggie was balanced precariously at the very top of a stepladder, reaching up into the ceiling space to fix a light, and Earl was watching her from across the room, twisting his hat in his hands. I gave him a look: tell her! He shook his head.
Taylor took Corrigan off to check on the critical patients. Krista pulled me aside the second they were out of earshot. “You two were out there a suspiciously long time.”
I started to tell her she was wrong... and then remembered that I couldn’t, for once, and turned scarlet. Krista’s jaw dropped. We joke about my non-existent sex life so often, something actually happening hadn’t occurred to her. “You didn’t!”
I looked at the floor. But for once, as well as blushing, I had this big, stupid grin on my face.
“Oh my God! Tell me everything!”
“Me too,” came Maggie’s voice from above.
I shook my head, remembering. Later. Maybe. If we did tequila shots.
At that second, it went black.
Not dark: black. Not only did every light in the hospital go out, every light in the street outside did, too. And with the moon behind a cloud, that left us in pitch, suffocating blackness. A shrill, discordant chorus of alarms sounded from the critical area: all the ventilators warning that they were now running on battery power.
“It’s okay!” Maggie’s voice. But she didn’t sound okay, she sounded panicked. Then I remembered she was perched ten feet in the air. “The wind must have brought down the power lines. The emergency generator will kick in in a couple of—shit!”
In the darkness, I had to fill in what was happening from the sounds. A rush of air as she fell. A creak as she grabbed hold of a pipe and dangled. A clang as her foot searched for the stepladder and kicked it instead. It toppled and crashed to the floor, missing me by inches. Heavy, running footsteps—
A scream as she fell. I winced, but there was nothing I could do: I knew the ladder was right i
n front of me, waiting to trip me. She was falling eight feet onto a hard floor, she’d crack her head right open—
There was a soft whump.
The lights flickered on. The ventilator alarms died away.
Earl was standing underneath the hole in the ceiling with Maggie in his arms. She was looking up at him in shock and he was looking down at her in a very particular way.
“Earl?” she said in disbelief.
“Ma’am,” he said.
I grabbed Krista by the elbow and towed her away. I may be socially inept, but even I know when two people need a moment alone. Behind us, I heard Earl mumbling something, her calling him a big lunk... and then silence. I sneaked a peek. They were kissing. Yes!
“I’m going to go check on Rebecca,” I told Krista, and walked off towards the critical area, grinning.
Rebecca was dozing, but she woke up as I approached. I whispered hi, keeping my voice low because the other patients were sleeping.
“You look different,” whispered Rebecca curiously.
My hair was down. I hadn’t thought to put it up again after Corrigan had pulled it free while we were... I coughed. But I wasn’t sure that was it. I felt giddy and light. I looked over my shoulder, seeing Corrigan at the far end of the row of beds, before I realized what I’d done.
Rebecca drew in her breath. “You’re in love!” she whispered, awestruck. “With Doctor Corrigan!”
I spent about three seconds trying to form a denial before I gave in and nodded. My grown-up head was saying things like you can’t use the L-word. Not yet. The whole rest of me was squeezing and singing, yes I can. “How did you know?” I whispered.
“My mom got the same look after she met my step-dad,” she said proudly. Then, at the mention of her parents, her face crumpled.
I leaned close and grabbed her hands. “Hey, hey, don’t worry,” I told her. Talking to her was getting easier each time... and leaving her was getting harder. “As soon as the snow clears, they’ll be here, okay?” She reluctantly nodded. “Now try to get some sleep.”
Mount Mercy Page 14
