by Fiona Lowe
‘I can put them on if you want?’
‘Next time.’ His voice was hoarse.
She gripped his waist with her legs, crossing her ankles above his back and he entered her tantalisingly slowly. Millimetre by millimetre, in and out, gently gaining depth until he filled her completely, she was almost screaming with frustrated pleasure. An unexpected sob left her lips.
He instantly tensed and concern pierced the fog of lust in his eyes. ‘Are you okay?’
She tightened around him. ‘I’m more than okay.’
It had been such a long time since she’d had sex. Since she’d experienced bliss quite like this.
It’s never been like this.
Her hips rose as she matched his rhythm, welcoming the length of him stroking her. She wanted to kiss him but sensation was taking over and her head thrashed from side to side as ecstasy built. The noise of their panting breaths fell away as the edges of her mind started to blur. Nothing existed except his touch and the addictive bliss that drove her on, promising euphoria. Her body spun ever upwards—twirling, rising, seeking and craving the ephemeral delight.
With a shout of wonder, she was lifted high out of herself, shattering into a thousand shards of silver that rained down all around her. As she fell back to earth, he jerked over her, crying out her name. As she raised her head to kiss him, she tasted salt and the joy of her own tears.
CHAPTER EIGHT
ALISTAIR COULDN’T STOP grinning but he knew he had to wrestle down the desire to beam from ear to ear before he arrived at the castle. If he didn’t, his joie de vivre would invite nudges, winks and comments from all the usual suspects—like the porters who’d say, ‘You’re looking happier than you deserve to, guv.’
And he was happy. Ridiculously happy, but no one at the castle could know the reason for his good spirits. Especially not Robyn. As head of surgery, she’d have his guts for garters and the Royal College of Surgeons would be none too pleased either if they got a whiff of anything untoward. Not that either he or Claire considered what had happened between them to be anything other than marvellous.
After making love twice—the first time hot and explosive, the second time deliciously slow but oddly more intense—they’d fallen asleep. He’d woken to find her head on his chest and her hair strewn all over his body. Normally when he had sex with a woman, he tended to leave her bed soon afterwards, but with Claire’s words—one night—clear in his mind, along with being in the neutral territory of the hotel, he’d fallen asleep and had slept surprisingly well.
He blew a few strands of her hair out of his mouth and nose, but his tickling breath must have woken her. She’d opened her sleep-filled eyes and a moment later—the exact second she’d remembered where she was—they’d dilated into pools of caramel sauce. It was as natural as breathing to stroke her hair. ‘Good morning.’
She smiled, although it held hesitancy at the edges. ‘Hi.’ She raised her head so she could see the bedside clock and then gasped. ‘No. Nine-fifteen? This is a little awkward.’
It should have been very awkward but for some reason it wasn’t.
‘Why?’
She sat up quickly, pulling the sheet with her. ‘Oh, you know.’ She gave an embarrassed laugh. ‘With the dawn comes the unforgiving light.’
He laughed. ‘You look deliciously sexy and sleep rumpled to me. I tell you what. We can always keep the curtains closed and pretend it’s still the night.’
Two hot-pink spots appeared on her cheeks and she groaned. ‘Is that a polite way of saying I have the remnants of last night’s makeup halfway down my cheeks and wild and crazy bed hair?’
He thought she looked beautiful. ‘Nothing that a shower won’t repair,’ he’d said, kissing her gently. ‘Tell you what. Let’s have a shower and some breakfast before we open the curtains and concede the night’s over.’ She stared at him for a long moment, her face giving away nothing. A stab of disappointment pierced him. ‘Or not.’
She blinked a few times before making a sound that was half laugh and half discomfiture. ‘Um... Al.’
All his life he’d been called Alistair and it was rare that anyone ever shortened it. If they did, he promptly corrected them, but there was something about Claire’s accent, and the intimacy the contraction implied that kept him silent. ‘Yes?’
‘The dawn also brings reality. My disposable contacts are long gone and I don’t have my glasses. Everything’s out of focus. To be honest, I can’t see much further than my fingertips.’
He laughed and pulled her in close. ‘You don’t have to see, Claire. Just feel.’
‘Is that an invitation?’
‘Could I deny a half-blind woman anything?’
She smiled the smile of a woman who’d just been given a box wrapped up in tissue paper and a bow, and she slid her hands up into his hair. Her fingers delved deep, firmly exploring his skull.
‘Are you taking up phrenology?’ he quipped.
Her fingers moved forward to his forehead. ‘With this prominence, you’d be considered benevolent.’
‘That’s definitely me.’
She raised her brows as if disputing his claim, but the look in her eyes didn’t match it. She continued her exploration, slowly tracing the orbit of his eyes before the stubble on his cheekbones slowed the progression of her fingertips. She traversed the length of his nose, drawing a little circle on the tip and then she outlined his lips and traced his jaw. As her fingers left a spot, she kissed it.
He relaxed into her light and gentle caresses and his mind slid away from all thought, sinking blissfully into the sensations and absorbing every single one of them. She moved her hands to the column of his neck and using both thumbs in a soft massage she swept outwards from the centre until she reached the base of his throat.
His now languid body pressed heavily into the mattress and his mind emptied, conscious of nothing except the pleasure of her touch. Her fingers were drawing delicious small and continuous ‘e’s along both of his clavicles, moving slowly but surely out towards his shoulders.
A shot of adrenaline pierced his languor and he thrust out his left hand, immediately capturing her right. He had no problem with Claire, the woman, touching him, but Claire, the doctor, was another matter entirely. He sure as hell had no desire to talk about what she was about to feel and instantly diagnose with her fingers. She’d ask questions—questions he didn’t want to answer—and not only would it summarily end her delicious exploration of him, it would end their magical time together on a sour note. He had no intention of allowing that to happen.
Thank goodness she couldn’t see very well. He pressed her hand to his mouth and kissed it before using his tongue to tickle her palm. She laughed and the musical sound surrounded him before sliding under his skin. As it trickled along his veins, he had the strangest sensation—something that made him feel different somehow—but with a beautiful and naked woman sitting astride him, he didn’t pause to give it any thought.
Very slowly, he sucked one of her fingers into his mouth before releasing it and turning his attention to the next one. With each flick of his tongue, he felt her thighs tense and relax against his own and felt himself harden against her. As he released her pinkie finger he pressed her hand on his belly with her fingers splayed downwards.
She shivered and without hesitation she took the bait exactly as he’d hoped she would. Her attention was focused far from his shoulder and her fingers and mouth explored him until he begged for mercy. She rolled a condom on him and he rolled her under him.
Afterwards, they’d shared a tub and he’d cradled her back against him, keeping her hands firmly away from his chest. They’d blown bubbles of bath gel like little kids, delighting in the rainbow of colours as the bubbles floated above them. Food had followed and he’d consumed the largest breakfast he’d eaten in a very long tim
e. He’d been unable to convince her that kippers were a treat.
‘Bacon is a treat,’ she’d said, savouring two poached eggs. ‘Pancakes and maple syrup are a treat, but oily smoked fish? Not so much.’
‘All that omega-3 is good for your joints and helps ward off Alzheimer’s.’
‘You forgot to mention reducing the risk of heart disease and stroke.’
He hadn’t forgotten at all. His failure to mention the top two health risks had been deliberate. Not that omega-3 could have prevented his cardiac condition, but it could help stave off other complications.
‘I prefer to get my daily dose of omega-3 from nuts.’ With a theatrical shudder of her white-bathrobe-clad shoulders, she pushed the plate of kippers back towards him. ‘Be my guest and eat mine.’
‘Well, if you’re forcing it on me...’ He’d speared it with his fork before enjoying the fish on hearty seed-laden toast.
‘Perhaps kippers are a bit like Vegemite,’ she said reflectively.
‘How so exactly?’ he asked, wondering about the connection between the ghastly black stuff Australians loved and the cold-water fish.
‘To enjoy either of them, perhaps you have to be raised on them from an early age.’
‘You might be right,’ he said with a grin. ‘I ate kippers a lot growing up. They were Cook’s favourite breakfast food.’
Her coffee cup stalled halfway to her luscious mouth. ‘Cook?’ She blinked. ‘You grew up with a cook?’ Her disbelief rode across her face and settled in her startled and out-of-focus gaze.
He regretted the slip of his tongue. What the hell had made him mention Cook? Trying to shrug away all the disparate emotions that always hit him when he thought about Englewood, he said with feigned easiness, ‘We lived in the country.’
She laughed. ‘And that’s your explanation? In Australia, living in the country and having a cook are not automatically connected. Next you’ll be telling me you had a nanny and you went to boarding school.’
‘Guilty on both counts, I’m afraid.’
‘And it keeps happening,’ she said, sounding slightly bewildered.
‘What keeps happening?’
‘Me, feeling like I’ve stepped into the middle of an English novel from my childhood.’ She slathered jam onto a croissant. ‘I grew up in a town ringed by red dust. I’m the daughter of a mechanic and a secretary. My mother was an anglophile and she read me all the classics like The Secret Garden, Wind in the Willows, all the Roald Dahl stories and, of course, A. A. Milne. The idea of having a cook and a nanny was the stuff of stories, but you actually lived it. Tell me, did you have a secret garden?’
‘There was a walled garden, but it wasn’t very secret.’ He gave a wry smile. ‘My father used to tease my mother that she only married him for the garden. She certainly loved it and my earliest memories are playing hide-and-seek with her there.’
Claire’s eyes lit up. ‘Do your parents still live in the great house in the country?’
He tried to stave off the flinch but it came anyway. Not for the first time today, he gave thanks that Claire was extremely short-sighted without her glasses. ‘No. Dad died when I was thirteen. Due to a complicated family will, we had to leave.’
‘Oh.’ Her hand shot out and rested over his. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘It was a long time ago,’ he said, sliding his hand out from under hers and refilling their coffee cups.
She frowned. ‘Thirteen’s a tough age to lose your father.’
Yes. ‘Fortunately, I had some excellent housemasters at school.’
She rubbed her temples and he swooped into action, needing to prevent her from asking anything else about his father. ‘Headache?’ he asked.
She nodded at him with a resigned smile. ‘As wonderful as all of this has been, I need to get home to my glasses.’
‘In that case...’ He rose and pressed a button. The curtains smoothly opened to reveal a Sunday full of sunshine. They both squinted into the light.
‘Oh, God,’ Claire suddenly moaned. ‘I have to go out into broad daylight in an evening gown.’
‘No, you don’t.’ He pulled her to her feet and kissed her hair. ‘I’ve bought us both a souvenir to remember our night.’
She grimaced. ‘I’m not sure wearing the hotel bathrobe home is any less incriminating than the dress.’
‘O ye of little faith,’ he said, tucking some damp strands of her hair behind her ear. ‘We’re leaving wearing a set of monogrammed hotel gym gear.’
‘They sell that?’ She laughed. ‘I love this hotel.’
He’d agreed with her.
* * *
That had been nineteen hours ago. The last words she’d said to him before she hopped into a cab were, ‘See you at work, Mr North.’
‘Morning, guv,’ one of the porters greeted him as he entered the hospital.
‘Morning, Amos.’
‘Heard you had a good weekend.’ The porter tapped his nose as if he was privy to some private information. Alistair tensed for moment but relaxed when Amos said, ‘Saw your photo in the paper with that pretty nurse Ms Hobbes.’
‘It was my job to dance with all of the nurses,’ he said easily, telling the truth. ‘And I went home alone.’
Disappointment flashed across the man’s face. ‘That’s too bad, guv. Next time, eh?’
Alistair grinned and kept walking. When he arrived on Koala Ward, his team were waiting for him, including Claire. He knew she would have arrived half an hour ago to read the files.
She gave him the same quietly restrained smile she’d given him for the past two weeks—well, at work anyway. With her hair pulled neatly back in a ponytail, a fresh white coat and glasses perched on her nose she looked exactly the same as she’d always looked. Rising to her feet, she picked up her stethoscope and swung it around her neck. The bell came to rest on the V of her blouse and it snagged his gaze. Immediately, the memory of a sheer lace bra that left little to the imagination hit him so hard his blood swooped to his groin.
‘Morning, Mitchell. Bailey.’ His normal greeting sounded strained and he cleared his throat. ‘I want an update on Ryan Walker.’
‘He’s not triggering the ventilator yet,’ Claire said as a small frown made a V on the bridge of her nose. ‘We’re continuing with the treatment of sedation, ventilation and parenteral nutrition.’
‘That’s all we can do at the moment,’ Alistair said. ‘Right, Bailey, your turn.’
* * *
After the ward round finished and he’d spoken to the Walkers, he ducked into the nurses’ tea room and grabbed a cheese and ham croissant. He needed the fuel before a busy morning in outpatients. He’d just brushed the last crumbs off his fingers when Dominic MacBride telephoned him.
‘We need you and your registrar down here for a consult. Sooner rather than later if possible.’
‘On my way.’
As he ran down the stairs, he was surprised to meet Claire on the third floor. ‘On your way to A & E?’
She’s hardly going to the circus.
She nodded. ‘Yep.’
He opened his mouth to say, I had a great time with you, which was what he usually said to a woman he’d slept with and wanted to see again. He promptly swallowed the words, remembering he’d promised her what had happened wouldn’t spill into their work world. Right now, they were clearly at work. He frantically sought for something else to say but pulled up blank.
What the hell was wrong with him? He was British, for heaven’s sake. He’d been raised on polite small talk. It was a relief to arrive at the ground floor. He pushed open the heavy fire door for her. As she slipped past he breathed in deeply, drawing in her scent that reminded him so much of summer days on the Côte d’Azur. The tang of grapes, the softness of lavender and the refreshing fizz of lemon s
hot through him and he had to fist his right hand so as not to wrap it around her waist.
In the corridor, he fell into step next to her when Claire’s brisk pace suddenly faltered. She abruptly stepped sideways as if she was avoiding something and bumped into him, knocking him off balance. He automatically gripped her hips to steady himself. As he did so, he noticed a man standing stock-still in the middle of the hallway staring straight at him and Claire.
It took him a moment to recognise who he was, but as his hands fell away from Claire, he realised it was Thomas Wolfe. He hadn’t seen the paediatric cardiologist in years, so why the hell was he staring at them as if he’d just come face to face with his worst nightmare?
The painful intensity of Thomas’s gaze gave Alistair pause, and without thinking he glanced over his shoulder. Rebecca Scott, the transplant surgeon, stood behind them, her face pale and tight.
‘North. Mitchell.’ She gave them a brisk nod of acknowledgment before striding past them. Without saying another word, she skirted around Thomas Wolfe and exited the corridor.
For a moment Thomas didn’t move. Alistair was about to break the uncomfortable silence with a ‘Good to see you again, Thomas,’ when the man spun around, punched open the large plastic doors to A & E and disappeared.
‘Wow. ’ Claire’s face was full of curiosity. ‘Who was that?’
‘Thomas Wolfe. He’s a cardiologist. Worked here years ago. I got a memo this morning saying he’s back. God knows why when the storm clouds of closure are hanging over the castle.’
‘That’s as may be,’ Claire said thoughtfully. ‘But something pretty big’s going on between him and Rebecca. If looks were a loaded gun, one of us would be dead by now.’
‘They used to be married.’ He blew out a long sigh. ‘Guess it must have been a messy divorce.’
‘That’s an understatement,’ Claire said with a shiver. ‘It’s a perfect example of why people who work together shouldn’t...’
Her cheeks pinked up, reminding him of how she’d looked two nights ago. More than anything he wanted to kiss her. ‘Get married?’ he said quickly, before she could say, Have sex. ‘I absolutely agree with you, but surely that doesn’t preclude enjoying each other away from the hospital.’
