by Jill Shalvis
She cupped his face and offered him a slow smile. “How about just me?”
His eyes darkened as he backed her to the bed and nudged her onto the mattress. “Tell me you still have condoms.”
She rolled to her hands and knees and crawled to the nightstand. He groaned, making her realize the sight she’d just presented. Deciding to own it, she wriggled her hips and was rewarded with another rough sound from him, inherently male, as she yanked open the drawer to reveal a full box of condoms.
“That’s a good start,” he said, setting a knee on the bed. He moved so fast she didn’t have time to react before his warm hand wrapped around her ankle and tugged.
She fell flat, facedown on the bed, laughing when he yanked her toward him, giving her a world-class wedgie. Then he flipped her over to face him. Her cami had risen up a little, and his gaze swept over her body, heating every inch it touched. His deep, rumbling groan was low and possessive, and everything within her quivered.
“Your shirt,” she said. She needed it gone, yesterday.
He impatiently tore it off and tossed it behind him.
Oh, that was better, she thought, taking in his broad, sculpted chest, feeling herself go damp at the sight of all those muscles bunching as he moved. Much better.
As if reading her mind, his lips curved, sending more heat through her because she knew exactly what those lips could do to her, the places he could take her. He had a way of making her feel sexy, beautiful. Like she was special. He had a way of sending all her doubts scattering, of reinstating her confidence.
Her parents had educated her and made sure that her horizons were broad. But Josh had given her something new.
He made her feel.
The soft material of her cami gave him no resistance when he lifted it over her head and sent it sailing somewhere in the direction of his discarded shirt. “Mmm,” he said, bending to kiss a breast as he hooked his fingers into the silk boxers low on her hips. They hit the floor next. “Christ, you’re beautiful,” he said as he stroked a hand up her leg, settling it low on her belly. “And wet.” His thumb glided over her, spreading her a little on each pass, making her moan and shift impatiently. But he simply continued to tease and torment, that knowing finger nearly driving her right over the edge. “Please…” she finally gasped.
“After you come.”
“But—”
“Shhh.” Then he dropped to his knees beside the bed, pulled her to the edge, and put his mouth on her. The first stroke of his tongue shot her heart rate to the moon. “Did you just…shush me?” she barely managed to ask.
He pulled back just enough to blow a breath over her, making her shiver and moan and pant. “There’s a code,” he said. “A guy code.”
Her only response was a throaty moan because his tongue was back. And good Lord, she could no more ignore that tongue than she could have stopped breathing.
“The guy code says you get yours first,” he said.
She opened her mouth to say something to that, she had no idea what, but all that came out was a low, desperate cry as he very gently nibbled at her.
And then not so gently.
And in less time than it would take to make toast and screw up the electricity, she nearly burst out of her skin. “How do you always do that?” she gasped.
“I know your body.” He climbed onto the bed, caressing his way up her thighs, wrapping her legs around his hips. “I love your body.”
And she loved his. “I hope the guy code says it’s time.”
He smiled as he cupped her butt in one hand. Leaning over her, his other hand slid up her back and into her hair as he whispered, “Yeah, it’s time.” He pressed a kiss at her damp temple, her cheek, her mouth, while she lay still trembling in little aftershocks from the orgasm. Lacing their fingers together, he slid their hands up over her head, and then executed a slow grind against her that had her eyes closing from the pleasure of the friction.
“Grace,” he said softly, nipping at her lower lip until she looked at him. When she did, he kissed her deeper, harder. She could feel the burn low in her belly as she began to rise to peak again. Wrapping her arms around him, she had the sudden, irrational wish that she’d never have to let go. Not exactly in keeping with this being just fun. But then he slid into her in one thrust, and she could no longer think at all. She whimpered for more, and he gave it, slow and steady, until she adjusted to him, then hard and fast as they climbed together. She clutched at him, panting his name, giving herself over to him fully, wondering if he could possibly feel what she was feeling. Which was entirely too much.
His head was thrown back, his big body taut as a bow. Pressing her harder into the bed, he tightened his grip on her and plunged deep. Moving together in just the right rhythm, her toes curled, and he shuddered against her as they rode each other to a mind-blowing completion.
When he finally sank down over her, muscles quivering, hands still possessively gripping her butt as he fought to catch his breath, she smiled. “Feel better?”
He rolled to his back so that she was straddling him. “Getting there.”
A long time later, they were a tangle of damp sheets and exhausted limbs in the warm night. Grace couldn’t have moved to save her life.
Josh pulled her in close, wrapped his arms around her, and let out a long, slow breath. Relaxed to the bone, she thought. It gave her a surge of feminine satisfaction that she’d gotten him there and it put a big grin on her face.
“Hmm,” he said in a voice so low on the register she could barely hear it. “I’d swipe that smile off your face, but my body isn’t working.”
“Later,” she promised him, hearing the exhaustion in his voice, snuggling in closer, stroking a hand down his back. “Josh?”
“Yeah?”
“Watching you tonight, working so hard to save Anderson…” She shook her head, moved again at the memory. “It was amazing.” She snuggled in close and kissed one corner of his mouth, then the other. “I was so proud of you,” she whispered.
The words seemed to rejuvenate him. He tugged the sheet from her, an urgent energy behind his movements that resonated within her as well. In a blink of an eye, he was pressing her back into the mattress, the sure and solid weight of his body as comforting as it was arousing.
It felt more right than anything she’d ever felt. He felt right.
He came up on his forearms, his eyes locked on hers as he slowly pushed inside her. Unable to keep still, she arched up with a soft gasp, wrapping her legs around his waist.
“So good,” he murmured, then lowered himself again, his hands sliding up her back, pulling her in close. “Always so fucking good with you.” He brushed his lips over hers, his eyes never leaving her face as he began to move inside her, slowly at first. She met him thrust for thrust, trying to urge him on by biting his lower lip. He hissed in a breath and gripped her hard, holding her still, forcing her to take the slow, tortuous climb, making her feel every single inch of him.
And she did feel him, she felt everything, and when the pure emotion overtook her, she felt her throat tighten, her eyes sting. She sobbed when she burst, feeling his release hit him too. Afterward, he pulled her in tight and held her close. Lulled by the feel of his warm strength, the comforting scent of him surrounding her, she drifted off, with him still buried deep.
Josh knew he needed to get up, but lying here with Grace wrapped around him like he was her own personal body pillow was really doing it for him.
He’d shown up here tonight and pretty much taken what he’d needed from her without a thought to the after. This wasn’t supposed to keep happening, and yet it did. And each time, feelings got deeper.
At least for him.
He had no idea what that meant for them now and wasn’t all that eager to find out if things had changed between them. Of course they’d changed, because in his experience, right about now was when things tended to go to shit.
“Hey,” Grace murmured, her head on his chest, finge
rs gliding back and forth from pec to pec. “You okay?”
“That was going to be my question to you.”
She lifted her head and looked into his eyes. “Nice deflection, Dr. Scott.”
He blew out a breath and lay back, staring up at the ceiling. He felt unsure, and that was an extremely new and uncomfortable sensation.
“Are you…feeling claustrophobic?” she asked. “Maybe contemplating a trip to Australia to go surfing?”
He shook his head at her polite tone. “Not all men are dicks like your exes, Grace.”
“Touché. And right back at you.”
He tilted his head down and met her gaze. “I haven’t dated anyone with a dick.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Actually, I don’t.”
“It means,” she said, coming up on an elbow to lean over him, eyes flashing, “that I might have called this ‘just fun’ but that doesn’t mean I’d walk away if the going got tough.”
God, she was gorgeous when riled up. “So that wasn’t some sort of pity fuck?”
She pulled back to stare at him, then laughed, dropping her head to his chest.
“Just what a man loves. Being laughed at in bed.”
“I don’t do pity fucks,” she said, still grinning, pissing him off a little. “And I especially don’t do pity fucks with doctors. Doctors don’t need pity fucks.”
Some of his annoyance drained away. “What do doctors need?”
She climbed on top of him, effectively taking care of the rest of his annoyance. “I’ll show you,” she said.
It was 3:00 a.m. before Josh could move again, and his blanket—a warm, sated, boneless Grace—murmured in soft protest. He stroked a soothing hand down her back.
She let out a sexy little purr and fell back into a deep sleep. He managed to untangle himself and rolled out of the bed without her stirring.
As he moved around the room searching out the scrubs he’d carelessly discarded earlier, his gaze kept wandering back to the bed. To the woman in it.
Dead to the world.
When he was dressed, he bent over her and brushed a kiss over her mouth. “’Night,” he whispered.
She let out a barely there snore that made him smile as he left the guesthouse, carefully locking the door behind him. He entered his house and moved down the hall. Toby’s door was open but he wasn’t there; he was still at his friend Conner’s. Anna’s door was also open, and he found his sister sitting in her chair at her bedroom window, staring out into the dark night.
“Hey,” he said, startled to see her. She did her best to avoid him these days. Something else he was going to have to fix in all his new spare time that he didn’t yet have. “No adventure tonight?” he asked carefully. Something was obviously wrong. Not that she’d tell him.
“Hard to have an adventure on wheels.”
His chest ached, and he drew a slow, painful breath. “What adventure would you like to have?”
She sighed, then wheeled to face him. “Don’t you ever get tired of trying to make my life work for me?”
“No.”
She stared at him and then shook her head. “Well I do. I hate being a pathetic burden.”
“Anna, you are smart, attitude-ridden, and scary as hell. You’re a lot of other things, too, but you are not, nor have you ever been, a pathetic burden.”
She shrugged.
“What if it was me?” he asked her quietly. “Me hurt in the accident. Me in a chair. Would you think of me as a burden?”
“Would I have to wipe your drool?”
He sighed. Her teen years had been hell on wheels. Literally. Once in a while he thought he saw glimpses of the gentler, kinder version of Anna that she’d been as a young girl, but right now wasn’t one of those times.
“Fine,” she said, caving. “I’d kick your ass every day until you no longer felt sorry for yourself.”
“So consider your ass kicked,” he said.
“I’m still going to Europe.”
He’d done a lot of thinking about this, and the idea of Anna alone in Europe gave him the cold sweats. But she was twenty-one, and the truth was, he couldn’t stop her. And he did understand her need to go, to prove her independence. He really did. He just was terrified for her. “You can get adventure closer to home and closer to your support system.”
“My support system works twenty-four-seven and doesn’t have time for his own life, much less mine.”
Guilt sliced him. “That’s going to change. You know I sold the practice.”
“I’m still doing this.”
Since there was nothing to say to that, he turned to go.
“Josh?”
He looked back, wondering what she was going to fling at him now. “Yeah?”
“Thanks.”
He was so surprised she could have knocked him over with one little push. “For?” he asked warily.
“For not seeing me as pathetic.”
Chapter 20
Coffee makes it possible to get out of bed but chocolate makes it worthwhile.
Josh walked into his office the next day and found his office staff and Tessa huddled over the scheduling computer. They looked up in unison, paused, and then—still in unison—grinned.
“Nice,” Dee said to him.
“What?” He looked behind him; he was the only one there.
“You got some,” Dee said.
Michelle and Tessa smiled and nodded.
Josh worked at not reacting. He had a good staff, but they were a pack of vultures. If they sensed a weakness, they’d attack.
“’Bout time, if you ask me,” Michelle said. “So it’s a good day to ask for a raise?”
“I’m thinking you don’t have enough work to do,” Josh said in his boss voice.
They all scattered, except for Tessa. “I’m beginning to see why you signed on the dotted line,” she said. “Having a life looks good on you.”
The morning went so smoothly that Josh got an actual lunch break. He met Ty and Matt at the Love Shack, Lucky Harbor’s bar and grill. They’d beaten him there and were seated at a table hunched over Cosmo magazine.
“It was on the table when I got here,” Matt said in his defense.
Josh eyed the open magazine. “You don’t already know how to satisfy your boyfriends in bed?”
Matt ignored this. “Did either of you know there’s ninety-nine ways to give a blow job? That’s ninety-nine nights of blow jobs.”
“Look at you with the math skills,” Josh said.
Matt flipped him off while Ty flipped the page. “‘How to Give Your Hoo-Ha a Spa Day.’ Huh,” he said. “I didn’t know a woman’s hoo-ha needed a spa day.”
Ford came out from behind the bar to take their order. “Saw you on FB,” he said to Josh.
“Ty was a part of the rescue too.”
“I meant with the pretty babysitter at your son’s Back-to-School night.” Ford laughed. “Caught by Lucille, huh? Gotta be stealth, man. Geriatric stealth.”
Josh didn’t bother to sigh. “Like you didn’t get on Facebook all last year when you started seeing Tara.”
At this, Ford let out an unabashed grin, because they all knew it was true. While dating Tara, he’d found himself in the middle of an all-out whose-dick-is-bigger contest with her ex, which had been splashed across the entire town like it’d been first-line news. Ford was a world-class sailing pro and had a gold medal and buckets of money, but to this day, he was most famous for that abs contest, which had been legendary. As had the fallout, which had involved Ford breaking his leg climbing an apple tree to impress the girl.
“At least I didn’t end up in my ER getting my leg set in a cast,” Josh said.
Ford laughed good-naturedly and took their order. When he was gone, Matt looked at Josh. “So how’s it going with your Grace anyway? Still having fun playing house?”
He’d been working at not replaying every detail of last night in his head over and over again. Working, and faili
ng. Last night had been…incredible. “Says the guy who just put a rock on his girlfriend’s finger.”
Matt shrugged. “Turns out I like commitment. Who knew?”
“Yeah? And what’s your excuse?” Josh asked Ty.
Ty’s lips curved. “I took a page from your book.”
“Mine?”
“I like the idea of the whole family thing, like you have with Toby and Anna. I want that. I want that with Mallory.”
Their food came, and while Josh ate his chicken sandwich, he thought of his “whole family thing.” He had his sister, who missed their mom and dad like she missed her own legs and was dating a first-class asshole. His son, who had spent far too many nights going to bed without any parent at all. The family unit everyone thought he had wasn’t what it was supposed to be, and that killed him.
He’d made the first step—selling the practice. He only hoped he’d done it in time to repair his relationships. It wasn’t something he could write a prescription for. He couldn’t order a scan and diagnose a solution. “I’ve fucked it up.”
“Yeah?” Ty asked. “With the hot nanny?”
“No.” Yes. “Never mind.”
“That’s the first sign of losing it,” Ty said. “Disagreeing with yourself. And trust me, I should know.”
Josh managed a brief smile at the memory of Ty coming apart at the seams not so long ago but Matt kept his eyes on Josh. Concerned.
“Stop,” Josh said to him. “I’m not losing it.”
“Maybe you should.”
“Huh?”
“You’re wrapped pretty tight,” Matt said. “You should get in the ring with one of us. Release some tension.”
“I’ve seen you two in the ring,” Josh said. “It’s like Extreme Cagefighting. On steroids. I like being able to walk out of the gym after a workout.”
“One time,” Ty said. “I only needed help one time. And it’s because he sucker punched me.”
Matt smiled smugly. “That’s what happens when you stop to take a call from your fiancée when you’re still in the ring.”
