She tapped her foot on the floor impatiently. ‘Well?’
Sam let out a long breath. ‘Lexi, I owe you an apology. I should’ve come to see you before I left for the States. It was wrong of me to just up and leave like that. I didn’t think about your end of things at all. I just believed what your father said about you and left it at that. I realise now that I should’ve at least listened to your side.’
Her blue eyes were still hostile, the set of her shoulders stiff with tension. ‘Is that all?’
‘No, it’s not all,’ Sam said. ‘I took on board what you said about the sacrifices you’ve made to protect Bella.’
She didn’t move or speak, just stood there watching him silently, accusingly.
Sam took another breath and slowly released it. ‘I should’ve realised the adjustments you’ve had to make,’ he said. ‘I know more than most how the squeaky wheel gets the oil in families and how other siblings can feel left out or isolated as a result.’
‘Fine,’ Lexi said. ‘Can I go now?’
Sam frowned. ‘You’re not making this easy on me.’
Her eyes hit his like blue diamonds. ‘Why should I?’
‘You’re right,’ Sam said, letting his shoulders down on a sigh. ‘Why should you?’
He was still trying to get his head around this new Lexi. Not the party girl but the young woman who loved her sister so much that she put her own interests to one side. It went against everything she had told him about herself back then. During their short fling she had laughed off his comments about her lack of ambition. She had said how much she loved the social circuit, how all she had time for was fun, not boring old stuffy studying. Those had been her exact words. He had thought at the time it was such a waste given that he’d had to work so hard to get to medical school.
Unlike Lexi, he hadn’t gone to a fee-paying school with the best resources on hand. He had toughed it out in the bush in between helping his father run their drought-ravaged sheep property. He had missed days, sometimes weeks of school to help nurse his mother through the last stages of her kidney disease. Catching up with his studies had been an added burden eclipsed by worry about his mother’s declining health and the quiet desperation he’d seen in his father’s sun-weathered face whenever he’d looked at his wife lying listlessly in the bedroom of the rundown homestead.
Hearing Lexi say she had deliberately sabotaged her educational achievements to protect her sister was something that had touched Sam deeply. It had made him take pause. He had not realised what a compassionate person she was. Her shallow party-girl persona was a clever artifice for a sensitive young woman who clearly suffered a lot of survival guilt. She had thrown herself into fundraising for SHH, but what else would she have secretly loved to have done? What dreams and aspirations had she put to one side in order to protect her sister from feeling inadequate?
It was part of his job to deal with the families of transplant patients. He understood the dynamics, the sometimes tricky family situations that fed into the patients’ outcomes, whether they liked it or not. He wanted to do a good job on Bella, not just because she was Lexi’s older sister but because she was a deserving recipient of a lung donation. But even more than that he wanted to make sure Lexi got her chance to shine. Operating on her sister could well be the most important transplant he had ever performed.
Sam looked at her standing there with a mutinous expression on her beautiful face. Anyone seeing her now would assume she was a sulky spoilt brat but he felt like the scales had been removed from his eyes. He could see the hint of vulnerability in her ocean-blue gaze and the almost imperceptible quiver of her bottom lip, as if she was holding back a storm of emotions. ‘Why did you get involved with me?’ he asked. ‘Why me and not someone else?’
‘It wasn’t an act of rebellion,’ she said. ‘It was nothing like that.’
‘Then what was it?’
She unfolded her arms and used one of her hands to brush back her hair. ‘I can’t explain why,’ she said. ‘It just … it just happened.’
Sam watched as she moved restlessly to the other side of the room, her arms folded protectively across her body. Her cheeks were a delicate shade of pink as if the memory of their time together unsettled her more than she wanted to admit. Her saw her beautiful white teeth sink into the soft fullness of her bottom lip. It was one of her most engaging habits, one he suspected she was largely unaware of. It gave her a look of innocence and guilelessness; the potent mix of sexy woman and innocent girl was totally captivating.
‘At the pub the other night you said something that’s been niggling at me ever since,’ he said. ‘What was it you thought I’d always known about you?’
Lexi kept her gaze out of the range of his. ‘It doesn’t matter now …’
But of course he wouldn’t leave it at that. ‘It was when I mentioned that we’d been worlds apart in years and experience,’ he said. ‘Tell me, Lexi. What was it you thought I’d always known about you?’
She pressed her sandpaper-dry lips together. Her throat felt tight, too tight even to swallow. Her stomach was churning so much she could hear it rumble in the prolonged silence. Why had she even mentioned it? What was the point of going over this now?
It was over.
They were over.
She was moving on with her life.
Or trying to …
‘Lexi?’
His commanding tone summoned her gaze. ‘I didn’t just lie about my age,’ she said on an expelled breath.
His gaze never wavered; it remained rock-steady on hers, but the darkness of his eyes seemed to deepen another shade. ‘What else did you lie about?’
She moistened her lips in order to get them to move again in speech. ‘Actually, it wasn’t really a lie, not an outright one. It was just that I didn’t quite tell you the truth.’
Sam’s forehead became a map of frowning lines. ‘The truth about what?’
Lexi took a breath and then released it in a rush. ‘I was … I was … You were my first lover.’
His face looked as if it had just received an invisible slap. She saw him flinch, every muscle contracting, his eyes widening and his mouth opening and closing as if he couldn’t quite locate his voice. ‘What?’
‘I was a virgin.’ Lexi bit her lip. ‘At least technically I was …’
‘Technically?’ he asked. ‘What the hell is that supposed to mean?’
She pulled in another uneven breath. ‘I’d had boyfriends in the past,’ she said, ‘lots of them actually. I just hadn’t … you know … done it … gone all the way …’
Sam raked his fingers through his hair as he paced back and forth. ‘I can’t believe I’m hearing this.’ He stopped to glare at her furiously. ‘Why on earth didn’t you say something?’
‘Because I knew if I’d said something you wouldn’t have slept with me.’
‘You’re damn right I wouldn’t,’ he said. ‘What were you thinking, Lexi? You were just a young girl. We had so much sex over those two weeks.’ His throat moved up and down over a tight swallow. ‘Did I … did I hurt you?’
She shook her head vigorously, perhaps too much so.
‘Lexi?’ He barked her name at her.
‘All right, all right,’ she said, her eyes rolling in defeat. ‘Just a little bit but it was fine after the first—’
‘Oh, dear God,’ he said, rubbing a hand over his face.
Lexi stalked to the other side of the room. ‘You’re making such a big deal out of this,’ she said. ‘I had to lose my virginity some time. At least it was with a considerate lover. It could’ve been a lot worse.’
He glared at her again. ‘How much worse could it have been? I thought I was sleeping with an experienced party girl who knew all the rules,’ he said. ‘Now I find out she was an innocent virgin.’
‘Not so innocent,’ Lexi put in.
He held his head in both of his hands and groaned. ‘No wonder your father was ready to nail me to the floor.’
‘My father didn’t know I was still a virgin,’ she said. ‘It’s not exactly something you discuss over the dinner table.’
‘No, but it is something you discuss with a potential sexual partner,’ he pointed out.
‘Not when you’re having a meaningless, short-term fling,’ she threw back.
He stilled. Not a muscle moved. He was like a statue, frozen. ‘So,’ he said finally in a voice undergirded with steel. ‘Let me get this straight. You just wanted a meaningless short-term fling and I was the handiest candidate. Is that right?’
‘No …’
‘For heaven’s sake, Lexi,’ he said bitterly, his voice a harsh rasp of anger. ‘You nearly cost me my career. I almost lost everything because of you. Do you realise that? Did you even think about what the consequences would be?’
Lexi turned away from his thunderous expression, her arms going back across her body, tightening like a band to hold herself together. He was a fine one to talk about consequences. He hadn’t had to face the biggest consequence of all. ‘It wasn’t like that,’ she said.
‘What was it like, damn it?’ he asked.
She let out a shaky breath. ‘When we met … I felt something.’
‘Lust.’ There was no mistaking the disdain in his voice.
She threw him a look. ‘Not just lust. Before you came along I didn’t feel ready for a relationship, not a sexual one at least. But it was different with you. From the first moment we met …’
His eyes hardened to chips of ice. ‘Don’t,’ he said, a warning thread of steel in his tone.
‘Don’t what?’
‘Don’t try and dress up what we felt for each other as anything other than what it was,’ he said. ‘I know it’s not the most romantic fact in the world but sometimes sex just happens because of instinct. Chemistry. Animal lust.’
‘It wasn’t like that for me,’ Lexi said quietly.
‘Well, it was like that for me,’ he snapped back.
Lexi turned away again, not willing to let him see how much he had hurt her. She had hoped … foolishly hoped that he had felt something for her back then, but their brief relationship had meant nothing to him.
She had meant nothing to him.
She had just been another name in his little black book. It was deluded of her to have expected anything else. His career was his priority. It had been back then and it still was now. She had been a temporary distraction that he deeply regretted. The breathtaking magic of their relationship that she had revisited so many times in her mind was an illusion, a flight of fancy on her part, romantic nonsense that had no place in the cold, hard world of reason. Emotion clogged her throat, a cruel strangulation of regret and recriminations. Tears were so close she had to blink to stop them from falling. The tattered remnants of her pride would not allow her to cry in front of him.
She made a move for the door. ‘I have to go …’
‘Hang on a minute,’ Sam said. ‘We haven’t finished this discussion.’
Lexi slung the strap of her bag over her shoulder from where it had slipped. ‘I think we have, Sam. There’s nothing more to be said.’
‘Wait.’
He caught her arm on the way past, his fingers like a metal band around her wrist as he swung her back to face him, the sudden movement sending a Shockwave through her body.
The skin on her wrist sizzled as if he had branded her with his touch. His long, strong fingers were like fire. They burned through the layers of her skin, setting nerves into a crazy, maniacal dance. She felt the strength of his grasp as she tried to pull away and her heart started to pound like a faulty timepiece.
She breathed in the scent of him, the hint of aftershave overridden by the sexy musk of late-in-the-day male. She could see the pinpoints of stubble on his jaw and her fingertips tingled as she remembered how it felt to stroke that sexy regrowth with her own soft skin.
Her lips, too, remembered how it felt to move over that bristly surface. She wanted to do it now, to remind herself of how he tasted. She wanted to feel her tongue lapping at his skin the way she had in the past.
Lexi looked into his dark, mesmerising eyes and it was like looking into them for the very first time. She felt the same electric shock rush through her, making every single pore of her body acutely aware of him. The raw physicality of it terrified her. It shocked her that her body could want one thing while her mind insisted on another.
Her leg wasn’t supposed to be moving forward half a step to bring her body up against the rock wall of his.
Her breasts weren’t supposed to be pressed against his chest, the nipples already tightly budded with desire.
Her pelvis wasn’t supposed to be anywhere near his, certainly not flush against him and shamelessly responding to the hard ridge of his growing arousal.
Her inner core was pulsing with a longing that felt so intense, so rampantly out of control it was like a fever in her blood.
It was wrong.
Forbidden.
Dangerous …
She dropped her gaze to his sexily sculpted mouth. It was suddenly just a breath away from hers as if her lips had drawn his down through a force of their own. She could see each of the fine vertical creases in his lips, the masculine dryness an intoxicating reminder of how it felt to have his mouth possess her soft, moister one. She could feel the mint-fresh breeze of his breath as it skated across her lips. It was like a feather teasing her, stirring every sensitive nerve until she thought she would go mad if he didn’t cover her mouth with the heated pressure of his to assuage the spiralling need.
His mouth moved infinitesimally closer.
Lexi felt his erection, so thick, so powerful and so wickedly tempting against her. She pulled a breath into her lungs but it felt as if she was hauling a road-train along with it. All she had to do was step up on tiptoe and press her mouth to his …
‘If you don’t step back right now I’m going to do something I swore I wouldn’t do,’ Sam said in a deep, rough burr that sent a shiver down her spine.
‘Why don’t you step back?’ Lexi asked, not because she wanted to win this particular battle but more because she couldn’t get her legs to work right at that moment.
‘Don’t do this, Lexi,’ he said, still staring at her mouth, his breath a warm caress on her lips, his body still hot and heavy and aroused against hers.
Lexi felt the hammering of his heart beneath her palm where it was resting on his chest. Its pace was just as hectic and uneven as hers. His hands were gripping her by the upper arms, his warm fingers scorching her flesh. She felt the battle raging in the pulse of his blood, pounding through his fingertips, the war between holding her tighter and letting her go. ‘You touched me first,’ she said. ‘You grabbed my arm.’
‘I know,’ he said in a gravelly voice. ‘It was wrong. I shouldn’t have touched you. I don’t want this complication right now.’
‘So step back.’
His glittering eyes seared hers for a pulsing moment. ‘You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?’ he said. ‘You’re enjoying the fact that you still have this effect on me.’
‘You want me to step back?’ she asked with a pert look. ‘Then let go of my arms.’
His fingers loosened but he didn’t release her. ‘When I’m good and ready,’ he said. And then he brought his mouth down slowly, inexorably towards hers.
Lexi knew she should have moved. She knew she should have pushed against his chest and put some distance between their bodies. She knew she should not have just stood there waiting for his mouth to come down to hers. She knew it, but in that moment she was trapped by her own traitorous need to feel his lips against hers just one more time.
As soon as his lips met hers she felt the electric shock of it through her entire body. It travelled from the sensitive surface of her lips to the innermost core of her where that deep ache of longing was flexing and coiling. Hot pulses of need fired through her as her lips felt the subtle pressure of his. He kept the kiss light at first, exp
erimental almost, as if he was rediscovering the landscape of her lips. It started with a brief touchdown of hard, cool lips on her softer ones. A barely touching brushstroke and then another. He raised his mouth off hers a mere fraction but her lips clung to the rougher surface of his. He pressed down again, slightly harder this time, his lips moving against hers in a gentle exploration.
But then it all changed.
That one searching stroke of his tongue against the seam of her mouth made the kiss became something else entirely. Lexi opened to his command, hungrily feeding at his mouth, brazenly playing with the stab and thrust of his tongue. It was a kiss of passion, of unmet desires, frustration and, yes, maybe even a little bit of anger thrown in for good measure. She tasted the wonderful familiarity of him, a hint of mint, good-quality coffee and that unmistakable maleness she had missed so very much. His tongue was roughly masculine against the softness of hers, stirring in her deep yearnings for the physical completion she had only felt with him.
Being back in his arms felt so right, so perfect, the chemistry so hot and electric it was making her blood hum in her veins. He drew her even closer by placing his hand in the small of her back, a touch full of intimacy and deliciously primal in its intent. She felt the rigid heat of him against her, the unmistakable swelling of his hard male body in response to hers. It was a breathtaking feeling to be back in his embrace, to experience the way her body fitted against the contours of his as if made specifically for him.
His kiss deepened even further as he gave a low growl deep in his throat, and the hand at her back pulled her even closer while his other hand cupped the back of her head, his broad fingers splaying in her hair. Every nerve ending on her scalp fizzed at the contact, sharp arrows of pleasure darting through her from the top of her head to her toes. She had to step up on tiptoe to kiss him back and the movement brought her breasts up against his chest, the friction so wonderful she pressed herself even closer. Below her waist she could feel the hard male ridges of his body, the stark difference that made him so male and her so female.
Sydney Harbour Hospital: Lexi's Secret Page 7
