There was a jangle of bells at the door, and more people came in, their voices fading to nothing as they entered the space and caught sight of the two mismatched fighters in the back. Ah, hell, he’d seen enough fights, where big boxers came out looking like losers on the ground, and here he was, the smaller man’s arm wrapped around his throat like an unbreakable noose. He’d hoped to just fight it straight, maybe a little dumb, but…
His body moved faster than his brain, and before he’d thought it out, his arm rammed into the crook of the guy’s elbow, his hand to his shoulder. God, he loved jiu-jitsu. And he’d missed rolling with someone who knew what he was doing.
The sheriff’s arm remained around Clay’s neck. Christ, he was strong for such a lightweight, but he’d left his ankle out in the open, and Clay went for it—pushed up on his legs, threw the little guy up, up, over his shoulder.
Past the blood rushing through his ears, he heard a murmur in the room. He was providing the entertainment. Fucking Fight Night Challenge over here. Shit. He’d blow his cover if he wasn’t careful.
But it had worked, that move, and he liked it, loved coming out on top in a fight, could see that the sheriff had enjoyed the challenge of being one-upped—and now Clay wanted more.
They shared a painful fist bump before the man pulled him straight into a clinch. “Not just a street thug after all,” he said into Clay’s ear in something just above a whisper. “You ex-military?”
Clay shook his head.
“Hmm. Let’s see some more like that,” he yelled and pushed away, going straight for the feet.
Fuck, he should stop. He had to if he didn’t want the guy to know he wasn’t a civilian. But civilian life was overrated, and this felt good—way too good to put an end to it.
* * *
At the knock on her door, George looked up.
“You’ve got a visitor,” said Purnima.
“Oh?”
Expressionless, as always, the nurse nevertheless managed to convey something with her look. “Andrew Blane.”
She took a big, shaky breath in. “Oh.”
“Shall I…?”
George stood, breathed out. “I’ll be right… No.” She sat back down. “Send him in. Please.”
“All right. You want me to stay with you?”
With a frown, George considered before answering with, “No. No, I’m fine. Go on home.”
Purnima hesitated but finally turned and left the room, returning shortly with Andrew Blane in tow.
“Come in,” George said with what she hoped was placid concern.
He stepped inside, disheveled and sweaty and… Oh, geez. Something else. Not hot, but heated maybe? Intense.
“I’m sorry,” he said, remaining in the doorway.
“It’s okay.”
“No, I mean, I’m…” He looked away. “I shouldn’t have missed yesterday. I had no excuse.”
“All right, well…” She swallowed hard, avoided his eyes, and then, maybe because he’d hurt her and she wanted to hurt him back, she said, “You’ll have to pay for the missed time.”
“Of course.” He waited, just stood there breathing hard, and she couldn’t help but notice his chest beneath his sleeveless T-shirt, moving.
“Can you take me today?”
“Have you put on the cream?”
“No, but…” His smile, dry and cracked, pulled at something deep inside her. “But I can’t reach most of my back anyway, so it’s all the same, isn’t it?”
“Oh. You don’t have anyone who can—”
“No, Doc. Got nobody to rub my back for me.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Are you?” he said with a bigger smile.
“Of course I am. I’ve—” She stopped herself from talking. “Oh.” God, why was she so dense? Was he flirting with her? And if so, why on earth would he bother flirting with someone like her? A swallow failed to wet her throat enough, and her voice, when it came out, was ragged. “I’ve got to finish up some…paperwork here, so…” Another throat clearing.
“Got all the time in the world.”
“Good. Perfect. I’ll just…apply the numbing cream, and we’ll wait for it to take effect.”
“Sounds good.”
“All right, follow me.”
He barely moved back to let her through the door, and that, even that, felt like flirtation, unfamiliar and dangerous, but so, so titillating.
In the examination room, she moved to the sink, washed her hands, and didn’t watch as he settled back on the table. From a cupboard, she grabbed a new tube of cream and a roll of plastic wrap. “I’ll just apply this, and you can wait about half an hour. Have you had issues with the others we’ve worked on?”
He shook his head, eyes steady on hers.
“Take off your shirt and lie down on your front, please. If it’s not too painful.” The words came out close to a whisper. Quickly, she pulled on a pair of latex gloves, waited for him to disrobe, and forced herself to breathe. Deep, slow. Okay, his chest was blistering and starting to scab, she noted before he settled onto the bench. The ink was nearly gone in some areas—the lighter applications—but others were dark. She hoped, for his sake, that they’d eventually disappear.
Although he stiffened at the contact, the first swipe of cream was easy. A thick layer of it, directly over the big, black triangle in the center of his back. If she concentrated on the cream instead of him, it was doable. But it was hard to ignore every line of his perfection—this anatomy book illustration come to life.
She watched as his skin pebbled up into goose bumps. Another swipe, over the spider web on his neck, then across a shoulder blade, and her hand couldn’t help but enjoy the rigid planes, the swell of muscle, the strength. And then there was how he smelled. He’d looked sweaty when he’d come in, but it wasn’t bad. No, it was…
George pulled her hand away as if stung, took a step back, and breathed through her mouth, although even that was intimate. Past the medical odor of the cream, she had smelled soap, maybe some cheap shampoo, and then…sex. He smelled the way she remembered sex smelling. Not the musky odor of genitals, but the scent of desire.
Man as animal. He smelled solid, real, warm. Right. He smelled right. So right, in fact, that her body did things, perking in places that hadn’t perked in so long she’d thought they were dead. It was cool in the clinic, thank God, because at least she’d have an excuse for her nipples. But not for the slippery weight in her abdomen. Lower.
“Everything okay?” the man asked, craning his neck to look at her, and rather than face those eyes again head-on, she placed her clean hand to the back of his head and pressed. Gently. Firmly.
Oh, crap. I’m not supposed to do that, am I?
Nor was she supposed to like it.
* * *
It was official. The doctor made Clay hard. And now…
Her hand on the back of his head… Fuck.
First, it made him want to fight back, pull away, get up, and take over. Because nobody pushed his head down. Nobody.
But it also made him want to give in—to see what she’d do. Rebel or succumb?
He went for something in between. Light resistance, up and back, into her hand, was all it took to turn things upside down.
She’s not controlling me, he realized with the strangest jolt. She’s holding me. Helping me. His mind flew back, remembering the way she’d held her cat in the dark in front of her house—and then to his embrace with the animal. He’d have held that cat all night long if it hadn’t eventually heard some forest sound and sprung away, ears pricked, tail swishing, its missing limb barely noticeable in attack mode.
But right now, here, the press of her hand against the back of his head was full of something good, something like affection or desire or maybe, just maybe, tenderness. And it was the best thing he’
d felt in a lifetime.
So different from recent flashes of memory—flesh smacking, hard fucks, teeth gritted, fist caught up in greasy hair. Toothy blow jobs from nameless women, victims of circumstance—collateral damage as he and Bread did whatever it took not to lose their covers.
Everything he’d taken—bottles to the face, ink, bullets, a loss of honor.
Clay stiffened.
But this—
He heard her breathe, felt the warmth on his nape, and shuddered.
That sent her away, left his back cold and him alone. When she came back, the moment of intimacy was gone. Maybe it’d been imagined anyway. He felt immune to sensation. Lost and empty and hard as nails.
He shut his eyes tight, wanting her to touch him again and so afraid of the mixed-up signals his brain kept sending.
Her gloved hands returned to his skin, warm through the cold cream. She rubbed it in, leaving a trail of goose bumps in her wake, and he wished she’d press his head again, take some of his weight, make him feel something. She walked around the table to the other side, where she stroked him with a fresh layer of cream, and something else skimmed his back when she leaned—her lab coat, maybe? In his fantasies, it was a breast. A mouth.
It was quiet in here, so quiet. He closed his eyes and breathed her in.
* * *
He’d fallen asleep. Either that or he’d gone to that place, wherever it was, that he seemed to go on her table.
Only this time, George’s hands were on him. She felt heavy and warm, and his back was big and strong and supple, but so sweet, laid out for her, waiting, needing…
Dear God, what’s wrong with me?
He was numb by now. He had to be—as numb as the cream would make him, which wasn’t very. Another dip, another swipe, and his flesh rippled beneath her touch. Maybe not asleep?
She wanted to put her hand on his head again and push him down, but there was nowhere to go. She wanted to lean into him and over him and maybe just stretch herself across all that muscle and bone. Desire settled into her pelvis as she stroked his shoulders, ran a hand a little too far down an arm that had absolutely no need of numbing cream. None.
What the hell is wrong with me?
But still, she couldn’t quite convince her body to stop. Slowly, she kneaded her thumbs around those beautiful scapulas, felt him shudder slightly, and pulled away, hyperaware of how strange her actions were—how unethical and wrong, but maybe…maybe just…
“Don’t stop,” he mumbled, and honestly, that was all she needed.
His back—this solid, robust plane—was like the culmination of all of the backs she hadn’t had the pleasure of touching over the years, and goodness, she wanted it. She wanted his back.
Wanted his back?
Was this how it felt to go crazy?
George stepped away, embarrassed and more than a little worried for her sanity. Was she really, truly, going to cave in and do things she might very well—no, would definitely—regret over some stranger’s back?
He grunted—or maybe it was more of a groan—and twisted his neck so one shadowed eye peeked out at her.
“’S the best thing that’s happened to me in fu…frickin’ years.” His voice came out low, almost on a whisper.
“This is…” George couldn’t get the words out, she was breathing so fast. “This is weird. I can’t… I don’t—”
“No. Feels good. So damn good.”
“Just…me touching you?”
“Yeah.”
There was hardly any hesitation at all, and then the succubus wearing her skin stepped forward. Closer, until her belly was level with his hand. “Are you numb?” She reached out and stroked him, right on that horribly defacing burn, wondering if he could feel her. Wanting him to.
“No,” he said, even breathier now. “No, the opposite. Numb when I walked in. Now. Shit. Now, it’s all nerves.”
The weight in George’s belly turned liquid, spread out on a wave of shivery sensation that she hadn’t felt since she’d been just a kid, squished in the backseat of Dylan Dean’s bright-red Mustang with nothing between her legs but his hand, and nothing in her head but blind teenage lust.
“Here?” Her fingers caressed him where his skin had melted into unsightly whorls, tracing the jagged surface and wishing he’d let her do more. Although, even as she thought that, she wasn’t sure if she meant more as in treatment for the burn, or more right now, to his body. To him.
“Yeah. There. Just…” He groaned, then begged, “Please.”
Possessed, she caressed him, up his side, almost to his armpit and its tuft of dark hair. It looked sexual, that hair, like something she wasn’t supposed to see. Then tracing along the top of his shoulder to the back of his neck and down, down, down his spine, the bumps adding texture along the way, the rocky road of his body the most enticing thing George had ever seen.
More sounds escaped him, little grunts that said he liked what she did, and those fueled her even more. Lord, she wanted to flatten herself on top of the man, to cover him, and… What? Hump him? No. Not really. Make him feel good? Touch every little bit of him? Heal him? Protect him from whatever hell he’d been through?
With a snap that surprised even her, she removed the glove that separated his skin from hers and lightly—oh so lightly—felt the reality of his flesh without the barrier of Nitrile in between. The noises were hers this time, and the contact was kinetic, burned the air, turned the heat up, ate out her brain.
His hand, right there on the edge of the table, somehow turned until his palm rested flat against her belly—not pushing, just…absorbing, fingers taking in her softness, exploring her the way she was him.
Before she knew it, she’d curled her palm around that hunk of a shoulder, leaned in until more than her lab coat pressed against the man, her breathing shaky and short. “I don’t know what I’m doing,” she whispered, in a dream. The bridge of her nose skimmed his hairline, and she took him in, smelled him, got a bigger dose of what she’d only guessed at until now. And it was good, elementally good, unexplainably, animalistically perfect. A smell she could dive into and live off of.
She pulled back. “Got to stop. I’ve got to stop.”
“Hang on.” His hand reached for hers, grasped it, skin to skin, and held on tight. “Don’t know what the hell you’re doing to me, but it’s making me crazy.”
“I don’t know; I don’t know. I’m not… This isn’t me,” George muttered, eyes clearing. She pulled hard at her hand, blinked hazily at the man laid out before her, and moved toward the door. “I’ll be…I’ll be right back.”
* * *
Tea. The woman brought him tea.
She’d touched him so he’d almost cried on her table like a goddamned baby, and after running away, she came back in with tea. One for him and one for her. And not sweet iced tea, like people here guzzled by the gallon. No, mugs full of the hot stuff. In the middle of July.
“Maybe we’ll wait on your back” was the first thing he actually understood after his complete and total whatever-that-was in her office. Jesus, had he nearly come at a medical back massage? Almost come and then come close to passing out on the exam table.
“Yeah,” he managed through a throat that was raw, an open wound. He felt like that. Not just his throat, but his… What? His psyche, maybe. His very being chafed. He hurt where she’d touched him, like he’d scarred or scabbed over, and she’d come along and opened him up again—with nothing but tenderness. It scared the hell out of him, the way he’d disappeared into her, made him want to grab her and fuck her. Or maybe hide beneath her lab coat.
He swung up to sitting and accepted the tea, blinking like a newborn baby, exposed, his cock semihard and heavy in his underwear.
“You okay?” she asked, sounding pretty choked up herself.
“Yeah. Thanks.” He took a sip, just t
o give himself something to do. It tasted good, spicy.
After a couple of minutes, the fuzz cleared slightly, and he noted what he held in his fist with a strange jolt of hilarity. It was a mug, brown, with the words Coffee makes me poop written in big, white caps.
“Wow, that’s…”
“Disgusting?” She smiled at him, and he breathed, deep and cleansing.
“Do that again.”
“What?” She frowned, and he reached out to smooth the wrinkle between her brows.
“Smile.”
His request had the opposite effect, of course, deepening those lines. But that only made him want to see them gone all the more. He leaned in from his perch, pressed his lips to the spot, to smooth them, to taste them, to drink her in or…or something.
The connection sent a jolt through him—just like when she’d touched him on the table. Rather than numb, he’d felt sensation: sweet and unfamiliar after so many months of nothing. And he could smell her—clean, with a hint of lady sweat, which seemed only fitting for the end of a day’s work. No, not sweat on Dr. Hadley, he reminded himself, like he had that very first day—perspiration. He breathed in again—his nose to her forehead—weird, in theory, but in fact the most sensual thing he’d ever done. His skin crackled at the contact.
She let out a noise, long and low and full of frustration, and he knew he should pull back. He should, since he was probably freaking her out now, but instead, he slid off the table and leaned down, down to where her lips were a little bit open, poised and waiting. He put his mouth to hers and it felt…fuck, it felt unreal. It was a miracle that it felt like something.
This is a dream, he thought, and let his mouth move with the words, closing his eyes.
Her sounds grew louder, lazier, and he sipped at them, his mouth to hers, his dick at full mast now, which was another miracle, since it’d lain dormant since the shooting. Before the shooting, if he was honest with himself.
This. This was medicine. This was—
She pulled away. “I can’t,” she said through a gasp.
“Why not?” he asked, idiot that he was.
“You’re my patient. What I already did, I should be… I could lose my license. I should lose my license.”
By Her Touch Page 14
