Chapter 26
Chapter Twenty-Six
This was unexpected. Houston had been unnerved to see Josie standing in his living room next to his mother, and puzzled at the strange longing that had tripped across his consciousness.
Followed by anger, that she would follow him here, see him like this, trapped on his own couch like some damn invalid.
He didn’t need Josie Adkins and her temptations right now, not when he was facing the fact that he had no feeling in his hand.
That no matter how he ignored it, how he hoped and ranted and cursed, it was probable that he could never conduct surgery again.
That Mike William’s words, almost fully functional, meant that someday after six weeks in a splint and months of rehab, he could expect to learn how to button his own shirt without assistance and lift a glass, but that fine motor skills like writing weren’t likely.
But Josie, Josie, Josie—sweet and sexy Josie, with the words that stumbled in their haste and the pale, rounded body that lured him. He couldn’t resist her. He hadn’t finished with her. There were so many more things he could do to her.
Not like this though. Not stuck here, a stitched-up, gauze-padded mess of a man. He wanted her to come back, when he was whole, and play their dangerous game again. Dangerous because they could get caught. Dangerous because he could find himself wanting more and more.
He shifted his legs to the floor, hiding a groan when his injured leg tugged and pulled, the skin itchy and tight under the bandage, the muscles burning. It felt less vulnerable to sit up, feet on the ground.
“I’m not up for it at the moment, but in a couple of weeks I think we can work something out.”
That skirt she was wearing was riding up, and Josie looked to have forgotten she was wearing it. Her knees were parted, her thighs spread out in front of him, a peek of white panties teasing him.
“I don’t want to wait a couple of weeks,” she said, cheeks flushing, eyes wide, breath tight.
Neither did his cock. It jerked forward at her words. “Is that why you’re flashing me your panties?”
Confusion crossed her face. The dusky stain on her cheeks darkened. Her legs came together tightly. “Oh! I wasn’t doing that on purpose.”
He grinned, feeling the upper hand shift back to him. “I thought it was meant to be an offer.” Then he added, a curious thought popping into his head, “What are Wednesday’s panties? What do you got on under there?”
Flowers, stripes, hearts?
“They’re bull’s-eyes.”
What little control he’d thought he had disappeared, shaken loose under those words. Did she mean targets? Little circles ringing each other right on her... fuck.
“Show me.”
“No!”
“Are they on your ass? Your front?”
“Both.”
“Turn around. Show me your ass.”
“They’re like the lip ones.”
“So let me see. Pull your skirt up.”
His leg throbbed, his cock throbbed, and he suspected he was acting like a prick, but Josie stood up, taking a deep breath. Her fingers fiddled with the bottom of her skirt, then she inched it up, wiggling to work it past her curvaceous hips.
She turned around before he saw anything, but quickly bunched the skirt at her waist, bent one knee, and waited.
Houston felt as faint as he had on the beach, bleeding into the wet sand. Bull’s-eyes ringed each side of her ass, red lines that blurred in his vision, taunting him, making his hand itch to land right on that spot.
“Where the hell did you get those?” he murmured in awe. “A sex shop?”
“Of course not! They’re just theme panties—they’re supposed to be cute, not sexual.”
Houston loved that Josie started these little games with him, then chickened out, panicked, tried to backpedal.
She was already shoving her skirt back down.
Only a foot in front of him, it was no effort to reach his good hand forward and under the skirt, catching it before it fell straight down. He snaked around between her legs as she went still, around to her soft batch of curls. He circled his finger over her.
“Is there a bull’s-eye here, too?”
“Yes.”
He nibbled the spot on her back thigh closest to him, right below her panties. Then he pulled his hand back and spanked her, right on that front target, cupping her after the blow.
She gave a cry of shock.
Heat poured out from beneath her panties.
“What was that for?”
“For suggesting you wouldn’t look good in a teddy or a thong.”
“It’s true.”
Houston held her there, his thumb marking the imagined dead center of the bull’s-eye, and he ignored the sharp pain in his calf. “When was the last time you put one on?”
“I don’t know, maybe when I was eighteen.” She tried to wiggle away from him.
He wanted to hold her, to keep her there, to feel her panties grow moist beneath his hand. But a sharp stab in his calf had him swearing silently.
Letting her go, he sank back onto the couch, wishing his leg to hell. God, the way it pulsed, hot and itchy, made him furious. But he hoped Josie had no indication how much pain he was in.
“Then you don’t know whether you look good in something sexy or not.”
Josie turned around and plopped on the coffee table again, making sure she didn’t hit his leg with her knee. “Why are we always talking about my body?”
Because he was obsessed with it. Because it factored heavily into the majority of his dreams every night and because she looked like an Italian master had painted her in curvy perfection.
“What else should we talk about? You’re the one who came here with the offer to have wild sex whenever we want, with no commitment, for the next few weeks.”
That had her rubbing her hands on her knees and her skin flushing in ruddy, uneven patches of pink so that if he didn’t know better, he’d think she’d come down with a fever.
“I don’t like the way you do that,” she said with a frown.
“Do what?” Between the need for a painkiller and the memory of those bull’s-eyes, he had no energy left for deciphering that statement.
“Make me deliberately uncomfortable whenever you’re uncomfortable. And the way you have to keep reinforcing to both of us that you’re always in charge.”
Josie watched Houston’s eyes, which had been filled with pain and lust, murk over with confusion. “I don’t do that,” he denied, shoulders stiffening at her suggestion.
“Yes, you do. You’re always catching me off-guard with suggestive comments, teasing me about spanking, complimenting my body. It keeps me off-balance and you in control.”
He scoffed. “It’s called flirting.”
The words were spoken to the ceiling as he shrugged, sounding casual but looking anything but. He looked ticked off. He looked like he knew she was right. And she was. Houston Hayes was a control freak.
But she was a people pleaser, and she wanted to see him happy—truly, deeply content in a way he just wasn’t. And she knew now what she wanted. She wanted Houston, not just his body, but all of him, his heart, his soul, the intimacy he had hinted at when he was lying on her table, drugged up.
An affair wasn’t enough for her, she realized, and she wasn’t a woman who could walk away, heart intact. If she had a fling with Houston, her heart would be squashed like an orange in a juicer. Unless she could convince Houston to give a real relationship a try.
Unless she could reach inside his heart, past the rigid aloofness, past the mentor-student relationship they had, to the real Houston Hayes. The one who wanted children and cared about the pain of his geriatric patients.
She wanted that Houston, and she wanted him to care about her. That didn’t seem likely, but heck, she’d never know unless she tried.
“You know, Houston, I’ve changed my mind.” The way to his heart wasn’t through his pants. She didn’t know which path to take instead, but she just knew instinctively that if she wanted something more she had to be his friend first.
Not an easy task, but she had always been friendlier than she was sexy, yet he seemed to have no problems getting turned on. Maybe he wouldn’t be able to resist her cheerfulness either. She’d wear him down with perky instead of passion.
“Changed your mind about what?” He sat back, surly.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea for us to continue with an affair.
It wasn’t right of me to come here like this, while you’re injured and try and take advantage of your vulnerability.
” She patted his knee and felt guilty for intentionally arousing him when she now could no longer in good conscience act on those physical feelings.
“You said you wanted one night, and that’s it, and I should have respected that. I was just trying to get more bang for my buck, so to speak, and that wasn’t right. I apologize, Houston.”
He gaped at her. “Excuse me?”
Josie did feel relieved. She wasn’t a seductress who had men on a revolving-door basis. She was just Josie, and she was happy with herself the way she was. A good friend, a caring doctor, and if anything were to come about between them, it had to be because he liked her the way she truly was.
She added, “I can’t believe I acted like that. Geez, I was almost on the verge of getting on my knees and pulling your, you know, into my mouth. I’m so glad I stopped myself.”
His boxers bulged, the vein in his temple pulsed. Josie heard herself babbling and realized she wasn’t making it any better. He looked like he was watching a man being beaten to death with a feather duster. Total disbelief.
“Since you want us to be platonic from now on, I think we should really try to be friends. We’re co-workers, and it’s impractical to think that we can go totally back to the way we were before, but I’d love to be friends.”
Josie stood up and swung his legs back onto the sofa with the practiced ease of a doctor, her touch as impersonal as she could manage.
She set the remote control on his lap and smiled, telling herself to think of him as any other patient.
The one you would go the extra mile for, but still just a patient nonetheless.
“Friends take care of each other, you know. So is there anything I can do for you to help make you more comfortable?”
Something that didn’t involve dealing with the massive erection that was straining in his boxers.
Celibacy wasn’t what she’d had in mind when she’d shown up at his condo, but a couple of weeks of squirming would be worth it if in the end she could convince Houston to give an actual relationship a try. A relationship based on more than the powerful sexual attraction that raged between them.
He stared at her, an ugly scowl marring his good looks. He shook his head, his words slow. “No, there’s nothing you can do.”
“Okay.” Determined not to make a mistake, to be supportive of Houston’s recovery and resist any further urges to lift her skirt in his presence, she settled herself back on the left-hand side of the couch.
Tucked in next to his feet, she started to chatter about her day, the cases she’d seen, and the weather, while he stared at her—frowning, brooding, silent— until his mother returned twenty minutes later.
Then Josie went into the kitchen to help Francesca unload the bags, more than aware of Houston’s eyes on her backside as she went. She wondered if she was the only one thinking about the twin bull’s-eyes on her panties and what he could be using for target practice.