Chapter 40
Chapter Forty
Houston’s mother and Larry were shoved to the back of his mind in a little compartment he had stamped Later. He would be happy for his mother if it killed him. But later.
Now he was going to take Josie to his bed and keep her there until he forgot that he wasn’t worthy of her and she forgot that he was a surgeon about to lose his job.
“The bedroom. Now.” Houston hadn’t closed his blinds against the midday sun and the brilliance was hurting his eyes, but that was only part of it.
He had promised her the bedroom the first night they’d spent together and they had never made it.
It was almost symbolic to him, that when they stepped into his room, they were reaching a new level in their relationship.
So he led her down the darker hall, to his bedroom where she had only been once, the time when she had tried to help him out of his underwear and had nearly destroyed him instead.
Every second or so, he turned around to drink in the sight of her, naked since she’d kicked the skimpy bottoms off her ankles before following him.
Houston wanted to hold Josie, to take her lushness in both of his arms and stroke her bare back.
To feel all that gorgeous heat pressed against him.
When he stopped in his bedroom and tried to do just that, his splint hit the base of her spine, and he’d had enough.
With a curse, he went for the bandage with his increasingly dexterous left hand, ripping at the tape that held the wrap together.
“What are you doing?” Josie moved in beside him, her hip resting against his, the swim trunks preventing him from feeling her flesh pressed against his thigh. But her breast rested warm and full along his elbow and he didn’t resent her inquisitive fingers stilling his.
“I want this off. I want to touch you with both hands.”
The smooth damp strands of her hair moved across his shoulder and Josie lay her chin on his chest. “I thought you had another week to go.”
“I do, but I just want to touch you without it being in the way. I’ll put it right back on.” He dropped his desperate plea, let it slow into a coaxing seductive request as he felt her responding to him.
Her body went taut alongside his and her hot little pants blasted across his chest, tightening his cock. Josie took his hand into hers and caressed the bandage and the palm of his stiff hand.
“Let me take it off then.” She kissed his fingertips one by one, lingering over the injured two.
That’s not what he had wanted—Josie to study his pale and motionless hand, lying there looking like a damn dead plucked chicken.
But here, now, this one time he wanted to be free to trust her, to believe in a future that included both his career and a woman he had come to understand he could love. Did love. Shit. He closed his eyes for a second, his jaw clenched.
“Okay.”
“The finger and thumb won’t work right, you know,” she warned him softly as she began to undo his splint. “Three weeks immobile is a long time, surgery or not. That’s what the physical therapy is for.”
“I’m a doctor, Josie. You don’t have to tell me all that.” But he wasn’t even annoyed. Irritation was just a reflex to him at this point.
He was enraptured by the vision of her poised over him naked, entirely uninhibited. There she stood, confident and caring as she unwrapped his hand with light and efficient movements, not seeming to notice that he could see just about every inch of her bare flesh.
“What doctors know and what doctors feel are two different things.” The last bit of tape and wrap was off, and Josie caressed his white and drawn fingers.
He had long red scars from the laceration and the surgery, and his hand was stiff and awkward. Ugly. Marred and mocking.
Josie put her tongue on it and traced a bumpy scar.
His heart about leapt out of his chest. His cock felt strangled in his shorts. Because Josie’s touch wasn’t pitying or curious, but was sensual, arousing, the touch of a woman who wants to know every inch of a man.
Then she massaged the stiff palm with her thumb, before placing his hand on her waist. “Now you can hold me with both hands. How does it feel?”
Delicious. That’s how she felt as he drew her in.
He was holding her, but not close enough.
With a nudge, she came forward, her breasts splaying across his chest while his erection found a place to nest between her receptive thighs.
It was as good as he could ever have imagined—better, softer, his heart tripping along with careening speed while his breath jerked and halted on sighs and deep, reaching, languid pulls.
His uninjured fingers were racing across her dewy skin, while the other two just rested in place. He couldn’t feel them, didn’t care, wanted only to caress and stroke and love Josie to a place where she would be his and only his.
“You feel perfect,” he murmured in her ear, brushing his lips against the pink lobe.
They were still hovering in the door of his bedroom and he walked backwards, coaxing her with him until he felt the cool sheets at the back of his knees.
He hadn’t made his bed, not since the accident, and it was just a matter of shoving the top sheet out of the way until there was a soft surface to spread Josie out on.
Poised beside his bed, he held her firm, bent his head and kissed her. All the frustration and feeling and fascination he felt poured out onto her sweet plump lips.
“Oh,” she moaned, ransacking his hair.
Houston had never liked women’s hands in his hair, but Josie was different. She was more, everything, day to his night, and he leaned and pushed and coaxed until she was on his bed, thighs spread.
Her breathing was shallow, cheeks pink, eyes wide and cloudy with desire, and he had never seen a more beautiful woman. “I’ve never felt this way before,” he murmured into the pale depths of her inner thighs.
“What way?”
He flicked his tongue over her soft skin.
Sudden pain rippled through his head as Josie dug into his hair and held tight. When Houston glanced up past the curve of her belly, he saw she was arching in pleasure, shifting to urge his tongue away from her thigh and to her clitoris. Bucking, like she needed something to ride.
The room was muted, the sheet cool, his vision in sharp focus. His nostrils filled with the loam scent of their sweat-glistened flesh, their desire that connected them here, right now, in the most intimate touch possible.
With a little flicker right across her damp folds, he murmured, “I’ve never been so fascinated by a woman. I think the first time you bent over I was gone.”
And hadn’t recovered himself since.