Chapter 27 Lara
Lara
“You made a mess,” I murmured as Calder set me on my feet in the bathroom, stepping away to turn on the shower.
A collage of muddy footprints and murky puddles stained our path through the Airstream, and I felt a twinge of guilt for insisting we stay out in the storm.
“You wanted me to,” he said and straightened, letting the shower door shut so it could start to steam.
Our eyes locked, and I felt my skin start to prickle again.
What had just happened . . . what we’d done .
. . I couldn’t even savor it because I simply ached too much for it to happen again.
I knew where my priorities should lie. I knew I should be focused on my sister.
Worried about what was happening to her. Worried about what had happened to her.
Worried, worried, worried about everyone but myself. Because, of course, I was fine. I was a doctor. I was stable. I had a good job. A good life.
I’d lost a patient. Been attacked in a place I thought I was safe. I’d buried my own fears and insecurities so deep, I didn’t even know how to unearth them, let alone give myself the freedom to treat them. I’d been alone for so long, too busy caring for everyone else—
“Hey,” Calder rumbled and I blinked as his hands cupped my face. “Not here. Not tonight.”
Air whooshed from my chest, sinking into the safety of his promise.
Calder was a buoy in the middle of my storm. Someone I could trust to keep me afloat when I just didn’t have the strength. Someone who could hold my weight and my worries without judgment. Someone who made me feel safe enough to not have to carry everything all the time.
“Yeah.” I tipped toward him, my hands splaying onto his chest.
He looked over his shoulder and then back to me. “Let’s get you clean.” When he stepped back, my arms fell to my sides, and I saw the muddy handprints left on his shirt.
“You, too.”
I caught a whiff of a smile on those dangerous lips before he reached in his pocket and I heard the gentle click of his knife sliding open.
“Are you going to ruin all these clothes, Wild Man?” I murmured when he brought the blade to my chest, using his free hand as a buffer against my skin.
He stilled at the nickname, his jaw muscle feathering his cheek. Slowly, his eyes lifted to mine, and that familiar tension metabolized the space between us. Oxygen ladened with ache. “Do you want me to stop?”
My heart thudded so hard, he had to have felt its lurch.
“No.” I never wanted him to stop. But that kind of thinking didn’t belong here. Tonight. It might not belong here at all, which was why I couldn’t think about it now.
He cut through my shirt with one swipe, the cotton releasing not even a whimper against the blade, and then peeled it off my shoulders in seconds.
“I need to get me one of those,” I murmured when his hands went to my pants. When his eyes lifted, I added, “I cut off my fair share of clothes.”
He frowned so harshly, I would’ve laughed if the reason for it didn’t make my stomach somersault. So it was possible for Calder Stone to be jealous.
“In the ER,” I murmured, but it didn’t seem to make a difference; a grunt was his only reply.
Flicking open the fly of my jeans, Calder stripped the muddy shreds from my legs, leaving me in front of him, naked except for my black bra.
I waited for the embarrassment to come, but it never did.
I stood in a pile of shredded clothes, covered in mud and dirt and rain and him, and the only thing I felt was power.
Like Venus rising from the sea, I’d risen from the storm.
And then I felt something leak down my thigh. Not rain. Something warm and sticky and wild.
Crap.
“Calder, I’m on the pill,” I blurted out, needing him to know.
He balled my clothes in one hand and straightened with a jerky movement. “I know.”
“You know?”
“I saw the blister pack you packed in your bag for the retreat.” I shouldn’t have been surprised. Preparedness was synonymous with Stone. He caught my chin in his fingers, lifting my face to his and lowering his voice. “Know your terrain, your target, and your limits.”
“So now I’m a target?” I breathed out.
His eyes smoldered. “No. You’re the one who never left my sight.”
And like he’d just reached that invisible line of no return again, he let me go and took a towel from the small cabinet, setting it on the counter for me. I removed my bra, unable to take my eyes off him as he reached in the shower and checked the water.
“It’s warm,” he said, and moved aside.
“Calder—”
“Take your time. I’ll shower when you’re done,” he said sternly, as though reminding himself the shower wasn’t big enough for two.
He strode out of the bathroom and closed the partition behind him, giving me only the briefest glimpse of his wet shirt tented in front of his groin.
I stepped into the stream with a smile on my face and closed my eyes, my sore muscles soaking in the delicious heat. The Airstream had surprisingly decent water pressure, but even that couldn’t tempt me to linger. So I soaped the dirt and muck from my skin, then made quick work of washing my hair.
All those years ago, I could’ve only fantasized about a night like this, and now that I’d had it, I didn’t care what havoc Calder wrought on my body as long as it came from him.
I shut off the water and pulled the towel from the counter, drying myself and then wrapping it around me. Whatever calm I’d found slipped away when I opened the door into the Airstream.
Calder stood by the entrance, hips resting on the kitchen counter, and his face lowered toward the mug of coffee clutched in his hands.
He looked like Rodin’s Thinker, but the Survivalist Edit.
The mud had dried hard into his shirt, his jeans well on their way to the same fate. Everything stiff on him. Him included.
And my mouth started to water.
It couldn’t have been more than a second or two that I took to simply admire him before he sensed me. “There’s coffee if you want it and a T-shirt for you on the bed,” he said and straightened. “It’ll be big.”
He came toward me, and I saw he’d removed his boots and cleaned the mud from the floors while I’d been in the shower.
“It’ll be perfect,” I murmured, knowing it was his.
“I’ll be out in a minute. Make yourself at home.”
I couldn’t help but steal another look as the door closed to the bathroom again, catching him haul his shirt off his back with a single hand.
His shower was just as quick as mine. Meanwhile, I’d savored the coffee but left his tee folded on the bed. Next to it, I reclined on my stomach—naked—working on his crossword.
My chest moved at a shallow pace, listening to his heavy steps in the bathroom, waiting for the slide of the partition opening. When it did, my breath caught.
One step. Two.
“Lara,” he growled when he saw me, and my pulse revved into gear.
I took a bracing inhale and pushed myself up, taking his crossword with me in my lap as I turned. He stood just outside the bathroom, eyes dark and filled with lust stars.
“I was working on your puzzle.” Naked.
His fist flexed, his hot gaze roaming over my face. My chest. My legs. There was no hiding the way I responded—the way I wanted him. And there was no mistaking how he was trying to hold back. Again.
I understood. It was . . . rough out there. Now I felt every step, every movement, in my core, the tender muscles so completely used, and I knew I would for days. But I wanted more. I wanted this whole night, if that was all I was going to get. And I knew he wanted the same.
“I’m stuck on a word. Four letters. Begins with an f.”
His nostrils flared and he took a step closer, and then another, his silence intoxicating.
“The prompt is . . . what my wild core wants.”
Calder reached the bedroom, his hands rising to frame the entrance as he stared down at me.
This close, I lost my attempt—my ability—to be coy.
Outside, in the storm, had been reckless abandonment.
Now all I wanted was to drink in the sight of him up close.
I wanted to fill in all the gaps of stolen glances and brief touches.
I wanted to memorize every inch of him, not with my mind, but with my fingers and tongue.
“What you need is for me to let you rest.”
A tiny smile teased the corners of my mouth. I loved Gentleman Calder and his rules. Almost as much as I loved breaking them.
“Me?” I slanted my head, savoring the chiseled abdomen in front of me, right at eye level, watching every ragged exhale cut the lines of his stomach deeper. “You’re the one who’s injured.”
His stare flicked to his bandage. “A flesh wound.”
It was a little more than that, but I held my tongue and instead let my gaze continue to roam.
“I used to think you were perfect,” I said and reached a hand out, trailing a single finger along the center. The linea alba.
I swore the doorframe creaked under his punishing grip. “‘Used to’?”
Perfect was an understatement, I realized now as I followed every dip and line, every bulge and muscle.
“Back in college,” I said, squeezing my legs a little tighter as the ache between them started to swell.
“I would study for anatomy, and I would picture you.” Heat bloomed in my cheeks, but I didn’t care.
I wasn’t embarrassed to admit I’d crushed on him; I was turned on by it.
By sharing this piece of myself I hadn’t shared with anyone.
“What anatomy did you picture?” He lifted an innocent eyebrow.
Two could play at that game.
Biting my lip, I rose onto my knees, the crossword falling to the side, and scooted to the edge of the bed. His expression was feral as I came eye level with him, his towel straining over his cock like it was holding on by a single thread.
“Neck and shoulders,” I replied, dragging my tongue over my lips. Instantly, his jaw clenched. “Oh, and your masseter.” I lifted a hand and pressed my fingers to the bulging muscle. “It was always firing every time I saw you. Always tense.”
It pulsed under my fingertips, and then he rumbled, “It wasn’t the only part of me that was tense around you.”