“What luck? I’m a doctor, Willow. I deal with medicine, and that’s what I believe in.”
The air between us is hot, buzzing, close. I should pull back. I should leave it there, a doctor’s warning and a soldier’s promise. But she’s looking at me like I’m both, guardian and man, and my body can’t tell the difference anymore. I see the quick flare of something in her eyes—fear, anger, desire—and it pulls me like a tide.
She whispers, almost daring, “You think that there’s nothing else? Just science and medicine and numbers? No luck, no love?”
I lean closer, and I can feel her breath across my face. “I think that you ask questions to see if I’ll always have an answer. I won’t. But when I do, you will listen.” Her sharp inhale is my permission. I kiss her.
It’s not soft at first. It’s months of held tension, of orders and arguments, colliding in the space between us. She fists the collar of my shirt and pulls me down, and I taste salt and summer and the frustration she’s been bottling. My hands frame her face,then slide down, anchoring at her waist where life swells warm and undeniable.
Her skin is hot under my palms. She arches into me instinctively, and the sound she makes is half gasp, half plea. The kiss deepens—her tongue meets mine, hesitant for a second, then hungry, her breath hitching when my thumb brushes the underside of her breast through the thin silk. She trembles, and the slight movement sends a pulse of heat through me.
When she parts her lips for me, sighing into my mouth, the edge gives way to heat. I lift her carefully, setting her back against the pillows, bracing one knee on the couch. She shivers when my palm traces her thigh. Her skin feels impossibly soft, the muscle beneath it tense with anticipation.
“Declan—”
“If you don’t want this?—”
“I do,” she cuts me off, voice trembling but certain. “God, I do.”
I kiss down her throat, across her collarbone, tasting the sheen of sweat on her skin. She arches into me, restless, impatient. My hands find the hem of the pajama dress she’s wearing, a yellow silk nightie, and I push it higher. I do it slowly enough that she could stop me if she second-guesses herself. She doesn’t.
I rest a hand against her lower back to sit her up while I peel the dress off her, mussing up her curls. Her cheeks are flushed, and she’s breathing hard, her hands exploring my hair and my back, unsure where to settle. When I let my fingers touch between her legs again, I can feel that her cotton underwear is damp against her. It sends a rush through my body, making my cock jump behind my zipper.
She whimpers when I drag my mouth down her belly, peppering kisses over the curve. “You’re beautiful,” I murmur against her skin. “Stronger than you know.”
She threads her fingers through my hair, tugging until I meet her eyes again. They’re wet at the corners. “Don’t talk like I’m breakable. Just…touch me.”
“I will touch you,” I whisper, hooking her underwear aside and circling her clit until she gasps. Her hips jerk up, her breath splintering. “But I’m going to be gentle with you. Youarebreakable right now, I need you to understand that.”
“You can’t even put away the doctor mode right now?” she moans, her eyes wild, her beautiful strawberry-red lips open.
I answer her with action—pushing two fingers inside her, slow, curling just enough to make her gasp again. Her muscles flutter around me, and the sound she makes goes straight to my spine. I lean down, kiss the hollow of her throat, the curve of her shoulder, her pulse hammering against my mouth.
When I finally push my cock into her slick heat, slowly, her body grips me tight, hot, alive. I groan, trying not to lose the rhythm before it even begins. She’s so warm I feel swallowed whole. Her head falls back against her pillows, lips parted on a sound that undoes me. “More,” she pleads. “Please.”
I brace a hand beside her head, the other gripping her hip as I thrust again, deeper this time. Even now my brain catalogues everything—her pulse at her throat, the rate of her breathing—as if I can keep her safe while I’m the one making her tremble. Her nails dig into my shoulders, and when I shift my hips to hit the angle she needs, she cries out, sharp and breathless.
I stop for a half second, and she growls, “It was a good sound, Declan, just fuck me.” She wriggles on me, trying to take control from underneath me. Looking at her like this, wild and horny, legs propped up, stomach curling over her soaking pussy, I want to own her, and I know I can’t. Every semblance of what I have she’s given me.
The couch creaks under us, ridiculous and intimate, and I stop caring about being under control or having or taking control. I care about her nails in my shoulders, her pulse racing under my lips, the way she says my name like it’s both curse and prayer.
Her body moves with mine now, desperate, clutching at my hips and my ass, matching me stroke for stroke. I feel her clenching and see the knitting of her eyebrows as she focuses on squeezing herself along my shaft. Sweat beads between us, the slide of our skin quickening until her thighs quiver around my waist.
When she comes, it’s with a shudder that takes me with her. I bury my face against her neck, muffling the groan that tears out of me as I spill inside her, undone and raw.
I lie half on the floor, half tangled in her, sweat cooling on my skin. She runs her fingers through my hair, absent, gentle, like she doesn’t know she’s undoing me all over again.
I trace circles on her hip with my thumb, anchoring myself. “You okay?”
She laughs softly, tired but bright. “Better than okay.”
I close my eyes. I should leave it there. I should let the moment stay light. But I can’t stop the thoughts pressing at my chest.What does this mean? Was I supposed to wait? Will the others be angry at me?
I should move, should get water, check her pressure, find something clinical to hide behind. Instead, I stay where I am, cheek pressed to her belly, feeling the faint roll beneath the skin. My chest tightens. It’s ridiculous how quickly awe can turn to fear. How easily love can disguise itself as vigilance.
She hums softly, half-asleep already, and I realize I’m gripping her hand like I’m afraid she’ll drift away if I let go. The thought unsettles me more than any abnormal vital sign ever could.
I think of Rowan’s easy charm, Sean’s lightness, both of them so much better at giving than guarding. I wonder if they’d call this selfish, touching her when she’s vulnerable, when I’m supposed to be the steady one. Maybe it is. But right now I can’t feel guilty about it.
