If I’m being honest, the line between wanting Rowan to fill the hole in my heart and the space in my bed has gotten pretty damned blurry for me, as well.
He sighs and taps on his smart watch when I don’t reply right away, then flips his wrist to show me his resting heart rate. “See this? Normal, right?”
I nod hesitantly, and he switches to show a graph outlining the past few hours.
“No spikes, not even during that delivery,” he tells me, as if he’s proving his point.
“Okay, so your heart is healthy?”
This time he growls in frustration and scoots closer as he reaches out to grab my hand. “Here,” he says, crushing my palm against his chest. “Feel that?”
His heart thumps within his solid chest, and my own pulse quickens from the contact. He turns his forearm to show me his BPM steadily climbing while mine follows suit.
“Now kiss me,” he demands, and my eyes fly up to his.
“What?” I squeak.
“On the cheek. It doesn’t matter. I just need to feel your lips on my skin.”
But we don’t need to continue with this demonstration to confirm his hypothesis. His breathing sounding more labored by the second, and I haven’t even agreed to anything yet. My own chest rises and falls as I watch him get all worked up over the prospect of a cheek kiss from me, and it’s so freaking hot that I couldn’t stop myself from following through with it, even if I wanted to.
I lean up and shift my weight onto my knees, both of us keeping our eyes trained on his watch as I brush my lips over his cheekbone. There’s a full-second delay before the numbers spike.
“See what I mean? If this is all it takes from you …” he begins, his voice gravelly.
He’s probably assuming I’ll back away now that he’s made his point. However, I’m already tracing a path over his jawline, watching his breathing grow more ragged as his short stubble scrapes my lips in the most delicious way.
He doesn’t move to stop me as I continue down his neck. My nose grazes his pulse point before I place an open-mouthed kiss over the spot. The artery throbs beneath his skin and tickles my tongue, as does the moan reverberating from deep within his throat. I don’t have to look at his watch to know what I’m doing to him now.
“Claire,” he says my name on a gasp. “You’re gonna give me a heart attack.”
“Can you really get a heart attack from all your blood pooling in one extremity?” I ask with a short laugh.
“A stroke, then,” he grunts in confirmation.
“Hmm, last I checked that’s not exactly a fatal condition, Doc,” I pose in a sultry tone.
He whimpers when I go back to kissing down his neck. “It certainly feels like I’m dying,” he declares. “Although, I can think of worse ways to go.”
I smile, and he tilts his head to give me better access as he brings his hand around to cradle my back, silently pleading for me to continue.
“There are a few life-saving measures I’d be willing to perform on you before it came to that. With your consent, of course,” I mumble against his skin, and he groans. “I could put an end to our suffering right now. All you’d have to do is ask. Better yet, make it a direct order.” I add a gentle nip at his jaw to make my intentions clear.
“You know we can’t,” he chokes out at the same time he fists his hand in the back of my shirt and pulls me in, guiding me as I climb into his lap. He may be saying no, but the way his body keeps betraying him speaks volumes.
“But if you didn’t want this, why’d you make me kiss you? Why tease me and make me so jealous?” I ask, staring down at him.
He shakes his head. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to … to go this far.”
I watch his throat work again as he struggles with himself, and it’s a reminder that I care too much to coax him into doing something he’d regret. But my stupid ego requires me to crack at least one more inappropriate joke in order to bounce back from his rejection.
“You’d be less sorry if you took off your pants,” I add to lighten the mood and smile when he snorts out a laugh.
He gazes up at me adoringly while he strokes my back, making me even more desperate to keep this going. “Were you really jealous?” he asks, surprising me with his forwardness.
I narrow my eyes and deliberately roll my hips over him as punishment for making me think about my feelings, and he whines again.
“Okay, okay,” he concedes, squirming beneath me. “You win.”
