Sara had never been a fan of awkward middle-of-the-night-afters. Especially when she awakened due to an unladylike coughing fit that ended with her new lover stroking her back.

“Easy. Let me get you some juice,” Brad murmured, slipping out of her bed before she could ask him why he hadn’t gone back to his.

The moment he left, she flung herself into her pillows. What the hell had she been thinking, demanding he go down on her? It had felt really good, granted, but so did getting rip-roaring drunk. The hangover was the problem.

By the time he returned, she’d composed herself. She thanked him for the juice and sipped it gratefully. The sweet liquid cooled her raw throat. At least it was still dark so she didn’t have to see his face.

Just when she thought she might escape with a shred of dignity intact, he turned on the bedside lamp and pried the glass out of her clammy hand. He tossed back the rest of her drink and set it aside, wiping his mouth in a way that should’ve reminded her of a little kid but instead made her swallow hard. The ripple of his throat shouldn’t have reignited the heat in her belly, but dear God, it so did.

“You really want to get sick too, don’t you?” she mumbled, rubbing her eyes in an effort not to meet his gaze. She could feel him staring at her and didn’t want to imagine how she must look. Who looked good while they were sniffling and hacking?

“Not worried.” He brushed her hair away from her face, his touch unbearably gentle. “You’re burning up.”

That explained why her clothes practically chafed her skin. She huffed out a breath and closed her eyes. “I’ll sleep it off.”

“How long’s it been since you took your medicine?”

“Dunno.” She curled up around her pillow, already drifting. But she woke in a hurry when a cold washcloth skimmed her forehead an instant before an icy stream of water trickled into her hair. “Dammit, Brad.”

“You need to cool off.” He nudged her up and sat behind her, cradling her body in his strong arms. He wiped her face, eventually reaching the back of her neck. She couldn’t deny it felt good, so she didn’t stop him.

She frowned, realizing the room was strangely silent. “Where’s Telly?” she asked, noticing his cage was gone.

“Downstairs. Didn’t want you to give him the avian flu.”

“I don’t have the avian flu, you ass.” But she giggle-coughed just the same.

He unlaced the top of her nightgown and smoothed the compress over her breasts. “See, you’re cooling right off,” he said against her ear, rubbing the wet washcloth over her shoulders.

Despite her near-slumber and general rundown state, her nipples perked up the minute his competent hands roused them. Since he still hadn’t covered her again, she figured they were probably standing sky high, but she was too tired to check. Everything below her forehead that didn’t ache felt numb.

“If you’re trying to take advantage of me, you’d probably get more resistance from a corpse.” She smiled as he tugged her earlobe. “So do what you must.”

“Oh yeah.” His irritated tone elicited a grin. “Watching your chin slump into your chest from exhaustion gives me a huge boner, let me tell you.”

It hurt her sore ribs to laugh, but she did it anyway. Her reward was yet another coughing fit. “I’m not used to having someone take care of me.”

“So? What’s the verdict?”

Already heading toward sleep again, she snuggled into his embrace. “I think I kind of like it.”

* * *

When Sara woke, he was gone. It didn’t really surprise her. What guy wanted to hang around the sick bed of a woman he had the hots for? At least he had before she’d been attacked by the super virus from hell.

She sat up and winced at the new pains that presented themselves. Her chest hurt, her back hurt, and her nose twitched with the near-constant need to sneeze. Charming. Good thing she had a nearly full bottle of cough syrup and a ton of movies to watch on Netflix because she so wasn’t going to work today.

How had she gotten sick so fast? In the last two years, she hadn’t had so much as a fever. Now all of a sudden she’d been laid flat by the mother of all bugs.

Yawning, she inched across the bed and grabbed her phone. After placing a quick call to the bird sanctuary, she sank into her pillows and stared at the ceiling with blurry eyes. Her oversized nightgown clung to her, and she desperately needed a shower. She glanced down at her attire and winced. God, had Brad really seen her in this?

And partially out of it too.

She moaned and rolled over, dragging her pillow over her head. Maybe blissful unconsciousness would claim her again, and she could forget she’d come onto Kim’s brother while in a cold-induced fog. Come onto didn’t actually cover it. She’d commanded him to orally please her, for God’s sake.

And he had. Oh, he had.

How could she ever face him again?

Their brief conversation in the middle of the night didn’t count. She’d been half-asleep and feverish. His sweet attempts to take care of her had lulled her into not erecting her usual boundaries, whatever ones she had left.

Him seeing her sick wasn’t bad enough. Why not go for utter mortification? Flipping up her ginormous, old-fashioned nightgown and expecting him to distract her with pleasures of the flesh had been a great plan. They’d totally go back to their comfortable friendship now, despite the fact that he knew what she tasted like. And how she got really rough in the throes of climax. She’d probably yanked out clumps of his thick, silky hair.

“Ugh!” She groaned again and pulled the pillow down tight over her ears. Maybe she’d had a nightmare. Sometimes she did if she ate weird things before going to sleep. More than once she’d consumed Brad’s late-night junk food creations and paid for it afterward. But this went way beyond indigestion from fried bologna and pickle sandwiches. This was complete and total humiliation.

“Morning, Sara Smile.”

She went dead still in the center of her bed, forgetting even to breathe. No. Didn’t he have to work? It was Monday morning.

“Go away,” she pleaded, hoping he’d get the message. Now that the cough syrup was out of her system—hard to believe she could have such an extreme reaction to routine medication, but there you go—she could view this situation with an objective eye.

Brad simply wanted a rebound affair with someone he found reasonably attractive, preferably a woman who wouldn’t be difficult to extricate himself from afterward. He knew she wasn’t clingy. Maybe he even had a thing for older women.

She was nice-looking, even pretty, but parts of her body sagged that did not sag on the women he usually dated. She wasn’t blonde or particularly stacked. Her jeans were not size four or six. She had long hair, yes, but that was due to the ease of putting it up rather than a desire to seem young and sexy.

She was a doctor, an ornithologist. A professional. She wouldn’t start up some sort of sordid, reality TV-worthy affair with a guy young enough to—

Eat your pussy with enough skill to make you scream?

“Unhhh!” She thudded her forehead against the bed and prayed for oblivion.

The mattress dipped under his weight and she realized, much to her dismay, that time had not stood still while she rated herself on his potential scale. Dammit.

“Sara?” He tugged at her pillow but she wouldn’t let go. Nope. If she had to stay hiding under this pillow until he moved away from home, then that was exactly what she would do.

Instead of continuing to try to loosen her grip, he let go. Suspicious, she pushed up on her hands and knees as cool air swept over her heated flesh. Before she could protest, he yanked up her infernal nightgown and placed a kiss on her bare ass.

She shivered. She simply couldn’t help it. And he laughed, the low, prideful sound curling her toes and dampening the traitorous area between her legs that refused to allow her to be levelheaded about him.

She’d never had a problem with that before. Before she’d known the joy of his lips and his tongue and his hard body wrapping around hers in the night…

God, she was fucked.

He slid the nightgown higher and trailed kisses over the small of her back. “Want me to keep going?” he murmured, tracing the crack of her ass with one silken fingertip.

“Where’s Kim?” she whispered.

“Work. She went in early. Lucky for us she wasn’t here last night. Apparently her new guy picked her up before I got home. I wondered if she heard when you—”

“Can we not talk about that? Please?”

“Why? Are you embarrassed? I’m not. I wish I’d taped your sexy moans so I could replay them when I’ve got my cock in my hand and I’m thinking about you.”

She tossed aside the pillow and rolled over, shoving her tangled mass of hair out of her eyes. “You expect me to believe you masturbate to thoughts of me?”

The corner of Brad’s mouth tipped up. “Whatever clinical term you prefer, yeah, I do expect you to believe it. In fact, the next time you hear the shower running in my bathroom, why don’t you come inside and see for yourself?”

“That you jerk off doesn’t prove you’re thinking about me. Even if you are, what does that mean? Other than you’ve developed some kind of unhealthy fixation.”

“Unhealthy? Says who?” One eyebrow winged up, disappearing under the golden hair that crossed his forehead. He’d let his hair grow longer than he usually did, and she didn’t know if she liked it.

Oh hell, who was she kidding? She’d like him with a full wig or bald. Naked or dressed. Though at the moment she certainly preferred him one way over the other.

“You’re not my Tim Robbins,” she said in a small voice, well aware she was fighting a losing battle. Again. Why did she even bother when she knew how good it would feel to give in?

She licked her lips as her gaze drifted over his loose navy T-shirt half-tucked into skintight black jeans. The man wore denim well. He wore everything well.

No one else needs to know what happens here between us.

That sounded better all the time.

“Never said I was. Though Susan Sarandon’s pretty hot, so I don’t blame him for going there. Sucks they broke up though.” He held up a hand when she started to speak, his eyes narrowing. “If you say they split because she’s old, I’ll take you across my knee and—”

“What?” she asked breathlessly after he fell silent.

He expelled a breath. “You piss me off, you know that?”

“I didn’t know you ever got pissed off.” Because the urge to crawl into his lap was growing by the millisecond, she forced herself to kick off the sheet and roll out of bed.

“Get back here,” he said in little more than a growl.

His deep voice skated over her skin, the erotic potential in his demand tightening her nipples. “Or what?” She shot him an arch look before she headed into the attached bathroom to face herself in the mirror.

When she had, she wished she hadn’t. “Oh my God.”

“What?” He was up and in the doorway in an instant. “What’s wrong?”

“Look at me.” Leaning forward, she tugged at the gaping neckline of her nightgown. He’d never tied it back up again. “I’m a mess.”

“Didn’t notice.”

“Right.” Rolling her eyes, she grabbed her toothbrush and toothpaste. She waited for him to leave, but he didn’t move from the doorway. “Mind?”

“Uncomfortable with me here?”

She shrugged and uncapped the toothpaste. “Suit yourself.”

He wandered over to the basket of fancy soaps and bottles of body wash she had on the shelf in the shower. “You use all this stuff?” he asked, sorting through her collection.

“Most of it. Some only on special occasions.” She loaded up her toothbrush and turned on the water. If he wouldn’t leave, she’d try to be as discreet as possible.

Once she’d finished, she put away the toothpaste and sighed as he continued to pick through her belongings. It would’ve been almost cute, if she didn’t feel completely grungy and incapable of dealing with company. Though he technically wasn’t, because she lived with him, and he already knew parts of her pretty damn well.

She flushed and glanced away. Enough thoughts about that.

“Which are for special occasions?”

“The honeysuckle ones.”

“Why?”

“They’re really expensive. I buy a new product in the line whenever I’m celebrating something big. Graduation from my doctoral program, when I moved here, my new job at the sanctuary. They commemorate big changes in my life.”

“Kind of like my torque wrenches.” He shot her a grin over his shoulder and set down the pink poufy sponge he’d been toying with. “Although a good month financially is sometimes a big enough reason for me to get one. The guys at the shop love them and hell, why not? What good is money if you never live a little?”

He made an excellent point. What good was anything if you didn’t enjoy life? If you didn’t say to hell with it every once in a while and go for something crazy and wild because you could?

Because it felt so damn right?

“Speaking of the guys at the shop, shouldn’t you be at work right now instead of babysitting me?”

“One of the perks of being the boss. I can be a little late now and then. Or a lot late,” he added meaningfully.

She swallowed and faced the mirror. Lovely. She still had to deal with the hornet’s nest on her head. She pulled the elastic out of her hair and let it fall around her shoulders. Then she yanked her brush out of the basket on the vanity and tackled the worst of the snarls.

“It’s hopeless,” she muttered.

“Hardly.” He came up behind her. “Give me the brush.”

“Why?” Her pulse galloped like a runaway horse. “So you can paddle my ass?”

“Now there’s a thought. No, so I can take care of this for you.”

“I’m going to shower soon. You really don’t have to bother.“

“It’s easier to wash your hair if it’s untangled, right?” he asked, his voice oozing patience.

“Yeah, I suppose.” She handed over her brush, figuring he’d poke at her until she gave in anyway. He dragged the bristles through her hair, roughly at first. Her wince caused him to gentle his strokes. Soon he was brushing the full length in long, even glides, caressing her scalp with each movement.

Her breath trembled out from between her parted lips, and she closed her eyes, somehow embarrassed by how intimate this looked reflected in the glass. If he’d been kneeling before her with his mouth between her legs, she wouldn’t have shied away from watching him. But his hot expression as he pleasured her this way drove the intensity level between them up by miles.

“Good enough.” She cleared her throat and shifted to look at him, maintaining eye contact even when she wanted to retreat and put a little distance between them. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” He wound a strand around his finger, pulling lightly. “I bet you want that shower.”

“Yeah.”

“I’m sure this is my cue to leave.”

In lieu of an answer, she reached for the gaping open vee of her nightgown. Despite its lack of style, she’d kept it for nights she wanted comfort. Nights she spent alone, or in bed with a man who eventually grew to view her as not much more provocative than the furniture. Pete had certainly never looked at her like this, his stare following her fingers as if he couldn’t wait to see what she revealed.

“I’d really rather you stay,” she murmured.