****
Hours later, I was standing on her doorstep. I made sure I’d given her plenty of time to arrive home and de-stress. I knocked, ready to get to work and win that gorgeous piece of ass.
When she opened the door, her hair was pulled back in a messy bun. She was still wearing her scrubs and her eyes were red and swollen like she’d been crying.
“What are you doing here, Declan?” she asked in a weaker voice than I’d heard from her in a long time.
“Bad day?”
“Yeah.” She closed her mouth as if she wasn’t going to say anymore, but then sighed. “There was a family in a car accident on the highway…the woman didn’t make it.”
Okay, this was heavy. It would have been bad enough if it was just the patient she’d lost, but her mother had died in an accident when Sarah was just eight years old—or so she was led to believe. Her father had passed not long ago in a similar way. No doubt, she hadn’t been able to avoid drudging up old feelings. If I was smart, I’d offer my condolences for the woman who died today and get the hell out of there.
But I wasn’t—at least not right at that moment.
“I’ll order a pizza; you go grab a hot shower,” I told her. Fuck, what the hell was I doing?
“Thanks, Declan, but it’s really not necessary. It’s part of the job, you know?”
Part of the job.
I’d taken more lives than I cared to remember, snuffed them out without a moment’s thought because that was ‘part of my job.’ But Sarah…she saved lives, or at least, she tried to. How many times had she held a life in her hands? How many patients had she lost despite her capable hands? And how many times had she cried alone afterward with no one there to comfort her?
“Go on and take a nice, hot shower. I’ll take care of dinner,” I told her more gently this time, laying a hand on her shoulder and nudging her in the direction of the bathroom down the hall. I resisted the urge to follow her, using considerable effort to steer myself toward the kitchen instead.
I phoned in an order as soon as I heard her turn on the water, doing my damnedest not to think about the woman five yards away. She would’ve been naked by then, probably stepping beneath the showerhead. It didn’t take much to imagine the hot water cascading down her naked flesh, making her smooth skin slippery…
Shit! This is a really bad idea, I told myself. The woman could use someone to talk to after a wretched day, but I was definitely not the guy for the job. Nevertheless, I’d walked right into this mess. I couldn’t exactly turn around and leave—at least, not without earning the title of the biggest asshole ever.
I searched the cupboards for a couple of glasses and checked the fridge for something that had a high enough alcohol content to soothe away her troubles. After finding a half-empty bottle of tequila, I reached for the wine instead. Sure, I wanted Sarah naked and writhing beneath me, but it wouldn’t have been much of a victory if she’d been too drunk to remember anything in the morning. And then I waited, pacing back and forth across the small space between the kitchen cupboards, trying to figure how best to extricate myself from the messy situation.
She emerged from the bathroom before the pizza had arrived, dressed in a pair of leggings and a thin, black T-shirt that hung off one shoulder. It was a casual outfit, but she somehow still managed to look like sex personified.
Her wet hair hung down her back, the dark tresses almost black in the dim lighting of the hallway. Her green eyes were no longer swollen, as if she’d used the time to stiffen her spine and bury whatever bad memories the day had dug up. She smiled up at me softly, nervously, as if she was embarrassed that I’d seen her with her guard down. She was…beautiful.
The pizza arrived just then, and we ate in silence for a few minutes.
“I’m not always like this,” she said out of the blue. “I mean, I knew when I started out there’d be people I couldn’t help. Once in a while, though…”
“I get it. So, what made you do it? Become a doctor, I mean.”
“I guess I just wanted my life to matter, to make a difference, if not on a grand scale, then on an individual one. At the end of my life, I can know there are people who are alive because of me; families that weren’t ripped apart that might have been otherwise…you know, all the usual stuff that drives people toward medicine.”
She brushed it off, as if her reasons were commonplace, but I don’t think she had any idea how uncommon they really were. Maybe because I’d spent the past decade seeking out the worst kind of scum on the planet, but I was all too aware of what drove people: greed and power, mostly, and very seldomly, a desire to truly help others.
“And what about you, Declan. What was it that finally made you decide to follow in your father’s footsteps?”
Right. She was under the impression I’d taken up where my father left off in the family’s multi-million-dollar empire. Little did she know, it wasn’t in my father’s footsteps I’d followed, but hers. And there was absolutely no way I was going to enlighten her since she also had no idea what her father had actually spent his life doing. Still, I had to give her some kind of answer.
“It just seemed like the natural progression of things, I guess,” I replied, and it was true enough.
The family business had never fit, and I’d railed against their expectations, spending far too long getting into trouble just to thwart them.
And I was damn good at it.
It was on one of those ventures into unlawful activity that Sarah’s father had slid into the passenger seat of a sportscar I’d just lifted. “You know, son, have you ever given any consideration to what you could do with your skills if you put them to better use?” he’d asked as he fastened his seatbelt like we were about to take a Sunday drive.
Given that the car wasn’t exactly mine and I was on a deadline, I couldn’t sit there in stunned silence, so I’d revved the engine and drove forty miles to the drop-off point. Erik hadn’t said a word the entire way, and I had absolutely no idea how I was going to explain his presence to my contact who’d been waiting for the car. But I did…easily. The lie had come like second nature, and Erik played right along.
The even weirder part came after when he motioned in the direction of his car, parked not thirty feet from the drop-off point. He’d known where I was headed from the beginning, and while I should have been panicking, I wasn’t. I was fascinated, caught up trying to figure out how he’d tracked me down, how he’d known exactly what I was up to.
And then he’d told me. Not a single person in town, not his daughter, and not even his own father knew what he was up to. But just like that, the course of my life had swerved in a completely unexpected direction. For the first time, I’d felt like I was right where I belonged, doing what I’d been born to do.
I’d become a vigilante.
“I suppose sometimes you just know when something’s right, don’t you?” she asked, and there was definitely a double innuendo in her question. Her mood had changed, and she’d begun to lean toward me, though I don’t think she was even aware of the movement.
It figured. Smooth lines and avid pursuit did nothing to win her over. But quasi-intimate conversation over pizza and wine, and her resistance crumbled away.
“Sarah…” I knew I should get the hell out of there. She’d been emotionally compromised…she’d been upset…vulnerable…
She put her hand on my thigh, and it sent a jolt of heat through my body. And by the way she froze, I could tell she hadn’t expected to feel so much in response, but she did. The sexual energy that had hung in the air between us had found a route inside her, straight through her fingers when she touched me.
But that didn’t seem to stop her.
Her hand started to move, lightly at first, grazing up and down in small circles. I gritted my jaw against the wave of fire that was quickly overwhelming whatever meager resistance I could muster.
“I want this, Declan,” she breathed quietly. I could hear it loud and clear in her soft tone—desire, hunger, longing. Her eyes meeting mine, all the while her hand continued to move, her nails grazing along my thigh this time as she moved higher.
Oh hell, what man could possibly be expected to walk away? Just then, she pulled her hand back, and I breathed a rugged sigh, part in relief and part disappointment. She didn’t move for a moment, and I waited, not trusting myself to speak just yet. And hell, I didn’t want to go back to talking. I wanted to touch her…to taste her.
“I know I shouldn’t want you…but I do,” she spoke louder, a split second before she lunged for my mouth.
All thought fled and I met her just as eagerly. My tongue sought entry, pressing firmly against the seam of her lips. I needed to taste her, to feel the warmth of her mouth. She opened and I delved in, sampling the light taste of Chardonnay on her tongue.
But I needed her closer; I needed to feel more of her. Without breaking the kiss, I slipped my hands beneath her perfectly shaped ass and pulled her onto my lap. I could feel the heat of her, radiating through our clothes and I was already rock hard. Hell, it felt like I’d wanted this forever.
Her hands started to move, wrapping around the back of my neck. Her fingers tickled as they grazed through the short hair there and then she pulled me closer, trying to deepen the kiss, to get even closer.
A lightning bolt of heat shot through me and my cock throbbed almost painfully. I could feel the soft mounds of her tits pressed against my chest, but I wanted more. I wanted to cup her in my hands and feel the heat of her skin.
Without another thought, I grabbed the neck of her shirt and tore hard, ripping it like it was made of tissue paper. She hadn’t been wearing a bra underneath, and my hands reached for her, cupping her as my breath caught in my throat. She fit perfectly in my palms, as if the two of us had been carved for each other. She moaned softly as I flicked my thumbs across her rosy nipples and her head tilted back, leaving the soft flesh of her neck exposed. I lunged for her, kissing just below her ear down to her collarbone. I leaned her back to continue lower and drew a nipple into my mouth, rolling it back and forth with my tongue as she moaned louder.
Seconds later, her hands slid down my back and I felt her fumbling with the hem of my shirt. I released her long enough to let her yank it over my head, but she froze as the shirt fell to the floor behind us. I did my damnedest to stay still as her eyes flitted across the flesh she’d exposed.
“They’re incredible,” she whispered as her fingers began to trace along the artwork on my shoulders. “You look like…” she began, and then stopped, her cheeks turning a bright shade of pink.
“I look like…what, Sarah?” I whispered back, strangely caught up in what she was thinking.
“I was just thinking that you…you look like a masterpiece…” she confessed awkwardly, tracing the tattoos on my shoulders.
Plenty of women I’d known had found them to be sexy, but Sarah seemed utterly mesmerized by them in a way that was somehow deeper.
It took me a minute to understand her fascination, but then I did…and I wished I hadn’t. They weren’t just random pieces of art to her; the furrow that had formed between her brow as she ghosted along my shoulder meant she was thinking—she was trying to figure out the reason for each tattoo on my body. They weren’t just tattoos to her; they were a story—my story—and she was doing her damnedest to read it.
And the worst part: I liked it. The way she was touching me and the look in her eyes…it was intimate in a way I’d never known, and had never wanted to know.
And so, I needed her to stop looking at me like that. I lifted her gently off my lap and stood, laying her back on the table. I reached for the waistband of her leggings and started pulling them down, caught between tearing them off in a hurry and drawing it out as long as I could. In seconds, she would be naked. And seconds after that, my cock would be buried inside that amazing body.
My hands itched to touch her. My mouth watered at the idea of tasting every inch of her body, and my dick was throbbing painfully enough that I worried there might be permanent damage if I didn’t fuck her right then.
With that thought in mind, I tugged off her pants as an electric sensation shot right through me. She wasn’t wearing anything underneath those leggings; she was completely naked, and by the way her pussy glistened, I knew she was just as ready as I was.
I ditched my pants as fast as I could, thinking of all the things I wanted to do to her, but knowing there wasn’t time for that. Right then, I needed to be inside her; to feel her tight, slick walls surrounding me.
I spread her thighs and slipped between them, leaning in until I was right there. But I had to check; I had to know she wanted this as much as I did, because I’d apparently taken leave of my senses and wanted to see just how much torture a cock could take.
I looked down into her fiery eyes, and her arms reached out for me as I did, telling me she was more than willing.
But she didn’t pull me closer. Instead, her fingers went back to tracing along the lines of the tattoos on my shoulders and chest. Damn it, I knew what she was doing, and it sent a shockwave of unadulterated pleasure through my body, so intense that my hips thrust forward of their own volition, plunging into her to the hilt.
I lunged for her lips on the next thrust, doing my damnedest to ignore the erotic way her fingers continued to move along my torso. Slowly though, as I increased my pace, she abandoned her attempt to read my life story and I felt her fingers kneading my shoulders. And before long, her nails were digging into the muscles in my back, the sting only making me harder. It was unadulterated proof that her body was rushing headlong for the end, caught up in raw pleasure.
I was so damn close, gritting my jaw and fighting with everything I had against the urge to come deep inside her. I wasn’t going to let it happen, not yet. I shifted my weight onto one arm and slipped a hand between us, finding her clit. Her hips bucked at the first brush of my finger against her, and her moans turned to cries of pleasure. I started to thrust faster, harder, and her hips reciprocated, thrusting upward to meet me.
And seconds later, the wildfire that had been blazing in her eyes burned out of control. Her back arched off the table and her gaze locked on mine as she screamed in ecstasy. And damn it, that was just too much. I’d held off as long as I could, and I’d made sure she got to come first, but I was right there. I thrust in deep one more time as her tight walls spasmed around my cock and I rocketed over the edge.
I withdrew slowly, almost as reluctantly as when I’d started, and pulled her up with me as I stood up straight. I swooped in and picked her up in my arms, and started down the hall to her bedroom. She looked up at me with surprise in her eyes.
“You didn’t think we were done yet, did you?”
She couldn’t have possibly thought I’d had enough. No way in hell.