“Oz?”
He swallowed back the burn, lost himself in Blair’s soft expression, in the way her lips curled around his name. Damn, his name sounded good on her lips. Soft, sexy, raspy.
“You don’t think he’s going to get better, do you?” Her lower lip disappeared between her teeth in a move he’d seen Addy do a dozen times during their sailing trip.
“Miracles happen every day.” He sighed, unwilling to lie. “But no, I don’t think he’ll go into remission. The Xabartan is his only chance and he’s not willing to undergo more chemo.”
He couldn’t bring himself to say that he thought their friend’s days were coming to a swift end.
A strangled sound escaped her lips. “You’re wrong. He will get better.” She trembled. “He has to get better.”
“I hope so, Blair. I really do hope so.” Oz held her tight. The tears she’d been wiping away since she’d started telling him about Chris flooded unchecked down her cheeks. “Regardless, we’ll be here for him and make sure each day is a good one.”
As painful as he found watching his friend slowly die, he would stay until the end, would ensure that Dr T didn’t want for a thing, that each day was as full as possible, that when Dr T’s time came he’d die knowing he was loved.
Oz held Blair while she sobbed against him, held her while she buried her face into his chest, held her when her lips sought his, seeking comfort.
He had no right to give her that comfort. Not really. Not after what she’d revealed, not when he felt her pain and ached inside.
But nor could he deny her what she needed.
What he needed.
Oz kissed her back.
Desperately.
With all the hunger that had built inside him since the first time he’d laid eyes on Blair Pendergrass years ago.
He’d wanted her then, but had known better than to dally with the woman Dr T loved like a daughter, with a woman who had a daughter, and would expect more than dinner dates and hot sex.
Oz needed to stop, to remind Blair that even if they made love, nothing would change. He needed to remind her that for him, making love was just sex, that it wouldn’t mean anything beyond the physical. That after he left Madison, there would be other women because that was who he was, who all the men in his family were, as if the trait was really some genetic flaw.
He needed to do all those things, but in her kisses Oz forgot that sex was just a physical act.
Because kissing Blair felt like so much more than physical.
When her hands slid under his shirt, over his abs, along his back, Oz didn’t stop her. When she tugged on his T-shirt, pulling the hem over his head, he didn’t remind her that he was the womanizing scoundrel she’d once accused him of being.
Instead, he pulled her into his lap, kissed the hell out of her, over and over until every breath he took was hers.
He stood, cradling her in his arms, inadequate in so many ways to be holding such a precious woman.
Her tender kiss against his throat, her sigh of pleasure almost toppled him back onto the sofa, his legs too wobbly to support them both.
He headed up the stairs, down the hallway, striding into his room with one purpose: to claim Blair. He gently laid her on the bed, paused to turn on the bedside lamp to take in the image of her lying on the bed, waiting for him.
For him.
Because Blair was his.
She inexplicably belonged to him.
He saw it in her eyes when she looked at him, felt it in the way she touched him.
He backtracked to the door, shut and locked it in case Addy or Dr T woke.
He turned, saw Blair had taken off her Springsteen T-shirt. Revealing the ample swell of her breasts above her silky blue bra, she bent forward and shucked her shorts down her hips, revealing matching high-cut panties that made her legs look impossibly long.