Evie slid her hands down and tugged at the hem of his tee shirt, pulling it up and only pausing in their kissing for long enough to haul it over his head. She balled the fabric and threw it across the room with a grin.
‘Making a point?’ he muttered, amused.
‘Might be.’
Her hands reacquainted themselves with the muscled chest she’d been dreaming about for the last twelve months. Weaving her fingers into the smattering of dark hair, Evie pushed him back onto the bed, her eyes grazing over him hungrily.
‘Like what you see?’
It was a challenge. Almost a dare. Evie smirked at him wickedly, feeling more sexually assured than she ever had before.
‘Purely a professional assessment.’
Max quirked one eyebrow.
‘Oh, really, Dr Parker?’
‘Mmm-hmm,’ she murmured, tracing an unhurried line along the tense chest muscles, which were, incredibly, even more impressive than she’d recalled. Lowering her head, Evie pressed a kiss into each of them. ‘Pectorals.’
‘You liked your anatomy classes?’ he managed.
‘I did.’ She dipped her head lower. ‘Rectus abdominis. Upper.’
‘Yup,’ but his voice quivered slightly as she kissed again.
Evie moved across.
‘Transversus abdominis.’
Another kiss. And this time he didn’t offer any kind of quip.
Lower again, Evie ignored the pain shooting across her side. She wanted him more than she was prepared to give in to anything else. Which meant she was ready.
‘Evie...?’
‘Shh...’ she instructed. ‘I’m fine, don’t ruin it.’
The moment with Max felt too precious, and too fragile to risk breaking. Besides, she needed to prove this to herself. She wasn’t just mentally recovered, she was almost physically healed, too.
‘Oblique.’
The requisite kiss and she could feel his body straining against her forearm. A sense of power surged through her. He was relinquishing control to her because she was claiming it. It was a heady feeling. She moved back to his middle.
‘Which brings us back to rectus abdominis. Lower.’ Her voice sounded thick with lust as she dropped a final kiss before straightening up to offer him an innocent stare. ‘So, Mr Van Berg, where should I go from here?’
Her hands moved to his belt buckle but before she could do anything else Max pulled her to him, hooking his hands around her backside, and stood up with her legs still wrapped around his hips.
‘You made your point,’ he growled. ‘You’re healing well. But I can make a point, too.’
Before she could worry that he was going to back away from her like last time, Max set her back on the bed and reached for her zip, waiting a few tantalising moments before he divested her of her top. Her bra didn’t last much longer. Then he pressed her gently down until her back sank into the soft mattress, and covered her body with his, taking care not to place any weight on her. Skin to skin now, the muscles Evie had just been kissing grazed her breasts, making her nipples stiffen even more in response.
Obligingly, Max lowered his head and circled them with a hot, wet tongue before taking them into his mouth. She squirmed underneath him, desperate for more, but he locked her down, taking his delicious time.
It was pointless to resist, Evie reluctantly concluded a few moments later as she gave herself up to the butterflies currently performing spinning and twirling Viennese waltzes throughout her entire core. When he seared her skin with his lips it was all she could do to hold still, contenting herself with familiarising her hands with the solid contours of his back and shoulders. And when he raised his head back up to reclaim her mouth she matched him, demanding kiss for demanding kiss. Evie ached to hold him in her hand again, feel him rock solid and so turned on by her that she could barely circle him with her fingers. But he held himself too far away, making her the sole focus of the evening’s intimacy, and, given the skill with which Max was arousing her, it wasn’t exactly a hardship to relinquish the power again. By the time he finally trailed a line with his tongue down her lower abdomen and to the waistband of her jersey trousers, she was powerless to contain her moan of anticipation.
The last of the Steri-strips had come off and the scar was looking less angry and welt-like than it had a few days ago, so Evie forced herself not to cover up the incision as Max paused for a moment to inspect it. Satisfied, he finally slid her jersey trousers down over her hips, cocking an eyebrow at her as he saw she’d replaced her comfy knickers with a scrap of lace that sat well below the scar.
It was on the tip of her tongue to claim that was all she had left, having thrown the rest of her underwear in the wash, but she figured that might be as transparent as the turquoise lace, and instead she ignored the unspoken question, focusing instead on the aching need for him to touch her right where she needed him most.