“You’re imagining that.”
“Maybe,” he admitted. She felt his smile against her lips before he leaned back in order to look at her. “But it wasn’t my imagination that night I came to see you in the hospital.” He stroked her as he talked, following the path of his hand with his eyes. She felt their touch as keenly as that of his fingertips.
“I was chilled,” she said.
“You were scared. But you would have been really scared if you’d known what was going through my mind.”
She raised her head high enough to kiss his scruffy chin.
He smoothed his thumb over a red spot on the slope of her breast. “Maybe I should do a clean shave.”
“Don’t you dare. What was going through your mind?”
“That night in the hospital? How to get my hands on you without you screaming the place down. Besides those prim white socks, the only stitch you had on was that flimsy gown. Knowing there was nothing but you underneath, wanting to see it all, touch you everywhere, it was killing me.”
“Was it?” she asked in a sexy voice.
His breath caught suddenly, and as he released it, he moaned, “What you’re doing now is killing me.”
She made another tantalizing pass across his glans with her thumb. “Want me to stop?”
“Hell no. I’ve done it so many times to myself while thinking of you doing it just like that, wishing it was you doing it.”
He wet the tip of her breast with his tongue, then pressed it between his fingers before laying the backs of them in the hollow between her rib cage and drawing them slowly down the center of her body. They drifted across the sensitive span of skin below her navel, then back and forth over her mound.
“When you sat down on the hospital bed, that gown molded perfectly to this.” His finger traced the V, following the grooves that formed it on both sides, then down the seam between her thighs, before sliding back up and coming to rest at the point where the three met.
“I mean, it couldn’t have been more perfectly delineated for my viewing pleasure. And, I thought, God help me.” He met her gaze and added drolly, “Then you pulled that sheet up over your lap.”
He’d entranced her with his touch, his words. She cupped the back of his head and pulled him down to her for another kiss. When they pulled apart, she gingerly kissed the cut on his cheek. “Hurt?”
“Wouldn’t know. I’ve been distracted by other physical sensations brought on by your talented hand.”
“I offered to stop.”
“Don’t. You’re better at it than I am.”
She smiled. “What makes me better?”
“I tend to be more…uh, efficient.”
“I can be more efficient.”
“Please, no. Take your time. In fact, you’ve got more area to cover now than when you started.”
She laughed softly as her fist moved up the full length of his erection and rode it down again.
He asked, “How come you didn’t live with that guy in Minneapolis?”
Her hand stilled. “How did you know—”
“I checked you out, remember. Or Carson did for me.” She gave him a reproving look, but he seemed not the least bit repentant as he reached down and started her hand moving again. “You two weren’t that serious?”
“I thought we were, but then I was offered the job in Dallas, and when I accepted, without hesitation, he wished me luck, without hesitation. It had been a convenient and uncomplicated relationship, and that’s how it ended.”
“He was a loser.”
“I wouldn’t call him a loser. He developed software for the medical industry that he then sold for millions.”