The tears wobbled her vision.
He coaxed her around now to look at them with him. Butterflies erupted in flight, batting her skin where his body touched her, so natural how they fit together, it was a wonder they’d ever been apart. His heartbeat thumped against her ear, a cool spring rain on dry, barren soil.
God, these photographs had been a fixture in her clinic for years; she passed them by without much thought, even though she sometimes still stood there and just gazed at them.
“These photos, Sky. Your clinic and sanctuary… You built our dream. And I’m so damn proud of you.”
His voice, so soft it was nearly a murmur, seemed to crack, and he cleared it, keeping her snug against his warmth. The vibrations of his talking reverberated through her body and tympanums and straight through her nerve cells to her brain. Yet try as she might to form speech, every ounce of concentration was on holding back the downpour. If she opened her mouth, the rain would pour again, and she couldn’t bear to look at those photos and what they represented.
Snapping away from his touch, she swooped each picture wire off its hook, dragging them down, yanked the legacy fund placard off the wall mount, fury and confusion and sadness suddenly unleashed and unwilling to be lassoed, her head shaking harder, harder.
“Babe, what are you doing?” Travis grabbed her arm to stop her, but she shook him off and hauled them away to cram under the desk with frustration brewing stronger, deeper in each maneuver, dust from the frames rubbing gray streaks upon her scrubs.
“It’s all a lie,” she whispered with such fervor as she jammed them harder, denting one of the frames.
“What’s a lie?” he croaked desperately. “The way you felt about me?”
“No,” she bit out, one stubborn tear succeeding in eluding her and rushing down her cheek. She wiped her arm across it.
“Sky, I’m confused—”
“They’ve been on my wall for so long I didn’t even think about it when you walked in here. But you’re not dead, you’re alive, and I lived a lie!” She gripped her belly now, a further loss she’d never been able to put into words. “I grieved, I mourned!”
She mindlessly grabbed papers, opened a drawer, dumping them in, simply to keep her hands busy, to tidy things that didn’t need tidying, that poor Judy-Lynn would have to sort out come Monday. She dug her nails into her palms to stave off the hurt, but her knees were trembling—
He caught her. Spun her to him. Lips crashed down to hers so hard, the wind was knocked from her chest. She shoved at his tight muscles, when suddenly her fingers were gripping him, clawing to hold on as his warm mouth moved over hers, showering sensations and memories over her like spring rain.
His hands roved over her, cinching her waist to his, her thighs to his, her ass to him; leaning over her; pawing at her as she clawed at him. She braced herself back on the counter and knocked a brochure holder over, scattering the papers as he hoisted her up and dropped her rear on the surface, wedging himself between her thighs and sliding his palms along her cheeks, fingers splaying over her ears into her hair as his tongue tugged on hers and his body undulated into her and his cock pushed against the juncture of her thighs as she moaned into his mouth. She’d forgotten these nuances blasting through her body and wringing a whimper from her throat.
She rocked her core against his jeans, and he groaned as she cinched her ankles behind his rear, feeling that hard column stoking a flame. Damn, she couldn’t help it. He’d always been the sparkplug to her engine, and in this moment, she wanted to feel every inch of him, feel this vitality beneath her fingertips.
His tongue thrust desperately. “Baby, I missed you,” he ground out.
A sigh exhaled from her lungs as she nodded, unable to find words. He groaned a low, rumbling groan, undulating harder against her between her splayed thighs, taking her cue and running with it. Her hand palmed his rear, so tight and firm, and God she’d always loved his ass, the way his jeans hugged it, rode low enough that when he was shirtless those stomach ligaments teased down beneath the waistband like sinuous trails signposting the goods behind his fly.
He was hard, aroused. She could feel the bulge behind his fly throbbing with steady surges of blood, a palm splayed across her lumbar to cinch her tightly against him. His body, so broad, so protective. His mouth moved over hers so wildly, teeth and lips gnashed against teeth and lips, her needy moans and his spiraling groans played a harmony in her ears as she tasted the flavor of his tongue and breathed in the earthy scent of his hot skin. He rolled into her, mimicking loving, as if his leash of control was about to snap, and she only encouraged it further. Her hands dragged up his chest, down his chest, under his shirt and across his tight, hot skin. He hissed against her lips.
“I can’t believe you’re here, that I’m doing this with you,” she whined, tugging at his shirt as if she wished to tear it off, fumbling with his belt buckle as his hands tangled madly with the drawstring of her scrubs and more guttural groans tore out of his throat.
What the hell were they doing? In her clinic, no less? Still, she didn’t care, only cared about touching him. Felt his hands slips beneath her loosed drawstring, felt the zipper of his fly vibrate on her fingers as she dragged it down, slipped them within, felt the thickened, heavy heat of his shaft and jewels, mewed needily as he dragged his fingertips along the sensitive seams of her skin against her panty line as he moaned nearly helplessly at her hand wrapping around him.
He groaned, tore his lips away, muttered something about his glove box, chest heaving up and down as he rested his forehead to hers. “God, Sky, God, baby, I’m fucking crazy about you and I wanna make every bad decision right here right now,” he rumbled, husky, mashed words against her lips and jaw. “But I don’t have any protection—”
She yanked back. Eyes pinched shut as the phone wrang. Hospital beds; IVs in her arm; and the doctor’s careful, sympathetic words imparting the news of her loss. God, the memories paraded through her mind. This heat in her belly… She knew what happened when she and Travis burned through hormones like a rig burning diesel, and it couldn’t happen again without a condom. She inhaled sharply, fingers still clenching Trav’s T-shirt, stretching the cotton, her forehead falling to his chest that heaved up and down in tandem with hers.
The phone, still ringing, finally stopped.
Three text messages then hit her cell, vibrating at her hip where the phone was clipped.
“What is it, baby?” he whispered hoarsely, concern etched into his brow as he gave her the look as she dared to unpinch her eyes. His lips were wet and reddened from the onslaught of pent-up emotions and his grip alongside her head firm, the other slipped free from her scrubs, easing the pressure of her splayed thighs pressed against his unmistakable, desperate erection. He dusted random kisses on her cheek and ear.
The phone started ringing again. “It’s probably Judy-Lynn seeing my missed calls, is all.”
“Naw, that ain’t why you pulled back. What’s wrong, what’d I do?”
Nothing. He’d done nothing wrong in this moment—except crash through the dam holding everything at bay for so long.
“We can’t kiss this all away, Trav,” she breathed in puffs as her lungs still labored. God, his hips were still rammed between her thighs and her boots still locked over his ass of their own volition because while her brain knew better, her body apparently hadn’t gotten the memo. “I’m not the same girl. I’m never gonna be the same girl.”