Mount Mercy

He spun me around and pushed me back until my ass hit the operating table, then put his hands on my shoulders to fix me in place. I opened my mouth to speak again—

“Beckett!” He used that voice.

I gulped. I could see the emotion in his eyes and it made my stomach flip-flop. God, his whole body had gone tense: his hands were like iron on my shoulders. I remembered how he’d tried to tell me something, just after the shooting. It seemed like a lifetime ago. He’d been desperate to get me alone ever since and now he had to tell me….

I shut the hell up and listened.

He rubbed his hand down his face, his stubble rasping. “When I met you, I thought, ‘she’s hiding. Hiding away up here.’” He laid one hand on my cheek and smoothed it back, knocking off my surgical cap and sliding his fingers into my hair. “‘I need to bring her out into the light.’” He shook his head. “I didn’t realize I was hiding, too. That’s what Africa and Libya and working in bad neighborhoods was all about. I was burying myself in it so I didn’t have to think or feel. You were the first person to make me want more again. You stopped me hiding.”

My mouth had gone dry and I was taking panicky little breaths. I nodded.

“The more I fell for you—and I have fallen for you—”

I bit my lip.

“—The more I thought about Chrissy and Rachel. Felt like I shouldn’t be with you.” He was struggling to get the words out, now. “Like I was being torn between you and them.”

Oh God, no….

His voice slowed right down. “I can’t be with you both,” he managed.

This is where he does it. This is where he tells me it’s over. I couldn’t look at him as he said it so I pushed him back, tried to wriggle out from between him and the table.

He frowned and pushed me back into place. “No! Listen!”

I listened, my face and eyes going hot.

“I let them go,” he said quietly.

I felt my eyes widen. I never meant to hurt him. Had I hurt him?

He understood and shook his head. “I let them go,” he said again. And he sounded... peaceful. For the first time, the pain in his eyes was gone.

I drew in a little breath of hope. And then both his hands were buried in my hair and his lips came down on mine.

46

Amy

HIS LIPS PARTED MINE, his thumbs stroking across my cheekbones and tilting my head back to meet him. The kiss was slow and deliberate, loaded with meaning. With every tiny caress of his lips against mine, he let me know: I was his.

His tongue teased over my lips and then plunged deep to own me. I’d never known anyone to be so absolutely certain of anything, so completely sure that this was the future they wanted. Corrigan was stubborn as hell and this whole time, that had been holding us apart as he refused to let his family go. But now that he’d made up his mind, that same stubborn, unstoppable intent was all focused on me. And it was glorious. My heart lifted and I just melted inside, the hot emotion sluicing down and then rising up as pure joy.

A slow rhythm began that wound all the way down our tightly-pressed bodies, chests grinding and hips circling. I felt the swish of my hair falling free as he removed the clip. He buried both hands in it behind my head and then gently combed his fingers down its length. He kissed across my cheek and into my hair and finally just dug his nose between the soft strands and inhaled. “Amy,” he said with his next breath, my name a blast of heat against the top of my head. When he spoke again, his voice had an ache in it, a neat wound painfully tight. My name, said that way, in that accent, slid straight down my spine, a shining silver pebble that landed weighty and urgent in my groin. “God, Amy….”

I pressed in close to him, suddenly breathless, and explored his chest. I slid my palms over the hard curves of his pecs, feeling his heartbeat through the thin scrubs. His hands were moving, too, tracing down my back to cup and squeeze my ass. My heart was dancing: he’s here. It’s real. We’re together. And along with that light, heady excitement, there was another kind, dark and heated, vibrating down my body in dense waves, making me crush my thighs together and press myself even harder against him. The feel of him, the scent of him, had a physical effect on me: I could actually feel my eyes go big and start to dart around and hear my breath going trembly. That part of me I kept locked down deep, that I only let out when I was alone in bed, safely secret under the covers? Dominic Corrigan brought it bursting right up to the surface.