Mount Mercy

I was obsessed. I wanted to lose myself in this man, to throw myself right into the very center of some green, ancient land that smelled of wet rock and crisp air and disappear into him forever. My hands wouldn’t stop moving: I wanted to grab as much of him as possible, wanted to fill my senses with him. My fingers slid over his sides, thumbs riding the hard ridges of his abs—

That did it. That unleashed him. He gave a kind of growl, grabbed my waist and lifted me right off my feet. He molded me to him, those big hands tight on my ass, as his lips found mine in breathless, frantic hunger. I wrapped my legs around him, my breasts pillowing against his chest. He marched us across the room like that. Each step made me lift and bounce, stroking my clit against the hardness of his six-pack. One of my outstretched feet caught an equipment trolley and I felt it tip, then heard the crash as hardware scattered across the floor.

A second later, he reached the counter he’d been heading for and swept it clear so that he could perch me on the edge. Kidney bowls clattered to the floor but I didn’t care. With his hands freed, Corrigan rammed my scrub top up to my neck, flipped up the cups of my bra and began to roll and squeeze my breasts, his thumbs stroking over my nipples. My yell of shock and pleasure drowned out the metal ringing as the bowls rolled across the tiles.

“Christ, you’re beautiful,” he muttered. He barely broke the kiss to speak, as if he couldn’t bear to stop kissing me. He kept his lips so close, I could feel every hot breath and the bs and fs made little feather-light kisses that drove me absolutely crazy. He squeezed my breasts in a slow, insistent rhythm. “Right from the first time I saw you,” he told me, “I wanted to kiss you. Wanted to fuck you. And I won’t ever, ever stop.”

The words were pure molten silver, burning into my brain and making me groan and lock my ankles around his calves, pulling him harder against me. All the barriers between us were finally gone and I wanted him like I’ve never wanted anything or anyone, a soul-deep ache that I had to satisfy now. I grabbed the hem of his scrub top and pulled it up his chest and off. The few seconds where his arms were trapped and we couldn’t touch each other felt like an eternity. When he hurled it aside and grabbed me again, both of us sighed out loud in relief.

He devoured me with frantic, open-mouthed kisses that started on my hungry lips and worked down my neck and between my breasts. My hands went wild on his shoulders, his pecs and his back, delighting in the feel of him: solid, heavy muscle beneath smooth skin. He was panting, I was panting. The more I touched him, the more he touched me and the more out of control we both got.

He grabbed the hem of my scrub pants in one fist, bunching it up, and pulled. The pants dragged down around my hips, then whipped down around my ankles and off as I lifted my ass. It was only when I felt the cold counter under me that I realized my panties were gone, too.

He kissed down the length of me, from throat all the way to groin. As he crouched, I felt his hot breath in the soft hairs there, felt his rising excitement as quickening rushes of air against my damp folds.

And then he stopped. Just for a second. As he stood up, his whole body was rigid with tension, his breathing ragged. He was just barely holding himself back: I could see how much he wanted to grab me, fuck me. But first—

“Let me look at you,” he ordered in a throaty Irish growl. And he nudged my knees apart and moved between them, then stood there and just looked.

His gaze stroked all the way down my body, from the copper hair on my scalp all the way down to the soft copper hair between my thighs, each square millimeter of skin throbbing and aching in its wake. I’d never been looked at that way before, not with such utter devotion, such complete lust. He reached out with one hand and gently glided his palm over my breast, making me gasp. His touch was worshipful, as if he couldn’t believe he finally had me. “You’re the center of my fucking world, Beckett,” he growled. “All that exists.”

I tried to say that I felt the same, but I was choking up. I’d never thought anyone would feel that way about me. I grabbed his bicep and squeezed and nodded instead. He looked into my eyes and nodded back. He knew.