Courting Passion (9 page)

“You proposing to me, Kate?” Garth tried and failed to tease her. Katherine shot him an evil look, laced with humour and love.

“Am I doing this wrong?” she asked, feigning innocence. “Should I be down on one knee? Offer you a ring? Gee, maybe I should call your dad and ask for his blessing, too. Take you out to dinner or something.”

Garth laughed, then coughed as his side pained him.

Katherine frowned. “Should I break the speed limit? How bad is it?”

“I’m fine.”

Katherine glared at him. Garth sighed, the tiniest smile twitching at the corner of his mouth.

“It hurts like a bitch, but a few good painkillers, getting the damn metal out of me and stitching me back together will have me good as new. Hillon will have some good Scotch sitting in a cupboard somewhere. A good slug of that, a handful of codeine and I’ll be back on board as if nothing’s happened.”

“So stubborn,” she muttered, more to herself than him. Even in the close confines of the car he must have heard, for he laughed.

The tension broken for the moment, a comfortable silence fell between them. Katherine grew lost in her thoughts as she skirted a few of the traffic laws to get them both at the good doctor’s home in near record time. She pulled into Hillon’s driveway and parked the car, not fussed that she blocked the doctor’s vehicle.

Katherine unsnapped her seatbelt, opened the door and had half climbed out before she turned around to watch Garth. While he moved far more slowly than usual, he managed. The thought of offering him some help flitted across her mind, but then she remembered the man’s pride and stubbornness.

Katherine climbed out of the car and waited until Garth was steady on his feet before she slammed the door shut and walked beside her lover up to the doctor’s home.

“Next time you can get shot,” Garth muttered in complaint.

Katherine rang the doorbell multiple times as she tossed her hair at him and sniffed in mock disdain.

“If I were shot you’d have not only killed those two imbeciles, James and Robert, but you’d have carried me back to the car and sworn a blood oath of getting revenge and making their lives miserable,” she remarked. “I’d have put up a fight, but finally would’ve let your idiot masculine ego win. You’ll note I’m not coddling you, not weeping and wailing and having feminine hysterics. Frankly I think you should be grateful for small mercies.”

“That’s a fair point,” he conceded, seeming to think it over.

Before Katherine could speak further the front door opened. A short, round man with flyaway grey hair stood in the doorway. He glanced from Katherine to Garth, then lowered his gaze to the damp, stained shirt and Garth’s bloodied hand clenched around his side.

“I’m glad I haven’t made breakfast yet,” the elderly man remarked. He stepped back and allowed them both entrance.

Katherine entered, followed by Garth. They stood in the front hallway as Dr Hillon closed and locked the door.

“Head on back, you know the surgery,” he said. Katherine turned and began to walk back as Dr Hillion spoke to Garth, an amused tone in his voice.

“I’ll expect you’ll be grateful for a slug of my Scotch, young man? I’ll need you to answer a few questions and then, once I survey the damage, I’ll decide what I can give you.”

“You mean this is one of those answer the question correctly and I’ll give you the good stuff?” Garth asked with a chuckle. Dr Hillon laughed in reply.

“Heavens, no! If you lie to me I’ll find out soon enough from your reactions to the dose of antibiotics or painkillers I inject you with. Once a patient lies to me I refuse to treat them again. Too hazardous. No, my boy, what I meant was depending on the dose and style of shots I will need to administer, there are varying risks of you losing your breakfast as well as my Scotch. There’s no sense in my wasting the expensive drink if the chances are great you’ll lose it a few minutes later. I’ll give you the cheap stuff if that’s the case.”

The entire situation seemed surreal to Katherine as she entered the small, clean room Hillon used to patch up agents and other assorted acquaintances. He ran a pro bono day clinic sometimes, eager to do his bit. She moved over to one side of the room and leaned against the windowsill.

Garth climbed onto the padded steel gurney–style bed. He gingerly tugged his shirt up over his head, his face losing colour as the movement aggravated his wound. “That sounds fair, doc. Fire away, I need that drink right now. Or a shot of codeine. Preferably both.”

The doctor smiled, pulled on a pair of gloves and moved a small lamp to shine it on Garth’s bloodied side. He bent to study the wound.

“Let’s start with the hour and items of what you last ate and drank, whether you’ve taken any drug—prescribed or non—in the last seventy-two hours and how the hell you managed to get shot at such an angle by a medium calibre handgun.”

“Well…” Garth hesitated. Katherine had to look out of the window to stop the incredible urge to laugh. Her lover looked like a schoolboy at the doctor’s office with a set of scraped knuckles and a broken nose trying to explain how it wasn’t his fault he’d got into the scuffle. Sir, it was the other boy who’d started it.

Her partner was in excellent hands. The tightly wound ball of stress pressing against her heart eased. She’d been scared silly, though not able to show it. Dr Hillon would not be taking this blasé, amused approach with Garth’s wound had it been serious.

Everything would be all right now. She just knew it.

Chapter Five

“You can’t possibly mean that. The moment I have some privacy the first thing I do is look at the damage,” Garth insisted from his bathroom.

The door remained open and he called out to her in the kitchen, where Katherine was making a pot of tea. Adding in the leaves to steep, she placed the lid on to keep the water warm, added two mugs onto the tray and carried it into the living room. Careful not to spill any, she placed it on the coffee table. Her feet deliciously bare, she walked down the hall to lean against the doorframe of the bathroom and watched her lover.

He’d stripped down to his boxers, his jeans stained and his shirt ruined from the caked blood. The jeans were thrown half into the hamper, one leg still dangling on the floor. The shirt had been tossed straight into the bin. Garth had sponged the worst of the blood and iodine from his skin and now studied Hillon’s stitchery in the large bathroom mirror that hung over the sink.

“I’ve never had stitches,” Katherine admitted, almost embarrassed. “I’ve had plenty of cuts and scrapes, even got myself a few nice scars. But I’ve never been shot and never required stitches for any of the bumps and bruises I’ve collected over the years. So no, Garth, I don’t usually dash off to look at the damage first chance I get. I will grudgingly admit, when I realised you’d been shot, my first concern was with how bad it was, but I put that down to the adrenaline.”

She put a teasing twist on her final comment, it being true as far as the words went, but not the real reason she’d been near desperate to survey the damage to her love and assure herself it wasn’t critical. Garth slanted her a hot glance and reached out to take her hands in his.

She let him pull her close, press her arse back against the edge of the porcelain sink and wrap his arms around her body. Tilting her head up, she met him halfway for a searing kiss that scorched her senses.

“What happened to my reward for being such a good patient?” he asked, a laugh in his tone. Katherine licked her lips, amusement crinkling her mouth into a smile.

“Considering the rich taste of Scotch on your tongue, my love, I would say you’ve been amply rewarded for being such a good boy.”

“That wasn’t what I had in mind,” he insisted as he got busy unsnapping her jeans and pushing them down her legs. Katherine bent to help tug the pants over her ankles, though she was not convinced he was up to ravishing her just now. Surely he ached. Since Hillon had given him two shots, one of penicillin and one of codeine, Garth had been acting pretty much his usual self once again, just moving a bit more stiffly than she had become used to.

Frisky play, however, she figured must have been out of his reach.

Perhaps she was wrong.

“Garth, I really don’t think—”

“Are you reneging on your side of the deal, Kate?” he asked. Kate frowned, perplexed.

“What?”

“Are you calling shortbread? Does the thought of having anal sex with me really not make you hot and jittery, because working on your earlier reactions I was positive that wasn’t the case.”

“What?” Kate repeated, then shook her head. “Of course I’m not reneging. But, Garth, you’ve just been shot. You should be lying in bed badgering me for cups of tea and slices of toast and whining about me not letting you have the remote or something. Not looking for the lube to give my arse a delicious reaming and chomping my anal cherry.”

At her final comment, somewhat more detail than she’d been planning on sharing with him, his eyebrows rose.

“I get to chomp your cherry?” he repeated, sounding delighted. “That makes getting shot almost worthwhile, sweetheart.”

Katherine couldn’t help it, she laughed. He must’ve known very well that she’d have let him fuck her in the arse without getting shot, but to take such a view on the situation struck her as funny.

As she chuckled, Garth lifted the hem of her T-shirt up over her head and tossed it into a corner of the room. Katherine twisted her arms behind her and unclasped her bra, sliding the straps down and freeing her breasts. The lacy scrap dropped onto the floor. Stark naked, she shivered a little in the cool room, but the heat radiating from Garth’s body made up for the low temperature.

She cupped her hand around his hardening cock. Katherine dipped her fingers under the waistband of his boxers and felt the heat of his soft skin stretched over his thick prick. She stroked him from the base of his shaft right up to the tip, caressing him multiple times as he moaned his approval.

A few tugs and his boxers fell to the floor. Garth stepped out from them and leaned over to open a drawer in the vanity next to the sink. He removed a foil packet and a small tube of lubricant.

“Turn around, sweetheart,” he muttered huskily.

Katherine paused for a second before obeying him. She still didn’t want him hurting himself from overexertion, but her nipples had peaked and excitement tingled through her body. She craved this wicked man, her partner, and if he felt up to it she longed to feel his cock reaming her arse, penetrating her as deeply as it was physically possible for a man to do.

She wanted him. It all boiled down to the simple fact that she desired him.

“Grab on to the edge of the basin,” he ordered.

Katherine complied, but turned her head and shoulders around so she could watch him as he squeezed a large amount of the fluid onto his index and middle fingers. He slicked the lube around with his thumb and rested the tube on the edge of the porcelain near the taps. With his free hand he spread her arse cheeks wide apart, her tiny puckered hole clenching.

“So tiny, so tempting,” he murmured.

Without further teasing, he stroked the tip of his index finger over the outside skin of her hidden entrance. The moisture transferred easily and soon he screwed the tip of his finger into her hole. Katherine’s breathing turned ragged from the incredible pressure of the intense penetration.

Twisting his finger, he opened her further and slicked the inside of her passage. He corkscrewed left and right, then alternated that with the finger-fucking thrusts of a deepening penetration. Katherine’s head bowed as her body trembled. Her back arched, her shoulders dipped down and this stretched her spine and flared her arse to unclench her inner muscles.

“That’s it, sweetheart,” Garth muttered satisfied. “Open to me. Give yourself over to the blinding passion a good arse-fucking can bring.”

“You’re not going to fit,” she moaned. “I can barely fit your finger, Garth. It’s not possible to squeeze your cock in here.”

“I’ll prove you wrong,” he replied, arrogant. Utterly certain. “But I’ll tell you a secret, sweet Kate. A man like me, I want you to beg me not to. That just makes it hotter. See, I can read your body, the way you arch into my possession, the way your breath hitches, the trembling along that slender line of your spine. You love this, you crave it. Beg and plead all you want, hell tell me to stop, tell me how small you are and how I stretch you to breaking point. Say I’ll split you wide. I want to hear all that and still I’ll ram it in harder.”

Garth’s words were making her hot. Her pussy had grown slick during his little speech, her cream flowing across her lower lips as heat suffused her core. Not only would her pleading make him want her more, but it got her own juices pumping.

His finger fucked her arse hard. Katherine moaned as he slowly pressed his middle finger inside her arse to join his first digit.

Suddenly, she wanted to make him as hot as she felt. Her nipples ached from the need to be caressed, her clit burned with desire and hunger. Katherine could feel her orgasm build inside her and knew she’d not last long once he penetrated her with his cock. Taking his words for truth, Katherine wanted to have Garth lose control as much as she knew she soon would.

Lifting her head, she caught sight of herself in the mirror. Her cheeks were flushed, her blonde hair spilling out of its ponytail and framing her face, strands brushing her shoulder. Better still, with a small turn of her head she could see Garth clearly behind her, his gaze hot and filled with lusty need. She could see his fingers pumping and feel the answering pressure in her full, tight arse.

The scenario took on a whole new dimension as she realised she could watch him fuck her arse without giving herself neck strain. Trembling, she lowered one hand to stroke her clit, the other hand clenching the cool porcelain for support.

“No, Garth,” she said in a soft tone, “stop. Don’t ream my arse.”

His fingers paused and he caught her gaze in the mirror. She gave him her richest, most secret, feminine smile ever. She tried to communicate with her eyes how she wanted to bring his fantasy to life as much as her own. She tried to repeat his words back to him as best she could recall them.