The Vixen and the Vet (10 page)

She grinned and turned the knob.

“Just so we’re clear,” she said, facing him from the center of the room, as he closed the door behind them. “I said ‘make out’ not ‘have sex.’”

His eyes widened as they always did when she shocked the hell out of him.

“I just wanted you to myself for a while,” she added quietly.

“It would have been pretty bold of me to just assume we were having sex, Savannah.”

She pushed her brown straight hair behind her ear, and his fingers twitched, remembering how soft her hair was. His nose remembered that it smelled like lemons. His body remembered that it was attached to her head, which was attached to the torso that held the most gorgeous breasts he’d ever had the privilege to touch. His pants started to tent again. He sat down quickly at the foot of his bed and crossed his leg over his knee.

Savannah surveyed the rest of his room. “As long as we’re on the same page. Oh.”

She crossed to his bureau, picking up a picture of him taken the summer he turned sixteen. It was the last picture ever taken of him with his parents. She caressed the glass, turning to face him. “Oh, Asher.”

Of course. She’d never seen him as he looked before the explosion. Now she knew. Now she knew just how bad it was. He looked away, ready to follow her to the door and back down the hall to the safety of his study, where they could sit in wingback chairs a foot apart and he could start telling her all about his time in the Army while his heart withered and died in his chest.

When he looked up, she was facing him with tears in her eyes, and he braced himself.

“Your parents,” she said.

He couldn’t speak.

“This is you with your parents.”

He nodded.

“I can’t imagine how much you must miss them.”

She placed the silver frame gently on his bureau and walked the few steps to sit beside him on the bed.

He turned to her. “Savannah,” he started, about to suggest they head to the study, saving her from having to make an excuse out of kindness or some misguided sense of obligation to him.

“Asher,” she said, placing a hand on his chest and pushing him back until he was lying on the bed and she was lying beside him. “Kiss me.”

Thanking God for yet another reprieve, he rolled on top of her, bracing on his elbows as he palmed her cheek with fierce tenderness. “You terrify me.”

She smiled, wiggling beneath him before pushing her pelvis up against his. “I’m harmless.”

“You’re lethal.”

“I’m waiting.”

And then his mouth claimed hers, and she didn’t have to wait anymore.

***

Savannah reached up to run her fingers over the taut muscles of his back as he kissed her, his tongue reclaiming its captured territory from Wednesday night, and she sighed into his mouth, grateful to be with him again, grateful that everything she’d felt on Wednesday came back in a perfect rush of heat and lust and happiness.

God, what was happening to her? She was becoming this thing that needs Asher Lee. She could barely enter his house without demanding his mouth on hers, his body pressed against hers, his tongue stroking and laving and sucking on hers. She was losing perspective. She was probably being stupid.

But right this minute, with the glorious weight of his body on hers, it just didn’t matter. Nothing mattered but being with him and making the most of every moment. She ran her hands down his back to his waist and loosened his shirt and undershirt, pushing both up his back until his skin was exposed, hot and hard beneath her fingers. He pulled away from her mouth just long enough to grab both shirts behind his neck and tug them over his head, finding her lips again as he rolled her to her side, slipping his hand beneath her T-shirt as his tongue sucked on hers.

All she wanted was to feel her skin flush and hot against his, so she reached back, unfastening her bra so that he had an easier time shoving her shirt and bra over her head with one hand. And then there was nothing between his chest and hers. Nothing.

He reached for her breast, gently kneading the overstimulated skin as he kissed her chin, her neck, the valley at the base of her neck. And then his head dipped lower to capture one hard nipple between his lips, swirling his tongue around it before sucking gently.

A bolt of lightning shot from her nipple to the aching flesh between her thighs and she arched her whole body upward to the source of her pleasure. She moaned softly as he moved to the other breast, loving the tight pink flesh with his tongue before lightly sucking
it as he had its twin.

Savannah plunged her hands into his hair, flinching and bucking beneath him, praying he wouldn’t stop. Her whole body felt electric, tight and hot deep inside where want coiled like an undetonated bomb, waiting for release, praying for relief.

“Asher,” she whispered. “Please …”

Still licking and sucking on her nipple, he slipped his hand into the waistband of her shorts, under her panties, over the soft curls and into the folds of flesh where he found her swollen bud and stroked it gently.

A strangled sound came from Savannah’s throat as her head bucked back into the pillow, the dueling sensations of his mouth on her nipple and his finger on her swollen flesh almost too sweet to bear. The pressure started to build inside her, and she felt his fingers enter her as his thumb took over the mind-blowing stroking of her sex.

“Oh God, don’t stop,!” she moaned, then cried out as his teeth grazed her nipple and her whole body arched upward, convulsing and shuddering, rushing hot and wet and totally undone. He slid up her body and kissed her slack lips tenderly, then pulled her against his broad, bare chest and held her until she stopped twitching, until she could take a deep breath, until she could form a coherent thought once again.

***

“Was that as good for you as it was for me?” he asked, not even trying to conceal the satisfaction and teasing in his voice.

“Better,” she said, turning to him with glassy, amazed eyes.

“How are we feeling?”

“Like a goddess.” She took a deep breath and sighed. “For someone with one hand, you’re strangely like Vishnu. Everywhere at once.”

“You’ve got to work with what you’ve got.”

“Well, you certainly worked it.” She paused. “Practice makes perfect?”

“Quit fishing. I haven’t been with anyone since …”

“No one? In eight years? Jesus, Asher. How’s that been working out for you?”

“As you noted, I still have my hand.”

“Gross,” she said, trying unsuccessfully not to giggle. “So I’m …”

“The lucky beneficiary of eight years of pent-up lust.”

“Holy cow.”

“I might start calling you Isis. The cow-headed goddess.”

She braced herself on her elbow to look down at him with a withering gaze. “Don’t you dare.”

His eyes drank her in. “I’m crazy about you, baby.”

“Then kiss me again.”

An hour later, after plenty of kissing, she pulled her shirt back over her head, but they stayed in his bed, side by side, staring at each other. He pillowed his damaged face against his damaged elbow, imagining that he looked almost normal to her, not that she seemed to notice his disfiguration very much anymore.

“It’s Friday night,” he said. “You’re young and beautiful. Don’t you have a date?”

“Yeah. Here.”

“No one else in the wings?”

“Do you seriously think there’s a better orgasm to be found in Danvers than the one I just had in this bed, Mr. Magic Fingers?”

“I’m serious, Savannah.”

“Shut up, Asher. You’re annoying me.”

“Fine. But don’t say I didn’t give you an out.”

“Do I look like I want an out?”

“I have to hide here. You don’t.”

She frowned at him. “Do you?”

“Yes. I do. I scare little children. Hell, I scare adults.”

“You don’t scare
me
.”

“You’re an alien.”

“You sure know how to flatter a girl.”

“I told you I was unpolished.”

“Unpolished, my foot,” she said. “You’re more polished than
me
, Camp-Dooley-Deke-at-U.Va. I never met another man so hard on himself.” She leaned forward and kissed him gently. “Tell me about Maryland.”

He grimaced. He wasn’t ready to share the details of his trip to Maryland with her. It was too heavy, too serious. Skin grafts and facial reconstruction and prosthetic molds. He didn’t want her thinking about all of it when she was with him.

He shrugged. “They took a look at everything. It’s routine.”

“Do you ever think about … having work done?”

Damn, but he didn’t want to talk about this. Especially not with her. He tried to think of something to share that didn’t have anything to do with blood and gore and skull-splitting pain. “They, um, they have some pretty cool bionic hands.”

Her face brightened. “That sounds promising.”

“I hate wearing prosthetic limbs.”

“Why?”

“The wool socks that go over my arm are uncomfortable. I never got used to the fit of the sleeve, and the suction fit leaves my stump red for hours afterward. Maybe I never had a good fit, or maybe I didn’t give it enough of a chance. I worked up the muscle tone and strength of my left hand instead.”

“But you sound interested in this bionic hand.”

Grudgingly, he realized he was. He’d mostly mentioned it to veer the conversation away from surgeries, but now that they were actually discussing it, he had to admit how cool they were.

“
The technology’s amazing. The fingers can pick up anything a real hand can pick up. I watched another vet pick up a penny from a tabletop. It has knuckles, you know? And they attach it to the existing nerve so that my brain could actually give the signals for movement. I couldn’t believe it.”

Savannah smiled. “It
sounds
amazing.”

“Yeah. But I don’t know. I’d have to be fitted for it, learn how to use it. I do okay, you know? With what I’ve got?”
He was feeling uncomfortable with this entire conversation and defensive about accepting help and treatment, but he was also trying to keep his voice level and calm.

“You do great.” She reached up and touched his face with the backs of her fingers, and he leaned into her. “But you sounded excited. I hope you give it a try.”

He knew she was just trying to be nice. He knew that, and yet her comment really bothered him, because it implied that he was in need of improvements. And yes, he knew he was, but he didn’t like hearing her say it. “Why?”

“Because it might make your life better.”

Bingo. “My life’s fine.”

“Your life
isn’t
fine,” she said.

He recoiled like she’d smacked him
, the sudden adrenaline burst making him feel winded. “What?”

“Asher, you’re the bravest, smartest, most interesting person I’ve ever met. But by your own admission, you hide here. You’re letting your life pass you by when you should be living. A louse like Patrick Monroe should be hiding from the world.
You’re
a hero.”

“You have no idea what it’s like
,” he said, trying to stay calm, reminding himself that she was only trying to be kind, only trying to help.

“Do
you
? When’s the last time you went into town?”

“On Monday. To your house,” he said tightly.

“I mean to the store or a restaurant. There are a couple of great restaurants in Danvers.”

“They deliver
,” he tossed back.

“It makes me sad.
You
make me sad.”

“
Damn it
!” Pity? He didn’t want her goddamned pity. His heart quickened in repulsion and he cringed. He couldn’t bear for this woman – for Savannah, who made him feel sexy and alive for the first time in years – to see him through that lens, to offer him pity like he was a wounded weakling, like he wasn’t a man. His eyes narrowed as he lashed out at her. “God forbid
you
feel sad. If you don’t like the way I’m living my life, Savannah, you don’t have to be a part of it.”

She’d jumped when he cursed, and now she stared at him, shocked, her eyes wide as saucers.
“I—I didn’t mean
—”

“Believe me, I’ve heard it all before. I don’t need to hear it from you, too.”

“Oh,” she said softly, biting her lower lip. “Oh.”

He wasn’t looking for someone to change him, and if that’s what this was—Savannah Carmichael on a mission of mercy trying to help the poor crippled war hero find his way back to society’s loving bosom by way of bionic hands and facial reconstructions?—well, forget it. It was his body and his decision alone, and if that was her goal here, it was best to part ways now.

“Maybe you should go,” he bit out.

It was her turn to recoil as tears brightened her eyes. She rolled away from him, sitting up and swinging her legs over the side of the bed. Despite the pain in his head and his heart, he forced himself not to look, to stay focused on the ceiling.