Page 69 of Puppy Love

No mortal man was. All he needed was the sound of his name on her lips, a laugh issuing from between them, and he was done for.

“I like kissing you, Harrison,” she said the moment she pulled away, proving his point to perfection. ThatHarrisonalmost slayed him. “And I think you like kissing me too, but you’re a chicken.”

He stiffened. “I’m not a chicken.”

“Yes, you are, but only where I’m concerned. You think I’m sexy and you think I’m scary, but you refuse to admit that you like those two things together. You like them a lot.”

It was true. He did appreciate the combination of those two things, especially where Sophie was concerned. She was quite literally the most desirable woman he’d ever laid eyes on, and the fact that he cared less about that than he did for the fact that he’d fallen hard for her scared the shit out of him.

But he liked it. He liked it a lot.

“I’m never going to be a good boyfriend, Sophie,” he said, groaning again. It was much less effective this time, since her lips pressed against his, capturing most of his words. “I’m never going to be cheerful or pleasant or even all that likable.”

“I know.” Her mouth brushed his—softly at first at, then with increasing urgency. As was always the case when this woman started pushing, he let her in.

“And there’s a good chance I’ll say something wrong—maybe even make you cry.”

“I know,” she said again, her lips moving down his neck. She ran her palms flat against his stomach and lifted his jacket, exposing his abdomen as well as the two ports—one attached to the insulin pump via a small cord, the other attached only digitally. He wasn’t squeamish about very many things and had no problems testing his blood sugar in front of others, but he’d always made it a point to remove the pump and put on a patch before things got too far with a woman.

Whirring mechanical devices weren’t exactly sexy, but he needed to keep them on while his body regulated itself. Which meant they’d have to slow down. They’d have to wait. He’d have to sit here with a cock so hard it could crack ice…

Sophie, however, didn’t so much as blink. Nor did she stop what she was doing.

He barely had a chance to get over the shock of it, of Sophie tugging off his clothes with an urgency that bordered on the frantic, before she started working her way inexorably down his body. No part of him was left untouched, her lips pressing against his pecs and his abs and—oh God—farther still, until she reached the line where his jeans hung low his hips.

“Sophie, stop. Wait.” It was an agony to stop her as her hands reached for his belt buckle, but he had to do it. “My pump… I can’t …”

She peeked up at him, a playful dance in her eyes as she continued her assault on his senses. Before he knew what was happening, she had his fly undone and was greedily tugging at his jeans.

“You think you’re the first guy I’ve been with who’s hooked up to medical equipment?” she said. “For that matter, you think I’ve never gotten down and dirty with my own IV in? Oh, Harrison, you sweet innocent. I came of age in a hospital, remember?”

He stilled again, but this time out of incredulity. “Wait, what? Are you talking about your leukemia?”

“Of course. What else would I be talking about?”

“But you were a kid.” The words came out as an accusation—mostly because they were. “You were sick. What the devil were they doing to you there?”

There was so much laughter in her eyes it was like looking into another world. “They weren’t doing anything to me. Well, not unless thetheyin question were the other kids on the ward. Oh, man. There was this boy with Hodgkin’s who could do the most amazing things with his—”

Harrison held up a hand, his whole body rigid. “I don’t want to hear it. I thought hospitals were supposed to be a place of healing, of convalescence. Not dens of juvenile vice.”

Sophie tilted her head and blinked up at him, looking the picture of virtue. “That shows how little you know about the real world, doesn’t it? You wouldn’t believe some of the parties we used to have. It’d be all fun and games and Methotrexate, but the second the nurses turned their backs…”

“You wicked little monster. Don’t say it.”

“…orgy time.”

His whole body shook with laughter. There was nothing funny about the things she was telling him. The idea of a young, fragile Sophie lying in a bed somewhere, struggling to make it through each day, was a thing that made his chest grow tight. She’d suffered and suffered heavily, and no amount of making out with other kids behind closed doors could make that okay.

But he laughed anyway. Whatever trials she’d gone through, she’d managed to come out intact. Intact and, well, happy.

He wished he knew how.

“All those tangled IVs and anti-nausea drugs…” She heaved a mock sigh. “It wasn’t always pretty, but we did the best we could. You don’t know sexual resourcefulness until you sit down with a group of teenagers who don’t dare let their heart rate monitors get high enough to set off alarms. The trick is to switch them when the doctors aren’t looking.”

“Okay, now you’re just making things up.”

“I guess you’ll never know, will you?” she asked, a coy lift to her brow. “The misdeeds of my youth aren’t a story for someone as uptight and proper as you.”