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‘It was a...concern.’
Then he was moving back over her, nestling himself between her legs as his hands moved under her shoulders and he rested on his forearms above her.
‘Then let me put your mind at ease. We have a long, long night ahead of us.’
Whatever witty response she might have come out with was chased from her head as he nudged against her hot, wet core. It was too much, and at the same time not enough. She sucked in a deep breath, her legs parting slightly further as his amused eyes caught hers.
‘You were saying?’
She shook her head and bit her lip, unable to speak. And then he thrust into her. Hard and strong and deep, stretching her in a way that felt more delicious than uncomfortable. As though she’d been made for him; they’d been made for each other. She shifted instinctively and he groaned, making her feel sexy and powerful all over again. Archie watched him in fascination, his face pulled tight as though he was trying to control himself, as though she made him feel unrestrained.
She couldn’t help it, this wanton side of her that seemed to be taking over tonight. Lifting her legs, she wrapped them around his waist, locking her heels at his back, drawing him even deeper into her slick, welcoming heat. He groaned again and it pulled at something low in her, and then his eyes caught hers, smoky and strong, the colour of richest brandy, his intent undisguised. Archie’s breath hitched somewhere in her chest. All she could do was dig into his arms, his shoulders, as he began to move. A dance as old as time and a pace equally as steady. Her body was helpless to do anything but match it, stroke after stroke, thrust after thrust, his eyes never leaving hers.
She had no idea how long they moved together. A lifetime. Maybe longer. As though she had never been meant to be anywhere else but here. With Kaspar. Better than any of her dreams if only for the simple fact that this was real.
At some point he swept his hand down her side, her already sensitive body shivering at the feather-light touch, and then he was touching her at the centre of her need and there was nothing feather-light about it at all. He knew exactly what he was doing. And how much pressure he needed to exert.
Archie gasped and arched her back, her hips, her neck. She wanted to tell him to slow down, not because she didn’t want this but because a tiny part of her couldn’t stand the thought that he might leave as soon as this was all over, but her tongue refused to work. At least as far as talking was concerned. Instead, she slid her hands down his back, her nails leaving their own exquisite trail, and he shuddered and growled, plunging into her more deeply. So desperate and demanding and right. It threw her straight back over the cliff edge until she was tumbling and tumbling, and she didn’t care where she landed so long as it was with Kaspar.
And as she called out his name, surrendering herself completely to him, this time Kaspar followed.
CHAPTER FIVE
‘FOURTEEN HOURS OF surgery and it all comes down to this.’ Kaspar grinned with satisfaction at his team. A reconstruction and rehabilitation procedure on a patient who had lost almost all of his upper jaw and teeth almost a decade earlier, following oral cancer surgery.
‘Yeah, rebuilding a man’s jaw and bone palate using advanced osteointegration and three-dimensional computerised design. It’s awesome.’
Kaspar glanced at the young surgeon. Rich, arrogant, the son of a renowned surgeon, he came across entitled and lacking in empathy, but he was a solid surgeon, if only Kaspar could find a way to steer him.
‘More than the medical kudos, it’s going to be life-changing for our patient. He’d become almost hermit-like, unable to venture out without people pointing and staring.’
‘I guess. But, still, we’re, like, in ground-breaking territory here.’
Normally, today’s surgery was exactly the kind of challenge on which Kaspar thrived. Had always thrived.
But despite his triumph, Kaspar was preoccupied. He had been ever since that stolen t
ime with Archie almost five months ago.
Five months in which he hadn’t been able to get her out of his head. The way she sounded, smelt, tasted. Night after night his body ached for her, in a way it never had for any other woman. He told himself it was just the sex, that he didn’t recall the walks, the laughter, the shared memories with such clarity. He refused to admit to whatever alchemy went on in his hollow, astringent chest. Even so, one night hadn’t been enough. He’d had to eke out the weekend, then an extra day. Even that hadn’t sated the yearning he had for her.
Yearning.
Him.
Every day had been a battle not to contact her. Even whether or not to send her flowers when he’d seen the date a couple of months earlier and had realised it was her birthday. Every day he’d prayed for challenges like this one to walk into his consultation room, if only to have somewhere else to pin his focus.
But it always came back to Archie. And whether, if he took up the offer to return to the UK next month, he should contact her or not.
‘I mean, think of it this way,’ the younger man enthused, pulling Kaspar back to the present, ‘using implant bone to live and grow around a titanium plate, being able to create the bone and tissue to support an implant of a whole new set of teeth. Traditionally we’d have had to use plates and grafts and cadavers.’
‘And our patient,’ Kaspar continued firmly. ‘Being able to speak and be understood, or to eat food or have a drink without fluid spilling from his sinuses and mouth.’
But the young surgeon was only interested in the surgery, and Kaspar didn’t have the inclination to lecture as he might otherwise have done. His head was too full of Archie.
He’d told himself he was too damaged. Too selfish. Too destructive. Especially for someone as bright and vibrant as Archie Coates was. He’d kept an ocean between them with the excuse that he was protecting her. But the truth was that he was concerned about her. The longer they’d spent together, the more he’d noticed that she’d seemed to have lost a little of the special lustre he remembered about her. As though life had somehow scratched at her when it shouldn’t have. Her father’s death, the idiot husband she’d mentioned, maybe even Robbie emigrating.
Whatever it was, something in him ached to be the one to take her pain away.
