Angela Knight - Unbound

“I can hear them,” he said, unwinding it from around his ear. “They can’t hear me unless I want them to. And believe me, after all this time, I want it to be just you and me.”

Her breath hitched. Could he be saying what she thought he’d said? What she wanted him to say? She started to undo his shirt buttons, one by one. Taking the fabric in her fists, she slowly pulled the shirt out of his pants, a deliberate, sexual echo of how she’d undressed him in her clinic not two days ago. He met her eyes with a heated look.

Parting the halves of his shirt revealed the long white bandage across his chest. She laid her palm over it.

“It’s practically healed,” he said. “What you did, the mix of water magic and medicine . . . Stars, Kelsey, you’re brilliant.”

He leaned down, kissing her, and she pushed the tux coat and shirt from his shoulders in one move. She flashed back to high school, to that day when he’d first entered the halls after growing up and out practically overnight. She remembered not believing that the skinny, funny kid in baggy clothes had transformed into this leanly muscled young man . She recalled wondering what his new body might feel like, whether he would have been firm or if he’d have deflated like a cartoon.

Now she knew. And he was hot and hard and oh so real.

Her fingers started on his pants zipper.

“Here?” he growled, even as he pressed in closer. “Are you sure?”

“After all this time,” she said, stealing his words, “ yes .”

His pants fell to the floor.

“We have so much to talk about”—he touched her wrist and pulled her to stand—“ after .”

“We do.”

He slowly pulled down her stretchy, clingy dress and caught it near her knees, letting her step out of it.

He ran his tongue along the inside of his bottom lip as he took her in, whispering more praise in Ofarian. “I should have told you how gorgeous you looked before I took it off.” He straightened. “I should have told you that the night of our betrothal, and pretty much every day before or since. You always wear scrubs and that white coat, and I really don’t care, but I love the way you look dressed up. Your hair down—”

“David.” His words were too much. Her body thrummed in anticipation.

He blinked up from where he’d been staring at her chest. “Yeah?”

“Shut up,” she said. “Unless you want to tell me to come again.”

Even in the darkness she could see his Cheshire grin. He scooped her closer, pressing her aching nipples into the gauze over his chest. She tried to pry herself away, afraid of further injury, but he wouldn’t let her, and she gave up her half-assed fight rather quickly. Gave up thinking like a doctor.

Their kiss turned frantic and fast, teetering on the edge of pain. Little lights zoomed at her periphery and she had no idea if it was from oxygen deprivation or just . . . him. There were too many things she wanted to do to him. Too many things she wanted him to do to her.

She slid her fingers beneath the elastic of his underwear, taking them down. He kicked them aside. And then David Capshaw, the thick, hard length of him, was in her hands.

Twelve years of dreaming could never conjure the real thing. Twelve years of self-torture and pining, and he was finally hers. Maybe just for tonight, but that was okay. Two months ago he’d made it clear he hadn’t wanted her forever. Maybe forever was overrated. Maybe tonight was the peak. If that was the case, she wasn’t going to waste time thinking about the descent. She’d stand on the very top of the world and enjoy the ever-loving hell out of it.

“Kelse?” David slid his hand under her hair. She still had him in her grip, and his breath labored. “Where’d you go?”

She blinked, disconcerted to find her vision a little blurry with wetness. She kissed him to disguise it. “Nowhere. I’m right here.”

And then she gave him a nice, slow, smooth pull that made him groan. He stroked her face with his thumbs as she stroked his erection. Finally, with a grimace, he peeled her fingers off him and gave her shoulders a gentle push back onto the table. She lay down, the faux wood cool against her hot skin. He crawled over her, the feeble exit sign light casting his muscles in crimson.

As he lowered himself to his elbows, she hooked a knee around his hip, loving the feel of his skin against hers. When he took his cock in his hand and rubbed it over her wetness, she whispered, “Is this really happening?”

And then he pushed inside her with a sigh as deep as the ocean.

“It is.” He stared into her eyes. “Oh, my beautiful Kelsey, it is.”

Of all the stars in the sky, in this universe and the next, nothing burned as brightly or as fevered as the feel of David moving inside her. His hips carried the movement of the waves, pushing her higher and higher away from herself. Great stars, she was full of him—where he stretched her and stroked her down below, and where his wordless whispers filled her mind.

She clung to him, digging in, scoring him. Loving him.

“I want you to come again.” The demand timed with his thrusts. “I want to feel you. Around me. Come on, beautiful.”

Because she’d always been powerless against him, she obeyed again.

“Oh, yes .” He pumped faster now, driving into her with such determination and power that her body skidded backward on the table. She felt him pulse inside her—long, rippling waves of pleasure that he vocalized with deep, plaintive sounds.

He came down on top of her, pressing a kiss to the swell over her breast.

“It really happened,” she said, when her mind and body realigned.

He raised his head and looked at her with such grave intensity that, if she wasn’t more careful or smart, she might mistake for love. “It did.”

From the pile of clothes on the floor, his earpiece crackled, and she knew he’d been called away.

The next day, Kelsey was still riding high on last night’s adrenaline and rapture. She’d barely slept, the bedsheets too tantalizing on her skin. Her body craved more, her mind bursting with the memory of David over her. Inside her.

She always did her best work with this much positive energy pumping through her system. Over the years, she’d trained herself to harness it, aim it at her patients and research, and just work . Right then, she felt like she could cure cancer.

Even though she’d closed the clinic in observance of the Ice Rites that night, she needed to be there. In the cab on the way to the clinic, she ran her fingers over her lips that still tingled with David’s taste. After all this time , he’d told her, I want it to be just you and me . She caught the reflection of her secret smile in the window glass. The cabbie saw it, too, and told her to have a great day as she exited on the curb.

“I already have,” she replied, and tipped him way too much.

At street level, the clinic was labeled Ball Food Labs to protect its true nature from the Primaries. As she typed in her access code for the third-floor entrance, she was still smiling.

In the elevator, she mentally triaged what she had to do. She wanted to take a look at the reports from an animal bite treatment and then input what she’d glimpsed on David’s chest last night. She needed to examine him again. Thoroughly. Preferably with him inside her.

Great stars, where had her professionalism gone?

She shivered and had to force down a deep breath to control the wave of desire derailing her with thoughts of shoving her hand down her jeans. She should change. Putting on her scrubs and coat was like flipping on a switch—personal to professional. Entering the clinic, she headed straight for the locker room.