Amy Andrews - Rescued by the Dreamy Doc

‘Now,’ Callie cried, her hips rising off the bed.

Sebastian looked down at her. Her skin was flushed like an exotic jungle bloom, lush and open before him. He kissed her hard. ‘One moment.’

Sebastian, his heart thundering in his ears, heard her mewed protest. He found his jeans, located his wallet, extracted a condom, and was back by her side in twenty seconds flat.

‘Now,’ he said, lowering his head further to drop a string of kisses around the base of her throat, his tongue tracing the line of her necklace, ‘where were we?’

Callie felt the heat lick at her. ‘Here,’ she said, grasping the firm globes of his buttocks and rubbing herself against him.

Sebastian didn’t need any further invitation. Her scent filled his head and it was the easiest thing in the world to slide into her, feel her tight around him, her fingernails pressing into his shoulder blades. And when she asked for more, he gave it, and when she wanted it faster, he picked up the pace, and when she cried out, his voice joined hers.

And when she went over the edge, he joined her.

It was quite some hours later they finally lay sated in a post-coital drowse among tangled sheets. Callie lay on her back, Sebastian’s shoulder a perfect pillow. His arm crossing her chest was warm and vital and his fingers trailing up and down her arm kept the hum in her cells, the thrum in her blood on a steady burn.

‘So. the bridge?’

Callie’s eyes snapped wide-open, the malaise invading her bones and infecting her thought processes evaporating in a heartbeat. The hum and the buzz snuffed out.

‘Sebastian.’

He regretted it immediately as her body tensed. All that languid warmth draped against him seemed to still and then tauten. ‘Come on, Callie.’ He ran a finger down her arm and felt her flinch. He stopped.

‘Something happened back at the restaurant. If Gerri’s to be believed, I think it has something to do with what happened on the bridge this morning.’

Callie vaulted up, pulling the sheet with her and leaving Sebastian exposed—not that she cared. She squirmed to the side of the bed, her feet finding the floor. She sat forward, her elbows on her bare thighs, her hands supporting her head. The only person who knew the story was Gerri. And that was the way she preferred it.

Her heart somersaulted in her chest at the mere thought of confiding in anyone else. ‘Gerri should mind her own damn business.’

Sebastian rolled on his side. The golden skin covering the long column of her spine, the graceful arc where shoulder met neck, the dimples in the small of her back all tempted him. Sitting hunched over like this, as far away from him as possible, she looked so alone.

Still, she hadn’t moved off the bed…

He reached out his arm and swept his palm down her spine. She didn’t flinch this time and he dared to run it back up again and rest it on her shoulder.

‘Maybe Gerri knows that sometimes talking to someone that you don’t know very well is easier.’

Callie snorted. ‘That’s a nice euphemism for virtual stranger.’

Sebastian wasn’t fooled by the sarcasm. He gave her shoulder a squeeze and dropped his hand to the bed. ‘Okay. How about I guess?’

Callie shook her head. Couldn’t he see she didn’t want to talk about this? ‘Just leave it, Sebastian.’

‘I’m thinking that you lost a client on that bridge. Maybe recently? Maybe someone you were negotiating with at the time who decided to end it all anyway?’

Callie was horrified to feel tears pricking at her eyes as a sudden flash of her brother’s anguished face flickered before her.

‘Someone you couldn’t help no matter how hard you tried.’

Callie heard Zack’s little voice asking for his daddy and sucked in a breath. She had tried.

So hard.

‘We can’t be all things to all people, Callie.’ On a deeply personal level, Sebastian knew that all too well. ‘It wasn’t your fault.’

She knew that. She did know it. But a familiar pain built in her chest anyway. And the pressure build-up behind her eyes was almost unbearable. A tear trekked down her face and the urge to unburden overwhelmed her.

For God’s sake, she’d just shared the most intimate thing two human beings could share. She’d been as physically vulnerable as it was possible to be with a man. But to feel such an emotional connection, a compulsion to open up, had been totally unexpected.

Sebastian watched her closely. Was she trembling? ‘Callie,’ he murmured, stroking her back again, ‘talk to me.’

Callie wiped at her face. His silky tone was so inviting. So soft. So understanding. If she didn’t say something, say what was on her mind, she was going to burst. And in some strange way she couldn’t understand, she trusted him. It was bizarre, she knew that. She barely knew him but she knew she could tell him this.

She shut her eyes as the stroke of Sebastian’s palm encouraged her more. Somehow it was easier to say, to admit, with her eyes closed, in the dark.

‘It was …my brother. Not a client. My brother committed suicide from that bridge eight years ago yesterday. I was there, talking to him, trying to talk him down, but…’

Sebastian’s hand stilled. This he hadn’t expected. He sat up and shuffled over to her, opening his legs, snuggling her into the V between his thighs. His powerful quads bracketed hers. His feet rested on the floor beside hers. He wrapped both arms around her waist and pulled her against him. ‘I’m sorry.’

Callie opened her eyes and sagged against him as if she’d just had a ten-tonne bock of concrete lifted from her shoulders. She bit her lip. ‘It was a long time ago.’

Sebastian nuzzled her neck and dropped a kiss on her shoulder. ‘What was his name?’

Callie faltered. Tears welled in her eyes. Nobody involved in the case back then had ever been particularly interested in his name. He had just been a system failure. A chart number. And people who knew she’d been Zack’s aunt and guardian had been too embarrassed or polite to ask.

She was curiously touched by the way he’d just humanised her brother.

‘Andrew.’

Sebastian rested his chin on her shoulder. ‘Did Andrew have problems or…?’

‘He was a schizophrenic.’

‘Ah.’

Callie drew in a ragged breath. It hurt to talk about him. But it was nice to acknowledge his existence after years of avoiding the topic.

‘In and out of psych wards from the age of sixteen. He was non-compliant with his meds and…transient… homeless for the last few years…’

The ugly scene at the restaurant came back to Sebastian and things clicked into place. ‘That must have been difficult.’

Callie remembered those years of trying to help, trying to save him, trying to get him to see reason. Trying to be sister, mother and health professional, and failing at all of them. Learning the hard way that you just couldn’t help someone who didn’t want to be helped.

‘The voices just got too much for him.’

‘I’m sorry,’ he said again. If anyone knew how mental health issues could affect family life it was him. Sebastian was quiet for a bit and they sat in a strange kind of solidarity that had little to do with the amazing sex they’d had for the last four hours.

After a while he moved back onto the bed and she followed him, turning into his side and draping an arm over his chest.

‘Is that why you became a psych nurse?’ he asked into the silence that stretched between them but somehow didn’t feel unnatural.

Callie didn’t answer for a moment, then she flipped over so she was lying on her stomach, her chin propped on his shoulder. She didn’t know why she was telling him this. Any of it. She just knew it felt right.