Chapter One
“What in the name of all that is holy makes you think I want to do that?”
Melinda stood clutching the prissy, expensive silk robe around her thin frame. Her ice-blue glare sliced through Kieran’s horniness like a Ginsu knife.
“You need a shower,” his model-gorgeous fiancée declared, shifting to the left when he tried to snag her for a grope, or at least a kiss. “You smell like acne.”
Even as he held the expensive champagne in one hand and observed her reaction, he got a whiff of high school emanating from his pores. Sweaty teenagers, bleach, pencil lead with a distinct underlay of old vomit—odors he’d become immune to during his last few months as a history teacher—floated across his consciousness.
Fury raced up his spine and hit his lower brain like a sledgehammer. The small bang the bottle made when it slammed down on the table gave him minimal satisfaction. Temper tantrums were not his style. His peacemaking role in his riotous family of Italian/Irish-American siblings had prepared him for any conflict. He could manage this.
I have to.
I love her.
We’re getting married.
Everything will be fine.
Even as the words crossed his lips he winced at his lameness, “Okay, babe. I’ll shower. Put this on ice though, would ya? I could use a drink.” He glanced down at the bottle of fizzy white wine he could barely afford but did buy regularly, because she loved it.
Bourbon would be better.
A lot of it.
And then to crawl under Melinda’s fluffy comforter on her giant bed and screw until they couldn’t walk. Then have more bourbon. He’d suggested that very thing on a whim. Which had earned him the bleating protest.
She padded closer on bare feet, her tempting form visible under the robe, backlit from the hallway. Cursing under his breath for wanting to get laid so badly, he bit the inside of his cheek to keep from begging her to go to bed with him. It had been over a month since they’d had sex, he justified. Her lips curved downward when she got a look at the label.
“Aw, sweetiekins, I told you. This is not the real thing.” Tapping it with an immaculately manicured finger, she used her sing-songy, lecturing-Kieran-about-expensive-booze voice. “I mean....” She shrank from him ever so slightly when a strange noise burbled up from his throat. “You know.” Tucking the bottle under one arm she let the creamy silk gape open, revealing her angular body to his eager gaze. “It’s fine. Don’t be mad, pookie.” She traced her fingers along one breast, her full lips pouty.
Relaxing the fists he didn’t remember clenching, Kieran acknowledged the pounding in his head that must be hunger, or thirst, or extreme blue balls. His throat constricted as her fingers kept moving down her stomach, reached the upper edge of the neat, sparse triangle of pubic hair before she stopped, giggled, and pecked him on the cheek like a little kid. Sashaying away, leaving him salivating like a randy Pavlov’s dog, she called out over her shoulder, “Shower first. Then we’ll talk about the other.”
His head pounded while his neglected, eager dick pressed against his zipper.
What the hell have I done? How can I possibly tell her I’ve just spent the last thirty minutes in the principal’s office of my high school alma mater, where I got hired six months ago, being pink slipped for next year?
“Don’t forget, I’m out of town after today, for the weekend, ’kay?” Her voice wafted from down the hall.
“Yeah.” He stripped, climbed into her expensive expanse of tile and cranked all six shower heads on full blast. “So once I’m clean, can we fuck? I mean, make love ’cause I am one hard-up dude, pookie,” he said as he jacked off so he could make it through the next few hours with her.
Chapter Two
Cara caught a flash of red hair atop a tall, familiar body the second she looked away from her computer. Face flushed hot, she glanced down at the screen to reabsorb the alarming news that not only would she be now taking on patients at three different locations, the clinic owners had reneged on her raise. Warring emotions made her stomach churn. But when she met Kieran Love’s deep-green eyes, twinkling as usual and focused solely on her, it sent a jolt of serenity through her psyche.
“Hey, gorgeous,” he said, as he slipped out of his sweatshirt. “Ready for the torture session?”
She blew out a breath and got to her feet, wishing she’d worn her newer scrubs today, even as she shook her head at such an absurd thought. He’d already climbed onto the tall treatment table in anticipation of their hour or so together. She must have sighed out loud because he frowned and put a large palm over hers.