by Linda Kage
The way her face lit up and she sucked in a breath told him the night before had been meaningful to her too. The pressure inside his ribcage grew hotter.
Biting her lip, she whispered, “Sure.”
He grinned—beamed really—and scooted to the far edge of the bed, patting the open space as he went. “Well, then crawl up here, sweetheart, and let’s get started.”
“Wha—” Her expressive eyes grew wide before she glanced at his face and then the doorway of the room. “We didn’t do that last night.”
Her innocence was going to be the death of him. Honestly! He loved how shy and yet totally sensual she could be. “But I want you close.” He put on the begging eyes, and by damn if that didn’t work.
She glanced toward the door again, telling him how tempted she was.
“What if I bump something? Your leg. Aren’t you in pain?”
“Na.” He lifted his morphine button. “See this little doohickey here? That’s my pain reliever. If anything hurts, I push it, and bam, just like that, no more pain.”
She looked so intrigued by the morphine pump, he didn’t have the heart to tell her he hated pushing that button because it always knocked him out and gave him horrific dreams.
“Are you sure I’ll fit?”
“As tiny as you are?” He snorted and patted the bed again. “Of course. Now get your cute tush up here, woman, before I start crying. You don’t want me to cry, do you?”
When he puckered out his bottom lip and feigned a pout, she rolled her eyes and grinned. “Oh, my God. You look ridiculous.”
“B-B-But, Tess.” He sniffled as if he was going to start bawling any second. “I need you close, right beside me.”
“Oh, all right,” she said, her face about ten shades of scarlet. “If it’ll make you hush and stop looking so pathetic.”
His grin was instantaneous. “It will.”
“You are such a faker.” She grumbled as she set what was left of his French fries on the side cart and gingerly climbed onto the hospital bed with him. But he just smiled and reached out his good hand to assist her up.
Being as large a guy as he was, there really wasn’t room for two people, but he didn’t care. To have her stretched out beside him, he’d make room.
“There,” he murmured once she was crowded in with her body squished right up against his. Oh, yeah. It was perfect. He smiled at her. “Comfy?”
She laughed. “No. Not at all.”
“Here.” Tucking her even closer, he turned and shifted her just enough so that they were facing each other, her cheek was resting against his chest and one of her legs had been wedged between his. “Better?”
Her gulp was so audible, he actually felt it in his own throat. When she lifted her face from his heart and looked up at him, the stiffy she’d given him when he’d first woken to her in his room paled in comparison to what his body experienced this time around. The heat that swirled through him consumed him from head to toe.
“How’s that?” he asked, ignoring how hoarse his voice had gone.
“Jonah.” Her voice wavered with anxiety. “We shouldn’t be doing this.”
“Why?” No way was he letting her off the bed just yet. “Aren’t you comfortable?”
She nodded. “Yeah. A little too comfortable.”
He grinned. “No such thing.” Then he bent his head and kissed her.
Chapter Nine
THE NERVE ENDINGS in Tess’s brain went on overload and fried out. It was impossible for her to process the fact that she was lying face-to-face on a hospital bed with a complete hottie as he kissed her like he meant it.
His hands tangled in her hair and tightened their grip, forcing her to tip her head up and meet his mouth more firmly. Then his tongue swept in, and she was a complete goner.
She knew she should stop him, but she found her fingers curling around the thin material of his hospital gown and urging him closer. He cupped her face, and she arched her body up until she could feel his erection through all the cloth separating them. When he slid his casted arm around her back and applied pressure at the base of her spine to bring them even tighter together, she broke away with a gasp.
“What’re we…this can’t be…I thought…” Whew, it was still hard for her to think. “I thought I was coming up here so we could to get to know each other better.”
He grinned, looking a little too full of himself. “You did. And I’m getting to know you a lot better. You taste really good.”
She groaned and closed her eyes before leaning forward to rest her forehead on his shoulder. Why had she let this get so far out of hand? This was so wrong. He wasn’t her boyfriend; he was a complete stranger, and she was totally deceiving him, completely taking advantage of his lack of memories.
But she felt so safe and warm snuggled up against his chest, as if she did know him and trusted him implicitly. Lord, she’d already trusted him with some of her deepest secrets last night.
“Jonah…” she started, knowing she’d gone way over the line with this whole charade. He wasn’t hers. She wasn’t his. And she was probably worse than his parents for slotting herself into his life when he didn’t know any better. She gulped. “I need to confess something to you.”
Band-Aid quick Bailey had called it, right?
She opened her mouth to spill everything but he whispered, “Don’t.”
Tess’s eyebrows furrowed. “Don’t what?”
His brown eyes flooded with panic as he shook his head. “Don’t confess anything. Please. It’s not like I’ll know any different until I get my memory back, anyway. Right?”
“But—”
He kissed her gently, effectively silencing her. Then, pulling back just enough to catch her gaze, he said, “I don’t like the look in your eyes. It’s telling me I’m not going to like what you have to say. So, don’t say it. If you cheated on me—or whatever—I don’t want to know tonight. Okay? I like how this is going. I don’t—” He squeezed his eyes closed. “You have no idea how much your visits help me. Just…Every time you walk through that door, I feel…” Shaking his head, he opened his lashes. “You don’t even know.”
Tess’s lips parted. She really needed to tell him now. If he was growing to depend on her like this, it was only making what she was doing to him that much worse.
As if he knew her mind, he caught a piece of her hair and gently tucked it behind her ear. “You can always tell me tomorrow. One more night won’t hurt anything.”
Damn, his powers of persuasion were much stronger than her conscience, and she always followed her ever-nagging, potent conscience.
But one glance into Jonah’s Abbott’s eyes, and she caved. “Okay,” she said. “Tomorrow, then.”
His relief was palpable. The kiss he planted on her melted the rest of her resistance. Tess curled into him, arching closer without realizing what she was doing until he hissed out a breath of pain and broke his mouth from her to grimace.
“Oh, my God.” She pushed against his chest. “I’m so sorry. Let me up.”
“No,” he gasped, tightening his grip on her.
What? Was he insane? “But I’m hurting you.”
His casted arm didn’t budge. “It’ll hurt more if you leave.”
“Jonah,” she begged, beginning to panic because the muscles in his face hadn’t loosened yet, telling her loud and clear that he was still in misery. “Don’t do this to me. You’re in pain. God, at least push your morphine button.”
He shook his head stiffly. “Hate that stuff. It always knocks me out and gives me nightmares.”
“But you said—”
“Some things are more tolerable than others. This is tolerable. Losing the rest of my time with you tonight is not.”
She sighed. “At least let me get off the bed so I won’t—”
“No.”
If both her arms had been free to do so, she would’ve thrown them up in the air in frustration. “You are so freaking stubborn, do you know that?”
Oh, now he was just rubbing it in. Not cool. “Yes,” she grumbled, then quickly added a “probably” so it wouldn’t sound like she was a complete pushover, even though she was.
“Good.” His mouth pressed against the pulse in her throat. “Now…what were we talking about again?”
“We weren’t.” She giggled because, geesh, his lips kind of tickled when he hit a sensitive spot right behind her ear. “You were demonstrating to me how frisky you were tonight.”
“Good plan. Let’s keep doing that.”
With another laugh, she nudged him in the shoulder. “Jonah. What if someone walks in?”
“They’ll just have to settle for watching, because there’s not enough room on this bed for a third person.”
Her scandalized gasp made him chuckle.
“God, I love shocking you,” he confessed. His warm touch soaked through the cotton of her shirt as he skimmed his hand from her hip and right up her ribcage until he toyed with the edges of her bra.
Tess totally didn’t mean to encourage him, but she bowed up her back, thrusting her chest firmly against his. Groaning, he slid his palm over her until he was cupping her through her clothes. When he began to knead her, she clamped her thighs around his leg and clenched her teeth to keep in all the feelings wanting to break free from every pore in her body.
“Jonah,” she gasped, gripping his shoulders.
“Damn,” he breathed, kissing the tip of her chin as she arched her neck back. “The way you say my name makes me want to be this guy you seem to think I am.” Then he kissed her jaw and next her throat. “Let me be that guy, Tess.”
The serious, heartbreaking tone in his voice made her glance at his expression. She wasn’t sure what had shifted him from playful to somber so quickly, but she was ready to take that trip with him, wherever he needed to go. Cupping his face in both her hands, she sent him a soft smile.
“You can be anything you want to be.”
He blinked, and in that one swish of the eyelashes, his brown eyes seemed to fill with tears. “What if I get my memories back and realize I’m horrible?”
Her chest clenched as if she were feeling his worries right along with him. This had to be a common one for amnesiac patients: fearing who they really were, wondering if they’d even like themselves.
“You’re not.” She kissed his cheek, even though her mind went back to his parents’ trailer, taking in the contempt in the father’s eyes. What kind of person did you have to be to make your own father despise you? Then again, Ted Abbott hadn’t exactly been the kind of person she would seek out for a character reference.
It didn’t really matter what Jonah had been like before. Right now, he was one of the most amazing people she’d ever met. He made her pulse race and, despite how gorgeous he was, he’d eased her nerves enough that she could open up to him and be herself.
He wasn’t a bad person.
“Seriously,” she teased, rubbing her nose against his. “Would I date a jerk?”
He studied her a moment before giving a reluctant smile. Interlacing his fingers with hers, he tipped their foreheads together. “I just want to be good enough to deserve you.”
Tess had no clue how to respond to that. To her, she wasn’t good enough for him. She was the one lying.
She was still wondering what to say when her stomach growled. Tess bit her lip, hoping he didn’t hear. But, dang it, Jonah arched an eyebrow.
“Either you’re hungry or your stomach just told me it wanted some personal space.”
It definitely didn’t want personal space. “I haven’t eaten since lunch,” she admitted, and she waved her hand to signal that it was no big deal. “But it’s fine. I’m just one of those people who doesn’t miss a meal…if you can’t tell.”
A scowl lit her fake boyfriend’s face as if she’d offended him. “No. I can’t tell,” he growled. “You’re so tiny I’d say you need to eat more meals.”
She sniffed. “I’m short. But I wouldn’t exactly call myself tiny.”
An ornery grin lit his face just before he smoothed his hand around to grasp her bottom and squeeze gently. She gasped, and his smile only grew.
“If you’re talking about this, I feel the need to state that men prefer a little curve to their women. And you are curved—” his hand wandered over to the next cheek “—to perfection.”
No one had ever been so free with her body. She knew Jonah didn’t know any better—he probably thought they did things like this all the time—but his boldness kind of turned her on. Okay, fine. It really turned her on, like, a lot.
“I’ll make you a deal.” His eyes sparkled as he grinned and kept stroking her bottom. “For every fact you tell me about yourself, I’ll share one of my beloved French fries with you. That way, you won’t have to starve, and I’ll still get to know you better.”
She nodded, tickled he still wanted to learn more about her. “But what should I give you for every fact you share about yourself?”
His face went briefly shuttered. “But I don’t know any facts about myself. Remember?”
Waving her hand, she rolled her eyes. “I meant about your new self.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“You can always have an opinion about something, whether you have memories or not.” When an idea hit her, she grinned. “For instance. You can have an opinion of whether you prefer kisses on the cheek…” She paused to set her lips softly against his scruffy start of a beard. “Or on the lips.”
When their mouths touched, he made a growling sound in the back of his throat. “Lips,” he said against hers. “Definitely the lips.”
She grinned. “I thought so.”
He cupped her face so he could kiss her some more. “I also have an opinion of where I most like you to touch me.”
Tess rolled her eyes. And here returned frisky Jonah. “Let me guess.” She lowered her hand to his lap and pressed it against his ever-present bulge.
He sucked in a breath. “Damn, you know me too well.”
Biting her lip, she watched him grit his teeth and close his eyes as she stroked the length of him, learning his shape.
She couldn’t believe she was doing this. It probably wasn’t all that bold of a move comparatively speaking, what with the blanket and his hospital gown separating them from direct contact. But this was as bold as she’d ever gotten with any man, going where no Tess had ever gone before. Her heart thumped like mad in her chest, and her breaths sawed a little faster through her lungs.
“I kind of like touching you here too.”
Jonah lifted his lashes to smile at her. Then he leaned in toward her so he couch reach for something behind her on his bedside tray. She glanced over her shoulder to see that he’d grabbed the carton of French fries. He pulled one free and held it up to her mouth.
She glanced at the fry and then him.
He rolled his eyes. “I told you I’d give you a French fry for every time you told me a fact about yourself. And the fact that you like to touch me there might be my favorite fact yet. So…have two.” He pulled another one free and held them both to her mouth.
Tess paused before she shrugged and took the fries from his fingers with her teeth. As she chewed, he grinned with pleasure. “Thank God you supersized. I have a lot of fun facts I’d like to draw out of you.”
She swallowed and licked the traces of salt off her lips. “Your turn to share a fact.”
The grin he gave her should’ve warned her what he was going to say next, but it still tugged a blush to her cheeks. “I’d like you touching me there even more if your hand was inside the blanket instead of outside.”
Her fingers paused. Biting her lip, she wondered if she should dare. His suggestion was crazy, but God, she kept on considering it.
His eyes went wide. “Holy shit, you’re tempted. Aren’t you?”
She glanced
toward the doorway, wondering how risky it would be. No one had come to check on him since she’d been here but—
A nurse walked into the room. Tess yelped and jerked her hand off Jonah’s crotch. The nurse stopped in her tracks, her tennis shoes squeaking against the floor because she halted so fast.
“What’re you doing on that bed with him?”
Embarrassment flooded her as she scurried to crawl off the mattress. “I’m sorry. I—”
“Don’t you realize how many staples and stitches and casts are holding that boy together? Haven’t you ever heard of MRSA? If you jostled him too much and opened a healing wound—”
“Hey,” Jonah cut in roughly, glowering at the nurse. “She’s fine. She didn’t hurt me.”
But Tess had already bowed her head in shame. The nurse was absolutely right. She could’ve hurt him badly.
“She needs to know the repercussions,” the nurse hissed right back.
“She did nothing wrong,” Jonah said. “I asked her to come up here and—”
“You know what,” Tess broke in, about to panic herself into tears. Worried Jonah and the nurse might actually come to blows, she waved her hands, surrendering. “It’s okay. I knew I shouldn’t have. And I’m sorry.” She glanced at the nurse and made eye contact to show her sincerity before turning back to Jonah and choking out, “I’m sorry.”
His jaw tensed. “You don’t have to apologize,” he said moodily, shifting his glare to the nurse. “I made you do it.”
When his chest started to heave as if he was about to work himself into a tizzy, Tess reached out and calmly took his hand. His warm fingers immediately clamped around hers and turmoil swirled in his brown eyes as he looked up at her.
“It’s okay,” she assured him with a small smile. After a quick glance at the nurse to make sure her back was turned and she was busy reading the numbers on his monitoring machine and jotting them down in a clipboard, Tess leaned down to Jonah and whispered into his ear. “Next time, we just won’t get caught.”
She straightened quickly when the nurse glanced their way. Face flushed because she was sure the other woman had heard her, Tess offered her a weak, guilty smile. But the nurse turned away and scribbled something else, giving no indication that she’d heard anything. Finally, Tess risked a peek at Jonah.