by Nicole Helm
“I had a headache this morning,” he found himself admitting without realizing that had been his intention.
Crap.
“So, you understand that you really do have to take the week off?”
He grunted. “My captain’s not giving me any kind of choice without a doctor’s note to rebut the hospital orders. Wait, there’s an idea.” He took a step toward her, caging her slightly between him and the passenger door of his truck. “Write me a doctor’s note.”
She gave a shocked laugh, her gaze dropping to his chest, then back up. It was too dark to see if she was blushing, but considering at how little it seemed to take, he chose to believe she was.
“Um, no.”
“How about I seduce one out of you?” It was a ridiculous line, but he couldn’t bite it back. He was getting too much enjoyment out of her shocked responses.
“Ha!” she said, hesitantly giving his chest a little poke, but quickly dropped her arms back to her sides. “You could try.”
He leaned closer, resting his hand on the door so his arm was next to her ear. He leaned close enough their chests just barely brushed and he could feel the slight tickle of her flyaway strands of hair. “Oh, I could definitely try.”
“I didn’t…” She blinked, but her mouth, just barely illuminated by the faraway parking light, was curved in a kind of shocked amusement. “How?”
It was his turn for some bemused shock. “How?”
“Yes,” she replied, lifting her chin. “Just how would you seduce a doctor’s note out of me?”
“Now, there is a question,” he murmured, taking that last step so not just his chest, but his leg could brush against hers. There was still space between them, but any movement would cause touching.
And each of those touches was electric, like the crackle of a spark in dry brush. Somehow, whatever made up the two of them was something combustible, just waiting for the right incendiary.
“First,” he murmured, lowering his mouth as close to her ear as he could get without touching his lips to the outer shell. He drew his free hand upward, torturing himself by not gliding his palm along the outline of her hips, or even her shoulder. No, he didn’t allow himself to make any contact until the tips of his fingers reached the lobe of her ear.
He wanted to do something unexpected, something that would surprise her. He touched his index finger to the unpierced lobe. Based on the sharp exhale of breath against his jaw, he succeeded in surprising her.
“First,” he repeated, but he couldn’t seem to put into words what he would do, what it would take to seduce a doctor’s note out of her. He didn’t care about the note. He cared about unraveling the affect she had on him.
The more he touched her, outlining the shell of her ear with the tip of his index finger, barely rubbing the scruff of his cheek against her temple, the less sense his thoughts made, the less able to put anything into words he became.
When she made a little moaning sound, he thought his brain might have been completely obliterated. It didn’t matter what he would do. He just wanted to do whatever would cause her to make that noise again. So he trailed his finger behind her ear and down her neck line, soaking in all her soft, velvety skin.
She tilted her head to give him better access and all he could think about was kissing her. Not who she was or why this feeling was so potent. Nothing in his brain existed except this need. Throbbing in his veins. Thundering in his heart.
And because he’d lost any semblance of detached control, he swooped in and claimed her mouth with his. She made a sharp, squeaking sound and again jerked into a little jump of surprise, which was neither censure nor refusal. Because she didn’t back away or try to run, she just hesitated and then sank into it.
It killed him. The sinking, her mouth was lusher than he would have dreamed. She tasted like the alcohol she’d had to drink and the smoke that had been in the air of the bar. But more than that, she felt like heaven—warm and soft and exactly where he was supposed to be.
Her lips remain firmly closed until he drew his tongue across the seam, back and forth until she just barely opened for him.
Everything about this strong, confident, hard-assed doctor had gone timid. Hesitant almost, but while she didn’t seem to know what to do with her mouth, she knew exactly what to do with her body.
She was no longer caged against the truck. She was leaning into him, pressing against him. Her fingers had curled around his arms and were holding on for dear life.
Ace didn’t know what to make of that, but he wasn’t in the presence of mind to give any time to analyze. He slid his palm back up her neck and cupped her cheek, tilting her head to get a better angle. Delving deeper into the sweet heat of her mouth, stroking her tongue with his. Forgetting where he was, forgetting who he was supposed to be pretending to be.
She pressed her hands against his chest, but it wasn’t a push. No, she drew her palms down his chest and his abs, exploring, tearing a groan from deep inside his throat.
Because if he didn’t sense any of that timidity in her mouth, he would be tempted not to drive her home, but to a dark corner somewhere and lose himself in the feeling of…her and being no one but the man with the privilege of having her.
But there was something not quite experienced about Lina’s kiss, and even in the haze of all that lust, it concerned him.
He drew away slightly, keeping his hands holding her head just as he wanted it. She blinked up at him, her mouth wet from his tongue, her eyes wide and intrigued and maybe a little desperate. He didn’t mind any of those things.
“I’m still not going to write you a doctor’s note,” she said breathlessly.
The laugh echoed out of him even though the last thing he felt like doing with laughing. But as unfunny as the aching hard on in his pants was, she was funny. She was some mix of a bunch of things he didn’t understand. All those math equations he’d failed to make sense of as a student—that was Lina McArthur.
“I guess I’ll have to work a little harder,” he said, once he found his voice.
Her pink tongue darted out and licked her lips. He groaned aloud and she cocked her head, looking at him with confusion etching her features. “What?”
“You apparently have no idea how erotic it is to watch a woman lick her lips.”
“Oh.” She cleared her throat, her fingers slowly uncurling from his arms, her body backing away and into the truck rather than his chest. “Ace… Maybe…”
He thought she was trying to bolt, so he finally let her face go. “I’m just going to drive you home, Lina. I promised that was all I was going to do.”
“You said you were going to kiss me.”
“I did kiss you.”
“Are you going to kiss me again?”
He brushed his thumb over her lower lip, still slightly wet from her tongue. Soft. There were some surprising areas of softness in her. A surprising innocence to her. He didn’t understand her at all. And mysteries always kept him coming back for more.
“Yes,” he said with a certainty that couldn’t be helped. One way or another, he would be kissing her again.
She seemed to consider that and he didn’t know if he liked the fact she wasn’t jumping up and down ready for more. But in the end, it didn’t really matter what he wanted.
“I guess you should unlock the door then,” she said, her cool in-charge tone back.
Ace grinned and fished the keys out of his pocket. Yes, he was going to kiss Lina McArthur again. And again. And again. And work up to more.
Chapter Five
Lina sat in the passenger seat of Ace’s truck, having no clue what she was getting herself into. But she was very eager to get herself into it.
Everything inside of her kind of throbbed and ached and…fluttered. She’d never fluttered before, no one had ever tried to make her flutter. Lina McArthur was the ice queen. She was certainly not the object of any man’s attentions. Not like what Ace had just shown her.
She swallowed.
He hadn’t touched her for the ten or so minutes he’d been driving, but her skin still hummed in all the places he had. Her palms still felt warm from everywhere she’d touched him. And her mouth… Her mouth was like its own pulsing, living thing.
He’d kissed her like he couldn’t help himself. Like she’d been irresistible and necessary, and he’d kept kissing her. Even when she’d stood there, having no idea what to do.
Her first kiss was no chaste peck, no simple meeting of mouths, no embarrassing story. It had been hot and carnal and wonderful.
Which made her wonder what sex would be like.
She blinked hard at the windshield of Ace’s truck as it drove through the dark evening. It would be insane to have sex with a guy she’d just met. Especially her first time.
But she kind of wanted to.
But you’re not going to, Lina. You are a responsible, careful, sensible…
She wanted to tell herself she was all of those things, but found all she could think was she hated those things. She was tired of being responsible and careful and sensible. She was tired of being… Boring and staid and contained. She was exhausted of always doing the right thing only to have it not really matter one way or the other. People still looked at her like she was some kind of alien.
Except Ace. He looked at her like she was irresistible. And he was irresistible. He was so hot and his hands were so big. And his mouth, God, his mouth had done things she didn’t even know mouths could do.
She couldn’t have sex with him. She couldn’t. She couldn’t. That would be an intimacy she afforded no one. She barely hugged the people she knew and loved. How could she have sex with a random stranger?
Maybe because this is your life and you can do whatever the hell you want?
Dangerous to think that way. There were so many consequences. She was a doctor, she knew the consequences. She couldn’t let this insanity grip her and change the course of her life.
She closed her eyes and bit back a groan—not the sexual kind, but the kind that said what the hell are you thinking?
“Do I turn here?” Ace’s dark, rumbling voice asked, sending an unbidden shiver up her spine.
The sexual kind. Definitely the sexual kind.
“Yes,” she said, trying to pull herself out of her insane thoughts. Like how her entire body felt touched when he’d placed his hand on the small of her back to walk them out. Or the way he’d seemed to listen and be interested in the things she had to say. Things that had nothing to do with being a doctor.
But most of all, she tried not to think about the way he looked at her like she was a treat. Like she was something he wanted.
No one really wanted her. Her father couldn’t seem to get over the fact she was a girl, her mother couldn’t get over her lack of graces. Her brothers had been so swamped in their own battles with their father they’d never paid her much mind.
Jess was the only one who had paid attention to her, and even Jess… Well, she’d always loved Cole more. Which was fine and great and wonderful, to see her brother and best friend so happy, but she wanted someone to want her.
Hell, even if he was Dean. She wanted what he offered. She wanted. Wanted in a way that would probably never make sense to her. This insane feeling, this insane want.
Something like her father’s voice reminded her McArthurs didn’t act on wants or desires. They acted on science and responsibility.
But being a McArthur turned out to be nothing but shit. Shit, shit, shit.
Lina glanced over at Ace, who was concentrating on driving with a kind of studied focus, like he had to focus on driving or he might just focus on her. Could she be crazier?
Probably. And she’d never been crazy when she’d been a teenager or in college. Wasn’t that an excuse to be crazy now?
“This is me,” she said, pointing to the apartment complex that was only a few yards down the street from the hospital.
She was tired of her life being that hospital, of being Dr. McArthur. She wanted her life to be at least partially something else, too, which meant she had to make that happen. She had to make the choices.
Maybe she wouldn’t sleep with him tonight, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t sleep with him some other time. That didn’t mean this couldn’t be the beginning of something, and if he ended up being Dean and this was a trick to throw her off the scent… Well, at least she’d have a couple hot kisses out of the deal, and she’d find out for sure and be able to tell Jess. So…
So, she had to be an adult and in charge of her life—her life, not a McArthur’s life—and make the choices to get her there.
“I want to invite you inside, but I don’t want to give you the wrong idea.”
He pushed the truck into park and then slowly turned his head so she could see all his features and expression. He looked vaguely amused and she found herself matching his smile.
“What would the wrong idea be?” he asked, still with the low, gravelly note to his voice that continued to send shivers up and down her spine.
Lina had been accused of being too abrupt and too straightforward her whole life, but as much as she wanted to change, that was one thing she didn’t know how to change. Abrupt and straightforward was just…who she was. There had to be some middle ground between who she was and the different person she wanted to be.
“I want to invite you up because I would like to explore more of what we were doing in parking lot. But I’m not sure I want a sort of…full exploration.”
“Full exploration?” he questioned, still amused, still smiling.
“Yes, that is what I’m calling it,” she replied primly.
He chuckled, but she didn’t feel silly. It didn’t feel like a mean chuckle. She had been on the opposite end of a few of those from her father and eldest brother, and she knew what they sounded like, the feeling they imparted. She didn’t feel silly or angered, she felt like laughing right along with Ace.
“I have never met anyone who talks like you, Lina.”
“Yeah, I get that a lot.”
He laughed again and leaned over the console, his fingers finding her face, tracing her cheek, her jaw, and then her lips. All of it came under the careful glide of his fingertips.
She liked that the gentle way he touched wasn’t… She didn’t know how to explain it, probably her lack of experience speaking, but he really seemed to be…exploring her. Discovering her.
She was probably setting herself up for a lot of heartache, but she’d never had any heartache—not the romantic kind. She’d never ached over someone, physically or emotionally, and she thought maybe it would be good for her. It would be good for her to not get some things she wanted. It would be good for her to feel as though something was out of her reach. She needed to learn not everything could be just fine with hard work and the McArthur name.
That wouldn’t be such a bad thing to learn, especially if the lesson came at the end of his fingers.
“So, what you’re saying is…” His fingers continued to touch the curves and angles of her face, of her neck. She leaned into every time his fingers found some place new they hadn’t discovered yet. “That you would like me to come upstairs and make out with you, but that’s as far as it will go?”
“Make out,” she repeated, not sure what to do with that word. Make out. She’d never even kissed a person before his very successful ending of that drought in the parking lot, and he was saying words like make out to her. Like she had any clue what she was doing. The hysterical giggle rose up in her chest and she tried to fight it, but she lost.
“Do I want to have any idea why you’re laughing?”
She waved a hand in front of her face, the giggling turning into full on laughter she couldn’t quite breathe through.
“I really don’t know whether to be offended or not,” he said looking at her like she’d lost her mind.
Which was right. She had lost it.
“If it’s not hideously obvious”—she finally managed through gasping breat
hs—“I’m not very experienced with this sort of thing.”
She noted he leaned back in his seat a little bit, his hands falling from her face, and that did a lot in the way of helping her stop laughing. Because if her experience or lack thereof was going to make him stop, then she should have kept her mouth shut.
“Just how inexperienced are we talking here?” he asked, oh so carefully.
“Does it matter?” she returned cooly.
His hand reached out and touched her face again, just a quick brush of the backs of his fingers against her cheeks. “That’s a question only you can answer, Lina,” he said, gently.
She wanted to be irritated by his gentleness, or be able to find it condescending, but in the end, she just thought it was kind of nice. That he would look at it as her choice, her belief.
More than nice he didn’t feel the need to push his own views on the her. She’d learned to really appreciate that about a person, because her family was so the opposite. Their opinions weren’t just opinions—they were fact. They were law. And so she’d adopted them with the kind of furor they’d offered them to her with, but the more she interacted with people, especially outside of Marietta, the more she’d realized no one liked the person who saw the world in black and white and wasn’t afraid to say so.
Ugh, why was she thinking about all this? This was not the point, and not at all what she wanted to be doing. “Come inside, Ace.”
It was a command and she also knew people didn’t particularly care to be commanded, but he gave a short nod and pulled the keys out of the ignition.
He was going to come inside her apartment and they were going to make out, and then… Well, she’d figure out the next step when she got to it.
*
Ace was no stranger to bad ideas. He’d made an adolescence out of nothing but bad ideas and selfish behavior. Except for cutting ties with Jess—that had been his one and only grand gesture of selflessness.
Still, most of the time he’d been nothing but a worthless little shit. He liked to think he was reformed. That becoming a smokejumper and being a part of this team had changed him into a mature, responsible man.