Finally, she had everything just where she wanted it and slumped crossly against the headboard, only to catch the corner of the bedside cabinet with her elbow and send the glass of juice flying.
‘Ah! No!’ she gasped when she saw the liquid heading towards her most expensive recent purchase, a weighty tome detailing the principles and practice of caring for the premature baby.
At the very last second she managed to get her hand in position to deflect the glass and managed to spill the whole lot right down the front of herself.
Her gasp this time was one of shock as the cold liquid instantly soaked right through to her skin.
‘Am I going to get any study done tonight?’ she grumbled through gritted teeth as she scrambled off the bed before the liquid could soak into the bedclothes. One soaked mattress was more than enough.
At least she didn’t have far to go to get to the bathroom, and another shower wouldn’t take very long if she kept her hair out of the spray.
Without giving the matter another thought, she swung the bathroom door open and came to a shocked halt.
The last thing she’d expected to see was Josh standing stark naked in the shower with the water pelting down on him.
She must have made a sound because before she could back out of the room to leave him his privacy, his eyes sprang open and his hand flashed down to cover the fact that he was fully aroused.
Through the clear glass screen she saw his eyes widen as they travelled over her standing frozen in the doorway, and a glance into the mirror opposite her told her why. To her dismay she was suddenly aware of the fact that the fruit juice had not only plastered the fabric against her body but had turned it all but transparent.
Automatically her hands came up to hide her body, one at the juncture of her thighs and the other across her breasts, and if she hadn’t been watching Josh’s face she would never have seen the brief change in his expression or the shake of his head, neither would she have noticed the way his eyes darkened with an almost predatory hunger as his gaze travelled over her from head to toe.
Not that she wasn’t doing some looking of her own, she realised as her eyes measured the unexpected muscularity of his naked body.
She’d seen him in his theatre scrubs often enough to know that his shoulders were broad and his arms were muscular, but she hadn’t realised just how gorgeous he was without the covering of clothes, every curve and swell tight and solid and perfectly symmetrical, all the way down to his impressive six-pack and…
‘Dani! Don’t!’ he growled, dragging her lascivious gaze up to his face and the pained expression on it.
Or was it pain?
Were his feelings anything like hers as he looked at her all-but-naked body? And he’d already been aroused before he’d seen her. Had her slinky pyjamas had more of an effect than she’d thought?
‘Don’t what?’ she asked, and he must have been lipreading because she didn’t have enough breath to ask the question aloud.
‘Don’t look at me like that,’ he ordered roughly, and closed his eyes to drop his head back against the wall of the shower with a shudder.
For the first time she noticed that there was no steam filling the walk-in enclosure and that, rather than a healthy pink glow to his skin from the warmth of the water, he was actually covered in goose-bumps.
‘Josh?’ For several embarrassing seconds she thought he was going to ignore her.
‘What?’ He was back to growling again and the expression in his slitted eyes reminded her of one of the big-cat predators she’d seen on a wildlife programme. The stark similarity sent an atavistic shiver up her spine.
‘Do cold showers actually work?’
He gave a startled huff of laughter then cast a grim glance down towards the hand still sheltering that most masculine portion.
‘What do you think?’ he said wryly.
‘I think…I think I won’t bother trying it as a remedy, then,’ she said, hearing a new husky note to her own voice as she took a tentative step towards him. She snatched a quick breath for courage, forcing herself to hold his gaze as she took another step and then another as she continued speaking.
‘I think you need to change the shower settings, to warm that water up a bit…and I think I need to take a warm shower, too, having spilled a glass of cold juice all over myself and…and I think it would definitely save water if we were to share the shower and…’
Her throat was so dry with nerves that she couldn’t continue, but by that time she was standing right in front of the curved glass panel of the shower.
‘Dani,’ Josh said, his tone clearly one of warning, but it was totally at odds with the expression in his eyes and on his face.
Summoning up the last of her courage, Dani reached for the hem of her wet T-shirt and stripped it swiftly over her head, then felt a sudden surge of unexpected power when she saw the way every muscle and sinew in his body grow tense in response.
‘Are you going to let me in?’ she asked, her voice little more than a whisper as she put one foot onto the icy shower floor.
‘Dammit, Dani…’ Josh began, but this time she wasn’t going to take no for an answer, not when it was obviously what they both wanted.
‘Warm the water up, quickly,’ she interrupted with a shaky attempt at a smile. ‘Blue is only a good colour if you’re wearing it, not if you’re turning blue with the cold.’
His answering smile was faint, but her heart leapt when he reached out obediently with his free hand to turn the control.
As far as she was concerned, that was tacit permission to join him, and she stepped fully into the enclosure and straight into his welcoming arms.
‘Oh!’ she gasped when he tugged her against his slick wet body. ‘You’re so cold!’
‘You’re not much warmer,’ he growled. ‘How did you get so wet?’ Both arms tightened around her and she realised that one part of his anatomy certainly wasn’t cold, no matter how long he’d been standing under the freezing shower.
‘I had to save my book from the juice…but at least, this time, the mattress didn’t get soaked.’
Her mind wasn’t really on what she was saying. What did conversation matter when she was finally where she’d wanted to be for so many years?
And it felt so good.
The closest she’d come to seeing him naked had been the time she’d walked in on him changing his shirt and the glimpses she caught of his chest when he leaned forward at the operating table…unless you counted the trips to the swimming pool when he had been teaching her five-year-old self to swim.
From her early teens, ever since she’d first fallen in love with him, she’d imagined what it would feel like when he finally held her in his arms, but this surpassed anything she’d ever dreamed. He was so tall and strong—the sort of solid bulwark that a woman could depend on to protect her when life turned rough. And his skin felt like slick satin under her fingers as she traced the rivulets of warm water over his shoulders and down across the flat swells of his pectorals.
It was only when her exploring fingertip reached the dark disc of his nipple, almost hidden in the thicket of dark tawny hair, that she realised that any pretence at conversation had ceased. In fact, there was complete silence in the cubicle apart from the hiss and splash of water…not even the sound of her jagged breathing registered over the sound of her suddenly racing heart.
Instantly, she was convinced that the tension she could feel in Josh’s body was the signal that history was about to repeat itself, and even though everything inside her screamed at her to prolong this moment of delight for as long as possible, honesty told her that she had to look up at him.
She didn’t want to, because she would know what he was going to say as soon as she saw his expression, so she took her time about reaching her destination, enjoying her last chance to be this close to the dark swathe of hair across the width of his chest and the erotic way that hair felt as it brushed against her nipples. The hollow at the base of his throa
t seemed strangely vulnerable, especially with the beat of his pulse so visible there, and the angle of his jaw seemed sharper than ever, a clear indication that that he was gritting his teeth…steeling himself to find the right words to push her away and restore the proper distance between them?
Then she met his eyes and when the heat in them almost incinerated her on the spot, she realised that she’d had absolutely no idea what he was really thinking.
‘Dani…’ Her name rumbled up from the depths inside him and she was fascinated to realise that with her body plastered against his, she could actually feel the vibration of it in her own chest.
‘I’m sorry,’ he muttered, almost incoherently, as his head swooped down towards her, even as he swept her up into his arms and pressed his lips to hers.
At last!
The words sang inside her as she wrapped her arms around his neck and gave herself up to the overwhelming sensation.
This was nothing like her clumsy attempt on her eighteenth birthday. This was the first kiss they’d ever shared and it was everything that she’d imagined and more. Her pulse was racing and she suddenly seemed to be filled with hot glittery sparkles until she almost felt as if she was going to burst into flames.
They were both panting now, uncaring that the water was pouring down on them as they tilted their heads this way and that, desperate to take the kiss deeper and deeper.
And still she wanted more—needed more—needed to become an intrinsic part of this magnificent man until neither of them could tell where one ended and the other began.
Dani was trembling so hard that she had to wrap her legs around him, too, her system going into overload as she went beyond anything that her imagination had been able to conjure up.
He seemed to be everywhere around her, one arm supporting her shoulders as he plundered her mouth as though starving for the taste of her, the other arm supporting her weight as though it was nothing, pressing her against the solid warmth of his obviously male, obviously heavily aroused body.
She had never realised just how overwhelming the elemental desire between a man and a woman could be, and for just a moment, as she felt him poised for the first time at the entrance to her body, fear of the unknown took over as she realised that they had reached a life-changing moment.
‘Dani?’
She gave a mew of displeasure when he tore his mouth away from hers and leaned back just far enough to force her to look up at him, apparently unaware…or uncaring…that the movement also pressed their lower bodies much closer together.
‘We shouldn’t be doing this,’ he rasped, the sound so raw that the words might have been torn out of him. ‘Tell me now and I’ll stop,’ he declared, even as his hand tightened convulsively on her bottom, giving the lie to the promise.
CHAPTER TEN
STOP? She shook her head while she gazed fiercely into his golden predator’s eyes. That was the last thing she wanted to do. Not when it had taken her nearly a decade to get here.
But she knew that he would do it if she asked it of him, even though he had reached this stage of intimacy, and if he should even guess that she’d been waiting for him…that he was the first…the only man with whom she’d shared such intimacies…
That realisation told her that she would have to do something very deliberate to convince him that this was absolutely what she wanted.
Without releasing his gaze, she took one hand from around his neck and reached down to position his impressive masculinity where instinct told her it should be, then tightened her legs around his lean hips and deliberately began to impale herself on him.
She saw the pupils of his eyes widen and darken even as she trembled in anticipation of the pain that teenage whispers had told her to expect. Was she going to be brave enough to inflict that on herself, to drive herself onto him to destroy the final proof of her innocence?
And then the decision was taken away from her as he palmed each of her hips in his strong supple hands to brace her for his desperate thrust.
Her sharp whimper of dismay was followed instantly by his shocked expletive.
‘You’re a virgin!’ he accused, disbelief almost insultingly clear on his face and every muscle and sinew as rigid as iron.
‘Not any more,’ she pointed out with an attempt at levity, suddenly horribly aware that she might have totally miscalculated. If Josh rejected her now, she didn’t think she would ever be able to recover.
‘Dammit, Dani…’
‘And if you’re even thinking of stopping at this point, I will definitely have to kill you,’ she continued, refusing to allow him to speak. Then she concentrated on experimentally tightening the muscles deep inside her, the ones that were being stretched for the very first time to accommodate their intended purpose. She was delighted to discover that while there was a slight throb of discomfort, there certainly wasn’t any hint of debilitating pain.
In fact, as she deliberately squeezed the muscles again, she wondered if that throb might actually be something to do with the amazing sensation of fullness that having Josh buried inside her would have to produce.
‘You’re impossible,’ he said on a groan when she tightened around him for a third time, his long fingers flexing and tightening around her hips as though tempted almost beyond bearing.
‘Actually,’ Dani said in a throaty voice she’d never heard coming out of her mouth before, ‘that was my thought, exactly, when I caught my first glimpse of you…that it would be impossible for something that big to fit…’
‘Dani!’ He gave a huff of laughter and she was amazed to see that she’d actually embarrassed him.
‘Good for the ego?’ she teased, but didn’t give him any time to come up with an answer as she deliberately loosened her hold on his shoulders and hips so that her body started to slide further down him, and on him.
In a swift move that stole her breath, he whirled around to press her back against the wall of the shower, his body curving over her to shelter her from the shower spray as he gazed fiercely at her.
‘You’re good for my ego and everything else that ails me,’ he declared, and she gave a shiver of awareness when she realised just how vulnerable her position was if she hadn’t trusted him completely. ‘Unfortunately, this time you’ve goaded me too far and I’m already on a hair trigger.’ He flexed his hips and she was suddenly torn between the need to retreat from his invasion—an absolute impossibility with the wall behind her—and the overwhelming desire to arch her body towards his to take everything he had to give.
‘So, promise that next time will be just for me,’ she suggested in a wicked whisper, and gave herself over to the maelstrom.
Was that the alarm? Josh thought groggily as something electronic tried to summon him from the depths of sleep.
He cracked an eye open to look at the time then let his head drop heavily back onto the pillow when he calculated that it had been little more than an hour since he and Dani had finally succumbed to exhaustion.
He felt a satisfied smile creep over his face when he tried to remember exactly how many times they’d—
The thought was cut off abruptly when his phone began to ring and he realised that it had been his mobile that had dragged him to wakefulness. It was awkward reaching for it with Dani curled against his side but he certainly didn’t want to disturb her. It just felt too good to have her there with her head on his shoulder and her hand over his heart.
‘H’lo,’ he growled, resenting the fact that such a call at this time of the morning meant he was unlikely to have time to do anything about his burgeoning arousal. Surely he should be too exhausted to grow so hard so quickly, but it seemed as if all he had to do was look at that surprisingly womanly little body to want her all over again.
‘Josh, I’m sorry to call you, but we’re going to need you,’ said the voice on the other end, and he instantly switched his focus. His patients deserved nothing less than his total concentration.
‘What have you got?’ He spared
a single regretful glance as he slid gently out from her slender weight and padded towards the bathroom that had been the epicentre of the explosion last night.
A quick detour to collect a fresh set of clothes only took seconds but it was long enough for a recitation of the basic facts.
‘What have you tried to control the contractions? And how high is her blood pressure? Is it coming down at all?’ he demanded as he began to form a clearer picture of the risks two tiny babies were facing.
‘OK, I’ll be with you in fifteen minutes…twenty at the outside. Has Theatre been warned that she might need to get in there in a hurry? Cross your fingers that we don’t. If there’s any chance of delaying things, we need every second we can manage to get some steroids into her. And warn the unit that we’ll need a warmed humidicrib, just in case.’
‘Twenty-six weeks, dammit!’ he swore, almost throwing the phone down as he strode towards the shower. That was far too soon for babies to arrive in the world. Their little bodies just weren’t ready to take on the rigours of doing their own breathing.
For a second, as he reached out to the controls, he contemplated turning them to cold to try to dispel the lingering mists of sleep.
‘Don’t you dare!’ Dani grumbled sleepily as she followed him into the walk-in enclosure and flipped the lever on full before coming under the deluge of warm water with him. ‘Tell me about the patient,’ she demanded, somehow managing to speak and rinse her hair without getting a mouthful of soap.
Josh hadn’t even realised that she was following him, and was delighted that she seemed to have automatically presumed that he would want her to come to the hospital with him. He found himself reciting the information he’d gleaned so far, stunned to discover that he could actually share the shower with this beautiful naked water-sprite without his brain totally shutting down to everything but the need to make love with her all over again.
Was that because her attitude towards him this morning was so totally matter-of-fact, making their sharing of the shower seem like nothing more erotic than a convenient means of saving time?
Six Sexy Doctors Part 1 (Mills & Boon e-Book Collections): A Doctor, A Nurse: A Little Miracle / The Children's Doctor and the Single Mum / A Wife for ... / The Playboy Doctor's Surprise Proposal Page 43