The Passion of Patrick MacNeill (17 page)

Puzzled, she frowned.

"You let me see your legs," he explained.

Laughter bubbled inside her, washing away her doubt. "Then, yes, the pants should definitely go."

He shucked off his jeans and stood before her in nothing but navy blue boxers and soft yellow lamplight.

Her breath sucked in. She saw naked men all the time, she reminded herself. Old and young, sick and broken, she examined and handled and healed them.

But Patrick's body was special, broad and vital, fully mature and potently male. With a doctor's knowledge and a woman's appreciation, she admired the strength of his long hones, the power of his solid muscles. Dark hair covered his well-developed pectorals and dusted his abdomen and thighs. His arousal stood out boldly under his boxers.

Kate exhaled, returning her fascinated gaze to Patrick's intent face.

"All right?" he asked her quietly.

She knew he was asking if she were all right, but she couldn't find the courage to tell him that she had never in her life felt as right as she did at this moment. She wanted him, wanted this, with a surety that flowed from the marrow of her bones, and she couldn't find the words to say it. Even if she managed the words, she didn't know whether her feelings would be acceptable to him.

She smiled, forcing lightness. "I don't have much to compare it to. But you look perfectly healthy to me."

His eyes glinted. "I'll show you healthy," he promised.

He caught her close. Laughter shimmered and dissolved between them. She felt the slow rise and fall of his chest and heard the thunder of her own heart. Under her hands, his skin was hot. She flexed her fingers wonderingly on the texture of body hair.

He hissed.
"Careful, honey."

Kate tilted her head to one side, considering. "Maybe," she said deliberately, "I don't want to be careful anymore."

His face stilled. His hands tightened. And then his mouth took hers.

He used his teeth to excite, his tongue to soothe. He made her crave his flavor. He taught her to follow his rhythm, in and out. Her breathing hitched.
In and out.
Distracted by the demands of his urgent mouth, she didn't register the movement of his hands under her loose top until they closed, warm and sure, over her naked breasts. Desire whipped through her, and she cried out.

The sound startled her. She struggled for composure, but it eluded her, battered away by his forceful mouth, his seeking hands.

"Patrick," she protested, "I don't think—"

"Good. Don't think, Kate." Relentlessly male, he moved against her, drugging her with the promise of his taut body. "Feel," he whispered. "Feel me."

She was helpless to do anything else. She thrilled at the wealth of sensation at her fingertips, firm flesh, smooth skin, rough hair. He slid his thigh between her legs, lifting her gently, and heat pooled at the contact. He pulled her top up, and the hair on his chest licked her breasts. With each fresh assault on her senses, her customary restraint slipped further. She felt it steal away, and passion rush in to take its place.

He lowered them both to the edge of the mattress, urging her legs to either side so that she straddled his lap. His big, warm hands cupped her buttocks. She gasped and arched into his waiting heat.

"Yeah," he muttered. "Like that."

He rolled with her, pulling at clothes. She lifted and tugged, smoothing his shorts from his tight hips, kicking her panties off one ankle, trying to get closer, needing to feel him skin to skin. He pressed and stroked, probed and caressed, drawing out her response, driving her from peak to peak. She couldn't breathe. She opened her mouth to tell him so and all that came out was a high, weak moan.

He swallowed it, his hands moving with deliberate power between her legs. He urged her up, up a steep mountain, into unknown terrain where her senses were clouded and her footing uncertain. Sensation pierced her as sharply as cold. For all her brave words, she was frightened by the force of it.
Too high.
She was too high, and afraid of falling.

His voice was warm in her ear. "It's all right, honey. I've got you."

She quivered, shaken by the thudding of her heart, by the pounding of his. Their bodies were sleek with sweat where they rubbed together. His shoulders gleamed. His hands were slippery. She closed her eyes against the vibrations set off by his hands.

Inhaling sharply, Patrick pushed her off the mountaintop.

And she flew.

Patrick covered her, body poised and screaming like a jet held on the ground. He knew he'd pleasured her. Now he waited until she dragged her eyelids open before he finished the job.

Her lashes lifted, and the open welcome in her eyes released his steely control. Lacing their fingers together, he thrust firmly inside her. She tightened around him like a fist, all wet, clinging heat, and forced the air from his lungs.

Need pulsed inside him. He held perfectly still, embedded in her, immersed in pleasure so deep he couldn't string two thoughts together. One thought.
Think, you moron
.

"Oh, hell."

She touched his clenched and aching jaw. "Patrick? What is it?"

"Birth control," he rasped.

Brown eyes widened. "Do you have it?"

"In my suitcase."

He watched her face as she absorbed that information, her soft yearning plainly at war with her hard intelligence. She was a doctor, he thought. She wasn't going to invite him to take chances with her.

"Oh." Experimentally, she moved under him.

Patrick swore. "Don't do that."

She subsided, and that was just as bad. He could feel her against him and around him, her pebbled nipples,
her
moist sex. She smelled of citrus and woman, and he wanted her so bad he thought it might possibly kill him to leave her.

"Sorry," she said.

She didn't look sorry. She looked pleased and anxious and maybe a little amused. Her humor caught and tickled his. Four years, he thought, and his first time at the party he forgot to dress.

Carefully, taking his weight on his elbows, he separated from her. They both groaned.

"Don't move," he told her.

Her fingers pressed gently against his lips, caressed his throat. "You said that already," she remarked.

"So doctors are no good at taking orders."

"Excuse me?"

He grinned at her indignant face. "I'll be right back."

He felt her hand like a brand trail down his chest and side as he levered himself away.

"Hurry," she said.

Kneeling on the floor beside his bag, he looked up at her rosy body. She was flushed from his loving, naked in his bed. A torrent of feeling sluiced through him: tenderness, appreciation and gratitude.
And a good strong current of lust.

"Count on it," he said.

Sheathed, he returned to her, dropping another couple of packets on the bedside table. She wrapped him in her smooth arms and strong
thighs,
gloved him in her heat. He felt her stretch to encompass him and struggled not to lose it. But she was so tight, so hot and tight, he was blanking out. Concentrating fiercely on her face, he began to move.

He felt her tentative attempts to accommodate him, to pick up his rhythm, and strained to adjust his driving need. But her hands, her small, competent hands, were tugging at him. And then she did something complicated with her internal muscles and destroyed him.

He couldn't stop. He could barely breathe. He could only pound away at her, desperate, greedy, intent on his own completion. Grabbing fistfuls of her wavy hair, he fused his mouth to hers. She kissed him back, arching to take him, twining her legs with his. He felt the tremors begin again inside her, and battled for time, like a pilot fighting gravity in a wounded plane, shuddering with the speed of his descent and the force of his need.

When she convulsed around him, he flung back his head and went down in flames.

* * *

Kate sighed. Her body still vibrated in reflex rhythmic reaction to increased blood circulation and muscular tension. Knowing the physiological explanation, she discovered, didn't make those tiny shudders any less surprising.

Or lovely.

In gratitude, Kate turned her face into Patrick's throat and kissed his smooth, damp skin, stifling a giggle. Who would have guessed that at the advanced age of thirty-six Dr. Kathryn Sinclair would finally get it?
Twice.

He stirred. "I'm mashing you."

She stroked a line down his back, tracing the strong curve of his
latissimus
dorsi
muscle, delighting in her right to touch and the heavenly weight of him pinning her to the mattress. "I don't mind."

"I'll move.
In a minute."

"I don't mind," she said again.

He sighed. She felt the lift and relaxation of his torso all the way up and down her body, and something fluttered inside her.

He lifted his head, his eyes dark and intent. Kate felt another funny flutter. Was this softening change in her, this incredible lightness of heart and the sweet heaviness of her body, somehow visible on her face?

"You okay?" he asked.

She felt better than okay, better than she'd ever felt in her life. "I'm fine." She had to ask.
"You?"

His slow smile curled her toes. "I'm wrecked. I'm going to need a long period of recuperation before I'm fit to walk again."

She was absurdly flattered.
"Poor man."
Unable to stop herself, she touched his cheek. "I'm a doctor. Perhaps I can help?"

Answering laughter sparked in his blue, blue eyes. "Maybe some exercises?" He shifted between her thighs, making her gasp. "I think I'd respond to a little physical therapy."

"I thought you needed time to recuperate," she said primly. He rolled away, reaching for the nightstand. "To walk, I said."

She beard the foil packet tear, and then he pressed against her, slipped inside her.

She yielded around him, her hands reaching up into the short silk of his hair. "Oh, right, and this is no effort."

His face was suddenly so grave that doubt snagged her heart. But then he smiled and shook his head. "No effort at all."

Her breath caught and quickened as he moved again inside her in long, slow waves.

And it was just as lovely as before.

Chapter 11

«
^
»

M
orning entered the room gently, in striped bars of dove gray through slatted windows. Patrick woke all at once, already hard and wanting Kate. He turned his head to find her. She slept with her cheek pressed to his
pillow,
her light brown hair tumbled over her shoulders.

The dim and private light, the peace of sleep, blurred her usual intimidating determination. Revealed between the rumpled hair and crumpled linen, her relaxed features were soft and surprisingly delicate. Her naked arm bore the imprint of his sheets.

His craving for her swelled.
But with the hot and welcome rise of lust, emotion stirred, deeper than tenderness, more complicated than desire. Patrick refused to give it a name.
After last night's uninhibited loving, he felt freer than he had in years.
His mind was clear. His body hummed pleasantly with sexual tension, like a well-revved engine. He was reluctant to knot himself up by examining that elusive and troubling emotion.

A thread of hair had slipped forward onto her face. Caught on her lip, it billowed with each soft puff of breath. Gently, he trapped the strand between finger and thumb and smoothed it behind her ear.

Above the pillow, her eye opened. The light in it thumped into his stomach like a fist. He didn't deserve to have a woman, any woman, look at him that way.

Kate's lips curved.
"My hero."

"Don't say that."

The words came out more harshly than he intended. It didn't seem fair to let her read more into the situation than existed. He wasn't anybody's hero. He was just an overworked air jockey with a four-year-old son who needed him.

Kate's brows pulled together as her analytical intelligence woke behind them. He tried, too late, to soften his reply. "I didn't do anything special."

"
Mmm
."
Languorously, she raised her arms above her head and stretched. The dangerous dip and pull of the sheet over her breasts riveted his attention. His mouth dried. Did the innocent lady doctor have any idea what she was doing to him?

He wrenched his gaze back to her face. Her brown eyes were compassionate and aware. Of course she did. If she had any doubts at all about his response, the hard evidence at her hip offered ready proof. She was too damn smart not to know of his desire and guess at his emotional turmoil.

He tensed, waiting for her to start the assault on his psyche. That was, after all, what medical professionals did. Even his family found it hard to leave well enough alone.

"
I
thought it was pretty special," she said, smiling. "But then, what do they say? If you want to get the job done, send in the Marines?"

Her teasing tone loosened the slipknot around his neck, the chokehold of guilt and responsibility. His muscles relaxed with cautious relief. She was okay, then. He could have her without some messy
postcoital
dissection of his
feelings
.

"All part of the service, ma'am."

Surrendering to the urge to touch, he circled her nipple with one finger and then spanned her soft breast with his hand. Her breath sighed out.

This much, at least, be could give her.

He replaced his hand with his mouth, savoring her scent and the flavor of her skin. He had always been a soldier, more comfortable with action than words, more sure of his desire than his emotions, more accepting of her woman's pleasure than that unsettling glimpse of her woman's heart.

To please them both, to distract them both, he took her fast and rode her hard. Deliberately, he lost himself in physical sensation, letting urgency drive away thought, concentrating on the wet, hot clasp of her body and her eager movements under him. He plunged in deep, purging his brain, filling his ears with the slap of flesh on flesh and her soft, welcoming cries.

But even as he drove them both over the edge of pleasure, even as his mind blanked and his body shuddered and emptied into hers, he could not rid himself of that troubling sense of deeper connection.

* * *

Lying in bed, Patrick heard the gurgle and hiss of running water and the squeal of the shower doors. Kate, he thought, getting ready for work. He narrowed his eyes at the digital clock beside the bed. 0600 hours. He hadn't slept long, then. They hadn't slept much at all.

He felt the pull of unused muscles, a twinge of unexpected conscience. He'd never slept with any woman besides his wife, not even when be was serving overseas. Now he had one in his shower.

The soap
thunked
to the tiles. He imagined Kate's rosy butt as she bent to retrieve it and had to shake away the impulse to join her under the warm spray, to slide soap-slicked hands over her curvy body.

Rounds at seven, she'd said. He didn't know her morning routine, but he'd bet the lady doctor was running late already. Patrick frowned, scraping his thumb over his jaw. It would take some getting used to, being involved with a doctor.

Involved
.
He made a face at the dim room, as if someone could see him. What a word. He didn't have involvements. He was the marrying kind. He'd never been tempted to cheapen the memory of his marriage with a succession of one-night stands.
Semper
fi
was the Marine motto.
Always faithful
.

And he had held true, first to his wife and his vows, and later to his grief. He'd had Holly, and then he'd had…

Nothing.

Jack.

Slowly, Patrick sat up, swinging both feet to the floor. How would his altered relationship with Kate affect his son?

You didn't think about that last night, did you, ace? You didn't think at all.

The running water stopped. Flinging back the covers, he stood. His gaze fell on his wife's photograph, smiling from its silver frame. Hell. Now he felt disloyal, almost as if she'd caught him in bed with the other woman.

He crossed the room, avoiding the eyes in the picture, and dug through his top drawer for clean shorts. Instinctively, he wanted to gird himself before Kate came back into the room. As if she hadn't already seen him naked. As if she hadn't already taken him into her body, blown his mind, and delicately peeled away at the armor covering his emotions.

As gently as possible, he had to find a way to get her out of his house. He pulled on the boxers.

And maybe Kate had had the same idea, because when she came out of the bathroom she was already zipped and buttoned up into one of those tidy blouse-and-khaki combos she favored. That gave him a moment's pause. She looked fresh and cool, her curling hair still damp, her face free of makeup.

She paused in the lit doorway, as if surprised to find him up, and smiled shyly. "Good morning."

Her hesitancy reminded Patrick that however uncomfortable he found this morning-after business, it was just as strange for her.
Maybe stranger, given her touching confession about her lack of experience.
Honor and kindness both dictated he make it as easy on her as possible.

And it wasn't that hard, after all, to slip his arms around her, to hold her fully-clothed body against his half-naked one until he felt her shoulders start to relax and her breath release against his chest.

He kissed her hair, which smelled of his shampoo. "You're up early."

"I need to leave for the hospital by six-thirty."

He'd expected to have to ease her along. He was taken aback by her apparent eagerness to go. "I'll make you some coffee."

"That would be nice."

For some reason, her polite acceptance ruffled him. He wished he could see her face. Maybe he hadn't slept with any woman since his wife, but he was pretty sure that after a night of steamy, mutually satisfying sex, Kate had a right to expect more from him than a hot cup of coffee on her way out the door.

"About last night…" she said against his chest.

Here it comes, be thought, and didn't know whether he felt dread or relief. Of course she would want more. And he had nothing more to offer her or any woman.

"I want you to know I understand that you're still in the grief recovery process," she said, all cool understanding.

His jaw unhinged at this analytical, early-morning dissection of his thought processes.

Precisely, she continued. "Please don't worry that I'll read too much into our … into last night. The stress of your father's illness after a long period of abstinence naturally made you reach out in a way that—"

Jolted, he gripped the back of her neck, turning her head to face him. "What the hell are you talking about?"

Her tongue darted over her lower lip, but her eyes were steady on his. "I'm trying to tell you I don't have any expectations."

"Is that a fact," he snapped.

"Yes. You said you hadn't—that I was your first sexual partner since your wife passed on. It's only natural for you to feel ambivalent this morning."

Ambivalent, hell.
He was suddenly, surprisingly angry. "It didn't maybe occur to you that you should have expectations?" he bit out.

Now, why had he said that? She'd given him the perfect out. But he didn't want it. He couldn't make himself into a one-night Romeo, and he wouldn't treat Kate with less than the respect she deserved.

She blinked. "I beg your pardon?"

"Don't apologize. Call me names, slap my face. You gave me the best night of my life, and you're telling me I should pass it off as, what, therapy?"

She drew herself up, straight and cold as surgical steel. He admired her composure, even when it ticked him off. "You're deliberately misunderstanding me," she said.

"Only to make a point.
Last night you said we weren't doing the pity thing."

"We weren't. We didn't," she protested.

"Then don't you think you deserve a little more than 'Thank you, Doctor, for the nice sex, I feel so much better now'?"

Even with the light behind her, he could see the color that flooded her face. But she pinned him with her cool doctor's gaze and asked in her clipped, light voice, "What did you have in mind?"

Frustrated, he dragged a hand through his hair. "This isn't about me."

"Isn't it?"

"Dammit, no.
What do
you
want?"

"I told you last night. For just once in my life, I wanted someone like you to want someone like me." She shrugged. "I wanted you. Simple."

It wasn't simple at all. His gut churned. But when she looked at him like that, with that small, wry smile, he was forced to admit that this new complication in his life was damn near irresistible.

"So where do we go from here?" be asked.

Her eyes flickered. Maybe his lady doctor wasn't quite
so
composed as she wanted him to think. "
I'm
going to work. I guess anything else is up to you."

Fine.
Let her see how she liked having someone invade her life.

"Dinner," he said decisively.
"Tonight.
I'll pick you up."

"That's not necessary."

"You want to take your own car?"

"No, I mean, you don't need to buy me dinner. Anyway, doesn't the meal usually come before the sex?"

Her quick, defensive sarcasm entertained him.
Annoyed him.
"If we get lucky," he drawled.

He saw the spark of comprehension, the answering laughter flame in her eyes, and suddenly the knot in his chest dispelled.

"I want to take you out to dinner, Kate. I want to spend the time with you. Say yes."

"I…" She chewed her lower lip.
"All right.
I get off at four. Give me another couple of hours after that to play catch up, maybe?"

"Six," he confirmed.
"At the hospital?"

"No!
My place."

"Fine."

He wondered how she'd react if he suggested they make love again before she left, and then grinned, shaking his head at his rampant libido and raging imagination.

He wasn't going to get that lucky.

"What is it?" she asked suspiciously.

"Nothing."
He bent his head and touched his lips to hers in brief promise. "See you at six, Doctor."

* * *

For once, she might clock out on time. She'd just look over the tests ordered for the little girl in 816, Kate decided, and her notes from this morning's team conference, and then she was out of here.

Anticipation sang in the marrow of her bones, a rising chorus of joy and desire that nearly drowned out the shouting voices of caution, the low notes of fatigue. Don't take it too seriously, she reminded her heart. Don't take him too seriously.
However complimentary or confiding, the man's not looking for a lasting relationship.
Just look at the way he stiffened up when he caught you coming out of his shower this morning.