“Hey, are you coming back to the beach or are you enjoying an afternoon delight.”
“The latter.” She glanced at Houston. “I got a little tied up here at Houston’s and I’m not sure when I’ll make it back to the beach.”
Sara snorted. “Subtle. Enjoy the sex!”
“Shh! What if his mother hears you?” she whispered, then clamped down on a moan as Houston came up behind her and started shoving her bikini bottoms down.
“I don’t think she’ll mind. She’s getting some action too, you know. I’m the only one who isn’t.”
Josie felt guilty, especially since Houston was bending her over the couch and slipping his finger inside her. “I’m sorry, Sara,” she managed, breath hitching. “Did you change your mind about your beach plan?”
“I talked to one guy and it turned out he’s married. It will take me another six months to get up the nerve to do this again.”
“Oh, sweetie,” Josie started, but Sara cut her off.
“I’m hanging up now before this conversation qualifies us for having participated in a threesome. You are clearly busy.”
Houston’s teeth sank into the tender flesh of her backside and she yelped, dropping the phone and flushing with embarrassment. Sara had known what they were doing. Well, not exactly, but the general idea and that was bad enough.
“Your mother...” she said, though she had no idea why. What the hell was she saying? Hismother?
“My mother is busy with Larry.” Houston retracted his finger and trailed her body’s moisture up between her cheeks, her muscles giving a tight jerk at his invasion. Then relaxing, accepting, wanting him.
Chapter Forty
Houston’s mother and Larry were shoved to the back of his mind in a little compartment he had stampedLater. He would be happy for his mother if it killed him. But later.
Now he was going to take Josie to his bed and keep her there until he forgot that he wasn’t worthy of her and she forgot that he was a surgeon about to lose his job.
“The bedroom. Now.” Houston hadn’t closed his blinds against the midday sun and the brilliance was hurting his eyes, but that was only part of it. He had promised her the bedroom the first night they’d spent together and they had never made it. It was almost symbolic to him, that when they stepped into his room, they were reaching a new level in their relationship.
So he led her down the darker hall, to his bedroom where she had only been once, the time when she had tried to help him out of his underwear and had nearly destroyed him instead.
Every second or so, he turned around to drink in the sight of her, naked since she’d kicked the skimpy bottoms off her ankles before following him. Houston wanted to hold Josie, to take her lushness in both of his arms and stroke her bare back. To feel all that gorgeous heat pressed against him. When he stopped in hisbedroom and tried to do just that, his splint hit the base of her spine, and he’d had enough.
With a curse, he went for the bandage with his increasingly dexterous left hand, ripping at the tape that held the wrap together.
“What are you doing?” Josie moved in beside him, her hip resting against his, the swim trunks preventing him from feeling her flesh pressed against his thigh. But her breast rested warm and full along his elbow and he didn’t resent her inquisitive fingers stilling his.
“I want this off. I want to touch you with both hands.”
The smooth damp strands of her hair moved across his shoulder and Josie lay her chin on his chest. “I thought you had another week to go.”
“I do, but I just want to touch you without it being in the way. I’ll put it right back on.” He dropped his desperate plea, let it slow into a coaxing seductive request as he felt her responding to him.
Her body went taut alongside his and her hot little pants blasted across his chest, tightening his cock. Josie took his hand into hers and caressed the bandage and the palm of his stiff hand.
“Let me take it off then.” She kissed his fingertips one by one, lingering over the injured two.
That’s not what he had wanted—Josie to study his pale and motionless hand, lying there looking like a damn dead plucked chicken.
But here, now, this one time he wanted to be free to trust her, to believe in a future that included both his career and a woman he had come to understand he could love. Did love. Shit. He closed his eyes for a second, his jaw clenched.
“Okay.”
“The finger and thumb won’t work right, you know,” she warned him softly as she began to undo his splint. “Three weeks immobile is a long time, surgery or not. That’s what the physical therapy is for.”
“I’m a doctor, Josie. You don’t have to tell me all that.” But he wasn’t even annoyed. Irritation was just a reflex to him at this point.