200 Harley Street: The Tortured Hero Page 11

  It whispered to her. Rest. Sleep. Dream.

  And the thought of getting just a couple of hours’ shut-eye was utterly, utterly seductive. But she dragged herself back from it, padding through his bedroom in her bare feet, the thick rug luxurious on her soles as she headed for her bag and coat and a brisk walk in the cold London night.

  Then an object sitting on a shelf near the door caught her eye and she stopped. It looked eerily familiar, and despite her brain telling her she needed to get the hell out of his room she was drawn to it by the insistent tug of ancient strings.

  Its shape became more distinct as she neared and Olivia’s heart beat a solid tattoo in her chest as she reached for it. The bronze was cool as she wrapped her fingers around the miniature figurine, but the spark of memory soon heated the object, sending warm tingles up her arm.

  He’d kept it.

  Stupid tears needled at her eyeballs as she looked down at the nude young woman reclined in a pensive pose and she blinked them back. He probably didn’t realise he still had it. Which fitted right in with the rest of the decade-old stuff in this apartment that time forgot.

  He’d bought it at Portobello Road market because he’d said the woman’s secretive smile reminded him of her just after she came. As if she’d touched the stars and knew all their secrets. That had been two days before she’d found out about his dastardly behaviour. Two blissful days when she’d floated on cloud nine because this exquisite, dainty, perfectly detailed piece of eighteenth-century sculpture had reminded him of her and the magic they made together.

  Olivia ran her thumb over that Mona Lisa smile, remembering that day. It was probably the last time she’d ever been deep-down-in-her-bones happy.

  ‘She’s still beautiful, isn’t she?’

  Olivia’s thumb stilled. She was aware suddenly of the heat of him at her back. Of his overwhelming presence enveloping her in a cloud of old memories and new desires. It fluttered in her pulse and prickled along her nerve-endings, peaking her nipples and fanning along the bare skin of her nape—her hair was up to avoid getting wet.

  ‘Yes,’ Olivia said, placing her gently back.

  * * *

  Ethan wanted to bury his nose in the exposed stretch of skin in front of him, right where her nape joined her shoulder, which the square neckline of the scrub shirt left beautifully exposed. He wanted to sniff her there. Inhale deeply. Smell his soap on her.

  Remember back to the days when his smell used to be stamped all over her.

  He itched to pull her hair out of its rough and ready up-do. The wet ends of the tendrils that had half fallen down taunted him more.

  ‘I am sorry about what I did, Olivia.’

  Olivia shut her eyes briefly. ‘I know,’ she said.

  ‘It wasn’t all mercenary. I did care for you too.’

  ‘I know,’ she repeated, then she took a deep steady breath and opened her eyes as she turned to face him.

  But he was close, so much closer than she’d realised, and his scent was intoxicating, and his neck was just there, its fat pulse bordering the hard ridge of his trachea, pounding right in front of her even through the thick growth of stubble.

  She shut her eyes again as a wave of longing rolled through her, sweet and hot, like sherbet and crack cocaine.

  She remembered how hard he’d fought for Ama tonight. How he’d taken over, securing her airway, fighting for the little girl’s life. Scooping out blood, never giving up as he’d raced against the clock and the hazards of prolonged hypoxia.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, her voice husky even to her own ears, thick and lumpy in her throat. ‘For Ama.’

  Ethan shook his head. She was looking at him with those eyes. Eyes frank with professional admiration and personal gratitude. A truly deadly combination. Oh, crap.

  ‘Liv...’

  And that was it for Olivia. A husky entreaty so masculine but so needy. She couldn’t fight it any more. She couldn’t deny it any more. She and Ethan had been on a slow trajectory towards each other since coming back in contact again and tonight he had sling-shotted into her orbit in a most spectacular fashion.

  She was lost. Heat and lust clouded her senses until her head was full of him. Every breath filled her up a little bit more until she was drowning in the essence of him. The intelligence of what she was about to do was so far out of her reach her brain might as well have been residing in Australia.

  ‘Oh, God...Ethan,’ she muttered as she slid her arm up to his neck and yanked him closer until her body was flush with his, going up on tippy-toe, shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip, feeling the hard press of him against her belly.

  The golden flecks in his eyes were glowing the way they used to, with passion and life, and she had no hope now of resisting him now the shadows that had warned her to keep away were gone.

  ‘I can’t not do this.’

  And then she pressed her mouth to his and she was lost in a vortex of arousal so strong there was no room for thought or for second-guessing. It was just him and his lips and his coffee taste and the rapid dissolution of all those years pretending she was over him.

  Ethan devoured her mouth on a surge of longing so all-consuming his knees almost buckled. But he felt her give against him and he held on to her tight, holding them both up in the maelstrom that descended.

  He was lost in a heady cloud of want that he hadn’t experienced in a long time. Ama and the near disaster they’d avoided was forgotten, the Hunter Clinic was forgotten, Fair Go was forgotten, even Aaliyah was forgotten as an all-consuming surrender stormed his body.

  Olivia had got under his skin and ploughed through his defences. Her mouth was as sweet as he remembered—sweeter—like a revelation, like a homecoming. Her breathing was heavy—like a rough panting in his head. And when his tongue entered her mouth she made a soft whimpering noise at the back of her throat that took him way back to the beginning, to when she hadn’t been able to keep her hands off him.

  Back to when he could have had her any time, anywhere, anyhow.

  And nothing else had mattered.

  He didn’t stop to think about consequences or regrets or common sense. The need to have her, to reacquaint himself with every delectable inch of her, swamped every cell in a dire imperative to mate and he followed where it led, hopeless to resist.

  He moved according to the dictates of his body. He kissed and he touched and he felt, his senses filling with her, intoxicating him with desire, his head humming with the need to be skin on skin, to feel her under him, to move deep inside her.

  Before he knew it her scrub top was up and off and his hands were full of the soft mounds of her breasts, her nipples hard and ready in his palms. Then he was moving his hands down, pushing under the waistband of her scrubs, cupping her naked bottom, pushing them down her hips and off, conscious on some level that she was kicking out of them.

  And then she was naked and he needed just to look at her, to remember every naked inch of her. To take her in and familiarise himself with the pure visual delight of her.

  She didn’t protest as he picked her up, his mouth still joined to hers, their tongues duelling and clashing, their mouths trying to suck up as much of the other as they could.

  He laid her on the bed and she looked just as he remembered: long and lean and utterly lovely. Lust had honed his night vision and he could see her nipples were pale and puckered tight. Her hair had escaped its messy up-do and was now spread out around her head like a cloud. Her half-closed eyes and pouty full lips were so damn sexy he almost lost it right then and there.

  Olivia’s head spun. She was so alive with the touch and taste of him she was practically levitating off the bed.

  ‘Ethan...’ she half sighed, half moaned, and held her arms out to him.

  Ethan didn’t need any further encouragement. He was suddenly a
wake, bursting with life and passion, and Olivia was his Princess Charming. She’d kissed him and woken him from a long sleep. A wellspring of desire he’d thought long dead was grabbing fiery possession of his groin and tugging hard.

  He was out of his clothes in seconds, his erection, hard and urgent, springing gratefully free of the confines of his trousers, and as he joined her on the bed, his mouth lowering to rejoin hers again, her hand slipped along the length of him.

  ‘Oh...’ He groaned into her mouth as she gripped his girth just the way he liked it—good and firm.

  Olivia revelled in the harsh scratch of his whiskers and in his guttural groan. And the way he filled her palm... Dear Lord. He’d always been big and solid, but feeling him again was like coming home, and when she stroked him she remembered just the way he liked it—as if it had been imprinted into her memory banks forever.

  But he remembered about her as well, and she arched her back, gasping into his mouth as one hand slid to a breast and the other found its way to the slick folds at the juncture of her legs, stroking her just right too. Just the way she liked it—good and firm.

  Olivia’s head buzzed with the overload of sensations. But it wasn’t enough. She wanted him inside her. Pounding hard and deep. Panting in her ear. Wanted to listen to him coming undone.

  To come undone with him.

  ‘Now, Ethan,’ she said. ‘Now.’

  Ethan heard and understood her demand for what it was—a call of the wild. The irrevocable need to mate, to be one. And maybe he should have been strong enough to resist it, to make this long and slow, to tease and taunt, to bring her to orgasm first before succumbing to his own overriding desire to be part of her.

  But all the wasted years battered against him and he didn’t want to waste another second.

  ‘Ethan!’ she called again.

  He knew a sexual demand when he heard it, and he knew she needed him to be inside her as much as he needed to be there too.

  He didn’t think about anything other than her as she wrapped her legs around his waist, inhaling the smell of his soap on the skin of her neck as he buried his face there and thrust into her, sliding home, deep and sure, on a groan that seemed to echo up from the mists of time.

  He didn’t think about their history. He didn’t think about Ama or the emergency trache he’d had to perform. He didn’t think about his injuries.

  He didn’t think about Aaliyah.

  He didn’t even think about a condom.

  He just let the sound of her gasp fill his head and the dig of her nails ground him to the bed and the frantic rhythm of their bodies take him away.

  This was Olivia, and it was as if they’d never been apart.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Oh, God...please, yes...don’t stop...’

  Ethan had no intention of stopping. He just held her tight and thrust over and over, her gasps pushing him higher and higher, urging him on, his heart-rate ratcheting up with each erotic slide of flesh into flesh.

  Hard, hot, delicious tension coiled in his shoulders, buttocks and the backs of his thighs. Fire raged out of control in his loins and spread to his belly. It built to an inferno until every muscle burned and shook from the unbearable tautness.

  ‘Let go, Ethan,’ she whispered. ‘Let go.’

  And he did. In a shocking jolt everything snapped and he fell headlong into ecstasy, slipping his hand between them into all her slick heat, finding just the right spot and stroking her there as his world came apart, aware of her muscles clamping down tight around him and the sharp keening of her cry as she joined him.

  And he kept rocking and thrusting, riding it out, keeping it going, until the last shudder had undulated through him and the last cry had been wrung from her mouth.

  Until they were both spent and lying on their backs, gasping for breath and reaching for sanity, fighting and losing the battle to keep heavy lids open.

  CHAPTER NINE

  OLIVIA DIDN’T KNOW where she was when she first woke. It was dark and everything was unfamiliar. She was used to that, travelling so much, but this felt different.

  It took several more seconds for the warm pillow beneath her head to register as human. Warm, male, human.

  Holy crap!

  She sat up as everything came crashing back. Ethan’s apartment. Il Conte’s spaghetti. A warm shower. A bronze figurine. Urgent, need-you-now sex.

  Really great, need-you-now sex.

  Ethan stirred, shifted, mumbled something and rolled on his side but didn’t wake. He’d always been a heavy sleeper—something that apparently the military hadn’t cured him of. But given how exhausted they’d both been it wasn’t surprising.

  But she was wide-awake. Panic skittered along her veins and edged up her heart-rate.

  Crap! She’d slept with Ethan-freaking-Hunter. The one man on this earth she’d vowed she’d never, ever sleep with again! Good going, Olivia. Really smart move. Nothing like taking a giant leap backwards in your evolution as a human being. Why not just give the man your heart on a platter and a great big knife to stab right through the centre of it?

  Did you learn nothing?

  But then another thought came crashing through her self-loathing. Ama.

  Oh, hell! She leapt from the bed, her heart-rate ratcheting up another notch—what was the time? She had to get back to the hospital.

  Olivia could barely think straight as she dashed around, trying to find her scrubs and get dressed in the dark, trying and failing to leave the bedroom without a backward glance and annoyed at herself when the broad sweep of a naked shoulder made the muscles deep inside her belly twist—in a good way.

  A really good way.

  Damn it!

  She forced herself out into the still lit hallway and the even brighter open-plan lounge/kitchen. She found her shoes near the lounge and shoved her feet in. Grabbed her coat discarded on a kitchen stool and shoved her arms in. Then she shoved fingers through her hair and hoped to hell it didn’t look as if she’d just rolled out of bed with a man who was a very bad bet.

  She snagged her bag as she hurried past the counter heading for the door, digging around in it for her phone, finding it as she reached the knob, and yanked the door open, clicking it shut behind her as she scrolled through, looking for any missed calls or messages.

  None.

  Her shoulders sagged in relief as she hit the stairs. But it wasn’t enough—she needed to know more. Olivia speed-dialled the ICU as she scurried down the stairs. A nurse answered as her foot hit the bottom step and by the time she was out of the apartment and striding towards the hospital she’d ascertained that Ama was stable, sedated and doing well.

  ‘I’ll be there in five minutes,’ Olivia informed the nurse, then hit the end button.

  Only then did she notice other things. Like her frantic breath misting into the air, the cold slapping into her face as she all but burst into a jog on the footpath, the sting in her thighs as needles of frosty air penetrated the cotton of her scrubs.

  Olivia pulled the collar up on her duffle coat and tightened the belt, hunching into its thick layers for added warmth. It was freezing. She’d forgotten how cold London was in November.

  It had been warm in Africa.

  It had been even warmer in Ethan’s bed.

  What had she been thinking? The man feeds her spaghetti and keeps a dumb memento from their time together and she just opens her legs for him?

  The slight ache there mocked her for her stupidity, as did the dampness slicking her inner thighs. They hadn’t even used a damn condom. Two doctors who should know better and they hadn’t even stopped to be responsible!

  She hadn’t thought. Or cared. She’d just needed him inside her.

  Her brisk footfalls were loud on the deserted pavement and each one formed the rhythm to her self
-loathing.

  Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

  Idiot. Idiot. Idiot.

  Fool. Fool. Fool.

  Olivia was grateful when she rounded the corner and the lights of the hospital were just there—close enough to reach out and touch. Like a beacon of hope, saving her from a bitchy internal dialogue and a series of thoughts that could only get more ugly.

  She couldn’t worry about any of the Ethan stuff right now.

  They were going to need to talk, but for tonight—until Ama was out of the woods—she didn’t want to think about anything else. She certainly didn’t want to have a conversation with him when their sex was still on her skin and his kisses still imprinted on her mouth.

  And, if she knew Ethan at all, he wouldn’t be cherishing the idea of talking either. Hell, they’d spent months together a decade ago and he clearly hadn’t spoken to her at all—not about anything of import. About what was going on with him, about his pain and anger. Clamming up and being all brooding and silent seemed to be his speciality.

  And, for once, Olivia was glad of it.

  * * *

  Ethan woke with a start. Aaliyah’s laughter was a faint echo in his head, teasing him somewhere in the distance, fluttering elusively just out of his reach, like a ribbon in the breeze.

  But in his mind’s eyes he tried anyway, his hand extending, grabbing nothing but air.

  Same as always.

  Aaliyah. I’m so sorry, Aaliyah.

  Gloomy daylight bled in around the heavy curtains at his window, matching his mood to perfection. The low hum of London traffic was a fitting background to the mumbled recriminations of his thoughts.

  He rolled his head to the side, where his arm was flung out on the mattress. The empty space was cold: no hint of bodily warmth, no dent in the pillow beside him to indicate anyone had been there.

  Same as always. But not.

  Olivia was long gone and he was...relieved.