Spring River Valley: The Winter Collection (Boxed Set) (20 page)

“Ah…tired, so I might not…you know…”

“Do you want to stop?”

“God no! If you stop, I’ll get my axe.”

“You want me to do all the work?”

“No…well…ah…you are doing a pretty good job of…” He found her center and delved in, testing the waters so to speak. She bit her lip and moaned.

“It’s okay. Lie back and let me handle everything.” To punctuate his words, he handled her…and handled her expertly. “Are you afraid you’re too tired to get to the finish line? Because I know the route.”

Audrey’s eyes rolled back, and every nerve in her body went taut. She had absolutely no doubt he could get her where she wanted to go, but would she be just as skillful when she’d been dead on her feet less than half an hour ago? What if tired Audrey didn’t live up to Max’s expectations? “I…I…oh…you do know the way there, don’t you?” Her hips bucked of their own accord, and he slid into her, one bold finger taking her to the edge of reason.

“That’s it…move with me.” She did, her mind a blur.

“I just…I don’t want to disappoint you.”

“Make that little sound again…that whimper you made when I touched you.”

She obliged him and shuddered as a feeling she hadn’t experienced in way too long began to build in the middle of her belly. “Oh, Max…”

“You can’t disappoint me. If you keep making that sound, you keep moving the way you’re moving, you keep feeling the way you feel to me…”

“Max!” That did it. She was gone, over the edge, shivering and shaking, crying out as she came.

He held her steady, easing her over each wave until she lay panting, done, a puddle of satisfaction under his hands.

“That was perfect. That was just what I wanted,” he said into her ear.

She nodded. It was just what she wanted too. To start with. “Is there more?” she managed to ask.

He laughed and rose up to remove his jeans. “There’s plenty more. Are you ready for it?”

“I’m ready for anything.”

Max lost himself in Audrey. Up until the moment he held her naked in his arms, he hadn’t realized how much he’d wanted her. She’d been a challenge, someone who turned him on and made him want to prove himself. The moment he pulled the covers of her bed up over their entwined bodies and held her while she shuddered through her third orgasm, he knew this was much more than a romantic distraction.

She lay half asleep next to him now, her hand across his chest, her hair fanning out on the pillow, her lips plump and red from kissing.

She was more than he’d ever asked for, and he had to wonder if how he felt in this moment might be more than he could handle.

He wasn’t the commitment type, never had been, but this woman in his arms, wrapped around his sated body, breathing in sync with him, demanded more than he might be able to give. He never wanted to disappoint her.

She stirred, and he stroked her skin, watching the goose bumps rise along her shoulder and travel down to more interesting curves. “Stop that,” she moaned. “I’m too tired to move.”

“Then don’t move.”

“But I’ve been practically limp since we fell into bed. You’ve done…everything.”

“Twice. I’ve done everything twice.”

“So I should do something.”

“You should. It’s practically expected of you.” He shifted his body so he was lying on his back and locked his fingers behind his head. “I’m all yours. Do what you will.”

She lifted her head then collapsed back on his chest. “I can’t. You’ve exhausted me.”

“That was my plan all along.”

“So that was your plan, not to seduce me, not to keep me quiet long enough for me to realize I sort of like you…all you wanted was to just wear me out?”

“Yes. Wait a minute, you sort of like me?”

She wove her fingers together and rested her chin atop them. “You have to admit, you’re an acquired taste. I’ve made it all the way to ‘sort of like’ in record time.”

“So what will it take to get you to the next level?”

“That depends. What comes after sort of like?”

He growled and rolled her underneath him. “You do.”

She protested only half-heartedly, and not long after he had demonstrated what came after sort of like and what came after her, they lay sated again.

“No more. My muscles don’t work anymore.”

“You call those muscles?” He squeezed her feminine biceps. “These are like wet spaghetti. No wonder you’re down for the count. We need to work on strength training and build up some resistance.”

She grinned and met his gaze. “Haven’t you figured it out by now? I can’t resist you. You’re irresistible.”

He contemplated that. “You’re right. I am. I’m also starving.”

“What time is it?” Slowly, she crawled over him, reminding him he still had a bit of strength left. He let his hands roam while she felt around on her nightstand for the clock. Squinting in the darkness she said, “It’s after midnight. You know what that means?”

“My coach turns into a pumpkin, and you’re going to have to run all over town searching for me with a glass Reebok?”

“No…ugh.” She heaved the clock back onto the little table and rolled off him to snuggle under the covers. “It means this is Valentine’s Day.”

“No kidding? Best one I’ve ever had.”

“Me too.”

“Do you have any plans for later?”

She stretched next to him, making sure her luxurious curves rubbed against all of his hard angles. “I was going to eat ice cream and watch sad movies.”

“Sounds like a plan to me.”

“That’s a plan for a single girl with no date.”

“Okay, we could eat hoagies and watch football.”

“Isn’t that the plan for a single guy with no date?”

“We can add ice cream and cry over the half time score.”

“Already this isn’t working out.”

Max laughed and wrapped his arms around her. “Other than the need to eat, what’s wrong with spending the day right here?”

“That sounds like a plan. I don’t have to be at the hospital until the fifteenth.”

“That leaves us back to eating.”

“You’re the cook. Think of something.”

He bit her shoulder, and she shrieked. “Problem solved.”

* * * *

Audrey kissed Max good-bye almost twenty hours later. They’d spent the day making love in the bedroom, making a mess of French toast and pancakes in the kitchen, and making plans for the rest of the week. She’d had to keep asking herself how the guy she’d wanted to avoid two days ago had turned into the man she wondered how she’d ever lived without.

His touch, his kiss, everything about him set her on fire. She’d spent so many hours on the brink of melting or shivering she was sure her body had gone into shock. When he finally stepped out the door, so she could get some real sleep and prepare for her next shift at the hospital, her apartment seemed empty.

Sipping tea after a long, hot bath, she finally checked her phone messages. Harper had called three times, Cassandra twice.

Uh-oh. Cassandra. She’d asked Max’s cousin to set her up with John, Appendix Guy, again. What if she’d
gone ahead and done that? It was past ten p.m., so Audrey didn’t want to call her now. She wrote a note and stuck it to the refrigerator to remind her to call first thing in the morning.

Before she left the kitchen, her phone rang and she scooped it up. It was Max.

“I just got home, wanted to hear your voice.”

“You’ve been gone a long time. I miss you.”

“I can come back.”

“I need to sleep,” she moaned. She wanted him to come back, but how would she ever drag herself out of bed to go to work?

“I could promise not to touch you for a couple of hours.”

“Don’t ever do that.”

“Good night, Audrey.”

“Good night, Max.” She twirled around her kitchen feeling a bit like Cinderella herself. She wondered how things would have gone between them if they’d met at Harper’s wedding, like they would have if the event hadn’t been called off. Max would have been the photographer and Audrey the maid of honor. How weird would that have been? Maybe it was fate after all—events had transpired to keep them apart just a few weeks longer, but they’d been thrown together anyway at just the right time. Audrey had never been sentimental or believed in destiny, but this seemed pretty damned close to it.

Now all she had to do was not screw it up.

* * * *

“I don’t know whether to give you the point or not,” Max said, balancing his studio phone on his shoulder while he spoke. He was rearranging the props in the portrait room for his client while he talked to Cassie.

“The point for what?”

“Fixing up me and Audrey. You technically didn’t pick me for her, but you still got us together, so I can’t decide if it’s a point for your matchmaking skills or not.”

“You and Audrey? I thought that was over.”

“Over? It never got started. Well, not until yesterday.”

His cousin made an exasperated sound. “Why am I always out of the loop? When did this happen?”

“We spent all day yesterday together. Yes, Valentine’s Day, but don’t make a big deal out of that. We’re not. When I say all day, I mean starting on the thirteenth.”

“Wow.”

“Didn’t she call you? I thought women told each other everything immediately.”

“I haven’t heard from her, which is odd since as far as I know, she still has a date with John tomorrow night.”

Max set down the overstuffed teddy bear he’d been trying to pose on a petite rocking chair. “Why would she still have a date with him?”

“She asked me to set her up with him ag…ain.” Cassie’s voice hitched as though halfway through the sentence she realized she’d said something she shouldn’t have.

Max straightened his back and gripped the phone tightly. “When did she set this up?”

“It’s not important.”

“Yes, actually it is.” Audrey hadn’t mentioned John to him. Was she hedging her bets?

“No, it’s not. Look, I’m sure she forgot about it. She’d called me the other day all rattled and said she still wanted to meet John because…”

“Because why?”

“Because she thought he sounded perfect for her.”

“Nice.”

“Max, that was obviously before you and her got together. Whatever happened between you definitely supersedes her wanting to go on a date with John.”

“Yeah. I’m sure you’re right.” But it irked him, like an itch he couldn’t scratch. Had she left his apartment the other day after they’d kissed and immediately asked Cassie to fix her up with another guy?

“I’m going to call her right now and straighten this out. I’m sure she doesn’t want to go ahead with the date.”

“I’ll take care of it, Cass.”

“Max, let me—”

“I said, I’ll take care of it. Don’t do anything until I call you back.”

“Hold still!” Audrey placed both hands on the sides of Quinn Preston’s head and forced him to look at her.

“But it hurts.”

“If you don’t want your eyebrow sewn to your ear, you’ll hold still.” She adjusted the angle of his head again and picked up a surgical swab to continue dabbing at the blood that ran from a serious divot in his left eyebrow down his badly scraped cheek. He winced and complained while she worked, but at least he’d stopped moving around.

“Can you make sure I have a scar when you’re done? Chicks like scars, they’re sexy.”

“You’re so vain. In fact, I don’t think you can avoid having a scar. Eyebrows don’t generally grow back around cuts this deep.”

“Awesome.”

“Hold still!”

“Sorry.”

“So what the hell happened to you anyway? Where’s Tanner?”

“He’s okay. He’s still on the scene. We got the call for that rollover wreck on the South Parkway, and I’d just gotten to the car. The driver’s window was smashed, so I was pulling glass out of it. The driver’s hanging upside down by the seatbelt, and the car’s lying on ice. Next thing I know, the whole wreck is sliding down the embankment, and my sleeve is caught on a metal shard from the door frame, so it takes me with it.”

Audrey shook her head. “You’re lucky you didn’t break your neck.” She dabbed at the road burn on his face then studied the cut, looking for pieces of debris. “You may have some glass in there. Does this hurt?” She pressed a spot, and he cursed. “I’ll take that as a yes. I can’t stitch this until the surgical resident looks at it.”

“Damn, how long is that going to take?”

“The way things are going today, about four hours. It’s been nonstop since dawn. In fact, I got called in early for my shift. It must be the start of a full moon or something.”

“So I’ve got to just lie here until someone comes to look at my eyebrow?”