“You know you’re really hot,” Ross remarked as his lips continued to skim over the pulse point in her neck. His hand drifted down over her stomach and slipped between her thighs to find her dripping wet. “Oh, that sort of dream was it?” He laughed. “Am I not giving you enough?” He rolled onto his back, pulling her on top, so she straddled his thighs.
“I thought you were knackered.”
“Only certain bits of me. My elbow.” He pointed and she bestowed a kiss there. “My right knee.” Another kiss, though that one involved some wriggling. “My nose, my left nipple.”
“Let me guess, your cock?”
Laughter rumbled through his chest again. “No, I think that bit’s definitely wide awake.”
“Then we’d best make sure he stays that way.” She closed her mouth over the head of his erection.
“Oh, god, Evie. You have the mouth of a fucking angel.” And he lapsed into a string of sighs.
That’s right Ross. Drive away the images of the past by fucking me.
He did taste good. The sexual tension remaining from her dream tingled with renewed interest. She left off sucking just as soon as Ross was really hard and meandered up his body until their lips met and their bodies joined.
Still, no matter how hard she rode him, or how powerfully he thrust into her, she never quite dislodged the impish version of Kit sitting on her shoulder.
“Shit!” she cursed as she came, wondering if even now, Kit was lying in bed listening to them and driving his cock through the ring of his fingers.
Chapter Five
The weekend soon passed, Sunday bleeding into Monday and so on. Both Ross and Evie fell into their normal patterns of work and play, while Kit made a start on transforming Rose Cottage. By Friday, he’d started disappearing before dawn and not returning until late in the evening. “Keeping busy and keeping out of the way,” he’d told Ross that morning when he’d challenged Kit on the front drive before they went their separate ways. “Figure I came on a bit strong and rattled Evie’s cage, so I’m downplaying my presence.” Although Ross had accepted the explanation, he suspected there was more to Kit’s prolonged absences than lulling Evie into a false sense of security. More likely, he’d been holing himself up in the cottage hoping the village wouldn’t notice him. Curiously, the ploy appeared to be working. Despite Doris’s less than subtle greeting in the pub, no one else had commented on his friend’s return.
A knock on the surgery door disturbed his thoughts. “Are you free? Oh, yes, you’re free. Wonderful.” The owner of the chirpy voice waddled into the surgery, arm aloft, trailing a small dog on a lead.
“Nice to see you again, Mrs. Hawes, and Hamish, of course. What can I do for you today?”
“Just his nails, please, Ross. I know I could get Margery to do it in her mobile unit, but between you and me, I’m not so sure she does quite as good a job.”
“Nails, right,” said Ross, his head going down as he looked around for the clippers. Scratch the lack of gossip. There was one reason behind this impromptu pet pedicure and one only. Sheila Hawes relished gossip in much the same way other folks loved chocolate, and was never more satisfied than when presented with a nice juicy morsel. The bigger the scandal, the greater the delight in her beetle-black eyes, and the more stops on her busy social calendar.
“I saw Doris yesterday. Went to her knitting circle, not that she knits much now with her arthritis crippling her joints, but she does still like to chat.”
Yes, here it was, thought Ross. Wait for it… Wait for it.
“She said she’d run into you in the Boar. Think Doris half thought you might show up and surprise us all. Silly bleeder,” she added with a cackle.
“Surgery,” muttered Ross. He found just the implication of a sick animal on the operating table generally derailed too much digging into his actual doings and whereabouts. Folk didn’t like to think too hard about sick pets, and he didn’t like to tax himself too hard with the village’s peculiar brand of social chess. “Afternoons are never a good time. We’ve been booked up pretty solid all week.”
“I suppose it’s the season. Cold affects the poor mites, same as it does us. You wouldn’t believe how much my joints ache first thing.”
“Bitterly cold this morning,” he said, hoping to further sidetrack her digging long enough to finish off Hamish’s nails, so he could shoo her out before she got her teeth into anything meaty. As it was the cry of a distinctive baritone proved to be a far more diverting distraction that grilling him.
“Is that… Is that him?” she cried. Her beady eyes lit with excitement.
“Who?”
“Is he here? In the surgery!”
“I’m sure I don’t know who you’re talking about.”
“Don’t mock me, Ross Hatton. That fiend you call a friend. Christopher Skye.”
Denying Kit’s presence seemed rather pointless since he could clearly hear Kit shouting his name. A devil of a ruckus seemed to have begun in the waiting room. Mrs. Hawes began waggling her finger at him, but Ross released the now yapping Hamish into her arms and swiftly opened the door.
“Well, how rude…” Her words faded as Iris ushered Kit through the open doorway, with a tea towel clamped to his head.
Time froze and then split apart. Ross’s heart clenched tight at the sight of his friend’s ashen face. Blood coated the cuff of his jacket and had already seeped through the Working Dogs of Great Britain tea towel, turning the Border collie ox-brown. Iris bundled Kit into a seat and nudged the wide-eyed, slack-jawed Mrs. Hawes out of the door, shutting it firmly behind them.
“Lock it.” Kit’s words burst from his mouth as a snarl. Unquestioningly, Ross turned the bolt.
“What it god’s name happened? Kit!”
Kit pulled the cloth away from his face, causing a trickle of blood to roll down the side of his face and drip into the open neck of his jacket. “Get this off me.” He switched hands and pressed the cloth back to his brow before shaking his left arm so that his hand disappeared inside the sleeve. Ross grasped the soiled cuff and pulled. Beneath the jacket Kit wore a soot-black T-shirt, the collar of which was slashed open on the same side as his wound.
“Who did this? Jesus, we need to get you to A&E.”
“I’m not going. I’ve already had that out with Iris.”
“Is that what the shouting was about?”
“That and she said I was upsetting the animals.”
Pleased to find Kit his normal argumentative and masochistic self, Ross slapped him across the back. “Let me.” He poked tentatively at the cloth. The blood flow seemed to be slowing. The gash itself lay straight across the top of Kit’s eyebrow, virtually parallel to the silvered remains of a previous wound. It was straight and a good few centimetres long. “Come on, I’ll drive you.”
“I’m not going.”
“What, you’re just going to sit there? It’ll leave a bloody enormous scar.”
“It will anyway.”
“It needs stitching,” he snapped back. Of all the crazy stunts he’d known Kit to pull, this had to be the most stupid and annoying. “Hospital. Police station. In that order.” He wasn’t being fobbed off over this. They could tell Evie later that he’d whipped himself with a yard of electricity cable to stop her worrying, meanwhile the bastard who was actually responsible wasn’t getting away with it.
“No.” Two big unblinking, dark eyes bored into him. Hell, the heat in that gaze. It was as if he were being sucked in, tempted, offered hell knows what if he’d just back down.
“You’re not—” He meant to say
pulling your Mephistopheles act on me today
, but the hot sparks had already started running up and down his neck, making the underside of his chin prickle. Kit was far too accustomed to being in control and manipulating moods to suit his purpose. Though how he could turn on the old sexual fire while sporting a head wound was utterly perplexing.
“You fix it.” Kit’s voice dropped to a husky whisper as he made the suggestion. For a moment, it even sounded reasonable. More than that, it felt like a blooming caress. Ross pulled back. He let the reality of their location sink in, cut Kit out of the picture and acknowledged the turmoil still raging in the waiting room. Snatches of the speculative conversation leeched through the walls, Mrs. Hawes loudest of all.
“Shit in hell, Kit!” Ross swore, snapping back to reality. “I’m a vet not a fucking doctor. Who was it? Tony? One of the Bryant boys?”
“Didn’t see,” he said, succumbing to an obvious snit. “If you won’t do it, give me some glue and I’ll fix it myself. You know that’s all they’re going to do at A&E.”
Ross got right up close and growled in his face. “I’ll do it, if you report it.”
“It’s not happening, Ross. It wouldn’t do any good anyway. Probably just make things worse.” Kit gave him an angry grin and kissed him, the shock of which sent Ross scuttling away again, so that he backed into the examination table. “Shit!” He rubbed frantically at his violated lips. “Shit! Don’t do that.”
Kit rose somewhat shakily and took a step forward, his intent written clear in his expression. Hot sparks flared within the depths of his eyes. The slender high curve of his cheekbones along with those sexy hooded eyes and the streaks of blood across his cheek made him a hundred percent drop-dead irresistible.
“Shit!” Ross snarled again. He half turned, not taking his eyes off Kit and tugged a pair of latex gloves out of box. “I’ll do it, all right, I’ll do it.”
Kit shrugged and sagged back into the chair. He pulled his hair back off his forehead and waited patiently as Ross cleaned up the wound and applied a layer of Vetbond. “Don’t come crying to me when it starts itching like hell, okay.”
“Whatever you say, honey.” Kit released his hair so that it flopped back over his forehead and shrouded his eyes. He leaned into Ross, pressing his face to the hard plane of his stomach. “Mind if I engage in a sniffle or two now? It bloody hurts.”
It wasn’t quite so easy to shrug away the intimacy when he put it like that. Ross cupped the back of Kit’s head and tried not to react to the rasp of Kit’s breath against his stomach. “Really, Kit, who was it? What happened?”
Kit simply pressed his face more firmly to Ross’s stomach. He wound his arms around Ross’s hips and squeezed him tight. Next minute he was kneading Ross’s arse and his lips were drawing shifting circles across Ross’s abs.
Ross stopped stroking his hair and tried to back step, but Kit clung on tight. He should have known this was coming from his experiences of old. Kit only had one avenue of expression—sex. It didn’t matter if he was miserable, in pain or delirious, everything sparked the same reaction. “Kit.” Ross wedged a hand between them and pushed. “I’m at work. We can’t do this.”
What he should have said was, “I’m not ever doing this”. He wasn’t. He had Evie. His relationship with Kit was remaining completely platonic. Unfortunately, his body didn’t agree with his brain. Just as they had that first night in the kitchen, Ross’s senses reeled and reared. His loins grew heavy and arousal danced up and down the length of his stiffening cock.
“No one’s going to come in,” Kit coaxed as he mouthed along the obvious swell in Ross’s trousers. “You’ve already bolted the door and I need the comfort.”
Comfort! He needed a lesson in propriety. Hadn’t this sort of behaviour led to all the trouble six years back? “You need to get a grip.”
“Excellent suggestion.” He pressed a hand between Ross’s legs and cupped his balls. Ross’s cock jerked and swelled, and Kit mouthed the very tip of it through the trouser fabric.
“I’ve appointments, Kit.”
The plea fell on deaf ears. Kit’s lips continued to move. His hand gently squeezed, causing shivers to run from the base of Ross’s spine down to his toes and then shoot right up his spine. Blood began to pool in his groin. His cock stiffened seeking further stimulation.
“Kit!”
“It’s fine, Ross. I’ll make you feel better. I know you were worried.” Kit’s nimble fingers worked open the belt. He gently peeled back Ross’s underwear and sucked the tip of his cock.
It didn’t matter how many times Ross said no, that intimate kiss bulldozed aside his reservations. Kit had the skills of a whore, only with more passion and extra guilt. Ross clung to him, guiding Kit’s head, as his hips picked up the rhythm. “Fuck, this is wrong. Oh, that’s good, oh, so good.” Evie would kill him. She’d wrap her fingers around his throat and throttle him. Even that thought didn’t stop the explosion of lust in his guts.
“Oh, Kit,” he sighed, lacing his fingers through the other man’s dark hair. Why wasn’t anything simple? The truth was, he did still want this. Their one brief time together in the past had been just that, too brief. They hadn’t had time to explore more than the basics. There’d been so much more he’d had planned out for them, when it’d all been cut so tragically short. He loved Evie. Loved her to bits, in fact, but this was different, separate to that. Fucking Kit was different, but perhaps not worth the risk of sacrificing something equally precious, especially when Kit could take off again at any moment. A flight back to Japan had to look more appealing than whatever had gone on this morning. Superglue aside, that cut was nasty.
“Stop it!” He pushed at Kit’s shoulder again. He needed to get a hold of himself. He wasn’t some randy irresponsible boy anymore. “Stop it! I don’t want an affair, Kit.” The force behind the push was enough to persuade Kit to release him. Ross zipped his fly before Kit launched another attack. “We can talk things over later, but we’re not falling into this. I know you’re hurt, but…”
Kit continued to gaze up at him from his knees, while sucking his thumbnail. He rose, looked as if he were about to say something, then retreated and undid the bolt on the door.
“Where are you going?” Guilt pangs tightened the muscles in Ross’s chest, making it hard to breathe without sounding as if he’d just run a four-minute mile. “I mean—maybe you shouldn’t go back to the cottage just yet. Not alone. You’re supposed to stay with somebody after a head injury.”
“Are you suggesting I sit in on your dog grooming?”
“I’m not sure that’d work.”
“It definitely wouldn’t work.”
Genuinely concerned, Ross reached out a hand to stop him.
Kit blinked ever so slowly at the gentle pull upon his wrist, then the corners of his lips turned up and the inky depths of his eyes lit with mischievous sparkles. “Maybe I’ll stop by and take Evie out for lunch.”
The words were barely out before Ross’s heart thudded hard against his chest. Jealousy curled his lip, but he forced himself to be calm and rational. Kit knew how to play him, and that’s all he was doing. He wouldn’t follow through with his implied wickedness, and Evie wouldn’t stand for his nonsense anyway. There was nothing to fear, despite the rapid pitter-patter of his pulse.
“There’s not a problem with that, is there?”
“No.” Ross spoke too fast. “I’m sure she’ll be delighted. She commented last night that you hadn’t been around much for her to get to know you.”