Instant Gratification
“Hands where I can see them, ass**le, or I’ll kick your balls into next week.”
He raised his hands in the air—slowly because he was still aching like crazy—and turned. Emma stood in the doorway in a pair of men’s boxers and a thin camisole, wielding a baseball bat like she knew how to use it. Her hair was loose and a bit wild, but her eyes were ice. She wore no make up, which he loved, and he really loved the bed head, but mostly his brain stuttered and came to a screeching halt on the fact that she wasn’t wearing a bra.
He really, really loved that part. “Just me,” he said lightly. “And FYI, you can’t threaten a guy’s balls when he’s facing the other way.”
She didn’t lower her bat, not a single inch. “I can threaten them now.”
He resisted the urge to cover them. “Okay, let’s all just relax.”
“Relax? You broke in!”
She was looking and sounding very New York, and maybe he was sick, but he liked it.
A lot.
And maybe, just maybe, he’d meant for this to happen tonight. “I didn’t break in, I have a key. Your father gave it to me. I tend to have a lot of emergencies…” He flashed a smile. “And he liked his sleep.”
“You want me to believe that my father let you come and go through his medical supplies whenever you wanted?”
“As the situation required,” he corrected, trying another smile.
She still didn’t match it. She was scowling, actually, and that sharp gaze ran down his body, stopping on a dime at the hole in his jeans revealing the bloody knee. “You’re hurt.”
“Just a little. I want to clean it out and—”
“Let me guess. Get a Band-Aid.” With a sigh, she finally lowered the baseball bat and jabbed it toward a chair. “Sit.”
Instead he pulled himself up on the counter and eyed the bat as she set it down. “You actually ever use that thing?”
“Didn’t I just threaten to kick your ass?” She smiled grimly. “Trust me, I could have done it.”
Maybe. Only because he’d been too busy dropping his jaw to the floor to protect himself. Holy shit, the woman had been hiding a smoking hot bod; full br**sts with ni**les that were pressing up against the material of her cami, a sweet set of hips and a strip of bared belly, revealed by the boxer shorts she’d rolled over several times to adjust to her frame.
She moved past him, picked up one of the doctor’s coats hanging on a rack and slipped into it. Damn.
“Sorry,” she said at his expression. “Only invited midnight callers get to see me in my pj’s.”
“Can I get an invite?”
Her laugh told him no way in hell was he getting an invite, but he smiled anyway. “You look pretty when you laugh.”
She was still smiling when she came close and bent, peering at his knee. “No stitches this time.”
“Good.”
She straightened and eyed the cut over his eye. “And that looks to be healing. I thought maybe you’d need some antibiotics, but you don’t. But.”
Ah, hell.
“You need a tetanus shot. You know that, right?”
“Yeah.” He felt his vision go a little fuzzy. Jesus, he was f**king pathetic.
“You going to pass out on me?”
“Not if you take your coat off again.”
“Nice try.” She was preparing the tetanus shot, and he was sweating and feeling sick when she glanced over at him. She shook her head and sighed. “Unbelievable.”
“I know.” He swiped his brow. “I—”
“Not you. Me. I can’t believe I’m going to do this for you, but…” She let the coat hit the floor. “Consider it a present, from me to you.”
It was a great present. She had great legs, long and toned. Great arms, too. But his gaze dropped to her br**sts as she came to a stop at his hip, shoved up the sleeve of his shirt and swiped his skin with an antiseptic gauze. Her skin was smooth and creamy, and his mouth watered. She smelled amazing, too, like—“Ouch!”
She slapped a Band-Aid on him. “You might have a sore arm for the next few days.”
“I have to rock climb tomorrow.”
“Maybe I should have given it to you in the ass then?”
He laughed, but when he looked at her face, he realized she wasn’t kidding. “You really are mean.”
She smiled as she bent for the doctor’s coat, giving him a heart-stopping view. “I know. And honestly? You shouldn’t be rock climbing. Not with your ribs and stitches and other various injuries. You shouldn’t be doing anything tomorrow.”
That said, she covered up again and was ushering him to the door, pushing him out into the night, the sound of the bolt sliding home his only company.
Well, that and the memory of her in those little boxers and cami, took him all the way home, followed him into his shower and through a whole night of new and even more erotic dreams.
The next morning, Emma opened the clinic’s doors for all the patients who hadn’t broken into the place in the middle of the night. It was eight sharp, and she had one patient. Cece Potter, Moody’s waitress. The young twenty-ish woman needed an antibiotics prescription for a throat infection, and alternately called her “Dr. Sinclair”—in a snooty tone, and “that woman that Stone’s seeing”—also in a snooty tone—which was more disconcerting.