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  Doyle chuckled at her obvious reluctance and Gemma’s almost comical, puzzled expression. Sal was usually the bastion of gracious and had always been unfailingly polite to him. He doubted Gemma had ever seen her so outwardly ungrateful.

  But that was fine. She’d been plenty grateful last night.

  “My pleasure,” he said, holding her gaze for a second longer than necessary before striding out of the room.

  …

  Doyle was sitting on the couch cradling a beer in his lap, patting Matilda and watching the television when Sal got in at eight thirty. The practice was staffed by two full-time vets, him and Sal, and three part-time ones who divided up the afternoon shifts among them and knocked off at eight. Occasionally things cropped up and some close shifts weren’t able to be covered and either he or Sal manned the shop.

  “Evening,” he said as she entered the apartment.

  “Jesus!” Sal’s big blue eyes turned on him as she clutched her chest. “You almost gave me a heart attack.”

  He grinned. “Sorry.”

  Although he wasn’t really. He liked her all round-eyed and slack-mouthed, her focus solely on him. It was nice to see her unguarded for a change.

  “What are you doing out here?” she demanded, crankily shutting the door behind her.

  He chuckled. “I live here, remember?”

  “Yeah, but since when do you hang out in the lounge room?”

  He took a swig of his beer, his gaze never leaving hers. “Since last night.”

  She turned away and stomped into the kitchen, and he smiled to himself. He couldn’t really blame her for being surprised. He’d made a habit of not hanging around. She’d clearly not wanted him to, and she was often entertaining here anyway, so it was just as easy to either go out or watch television in his bedroom.

  But that was about to stop.

  From now on he was going to be present. He was going to exist in this apartment whether she liked it or not. He was going to be in her face.

  She grabbed a container of leftovers from a few nights back, stirred it with a fork, then quickly shoved it in the microwave.

  “You wanna watch something on telly?” he asked, picking up the remote and flicking through the channels. “I’m not really watching this movie.”

  “No.”

  He smiled at her brisk response as he got up from the couch, disturbing the sleepy cat, and sat himself down at the breakfast bar. “Plans?”

  She glared at him as he got comfortable, and he had absolutely no doubt that if looks could kill he’d be six feet under. “No.”

  “You’re really not much of a conversationalist, are you?”

  She shot him a sugary smile. “Maybe I don’t find the company that stimulating?”

  He quirked an eyebrow. “You found it plenty stimulating last night.”

  “Okay.” She slammed down the fork. “We’re not going to do this. Last night was…well…” She looked down at her hands for a moment before looking back at him. “It happened. And unless you’re going to call in your debt, I suggest you forget that it did. That we both forget.”

  Doyle put his beer down on the counter. “I’m not going to call in my debt. There is no debt. Last night was given freely with absolutely no expectations of quid pro quo.”

  “Good. So how about we just put it down to a temporary aberration and move on?”

  Doyle shook his head. “Nope, sorry, no can do. As I said this morning, it’s too late to put it back in the bag. Despite your best efforts, I like you, Sal. I want to explore that a little.”

  “Well, I don’t. I don’t explore. I don’t date or do relationships. You’re wasting your time.”

  “Why don’t you? Tell me why.”

  She shook her head. “None of your business.”

  Doyle took another swig of his beer, holding her gaze as he did. “Did somebody hurt you?”

  Something flared in her blue eyes before she shut it down. “Don’t do that,” she snapped. “I’m not a Labrador with diabetes, Doyle. I don’t need fixing.”

  He held up his hands in mock surrender. “Of course you don’t. Everything’s just fine with you, right?”

  The microwave dinged and Sal didn’t hesitate attending to it. “Saved by the bell,” he murmured.

  She punched in some more time on the keypad and turned back to him. “What do you want to hear from me? That I’m attracted to you? That I like you, too? You want me to scratch your initials into a tree and put a big love heart around them?”

  “No. I just want you to be honest.”

  “Honesty?” Sal snorted. “Okay, fine.” She moved until she was standing on the opposite side of the counter. “I’ve been having a bit of a…dry spell. You know, finding it hard to get across the finish line, and you caught me in a particularly…frustrated mood. And when I’m frustrated I find it hard to sleep, and that doesn’t come easy at the best of times, so last night I chose tequila to get me through. And then you, as it turns out.”

  Doyle blinked. Now that he hadn’t expected. Also—what the fuck? She could have fooled him. “If you don’t mind my saying so, I’m across the hallway from you and if that’s you having a dry spell, I’d hate to be around when you’re experiencing a flood.”

  She shrugged. “I’m a very good faker.”

  Oh, yes she was. A thought suddenly occurred to him. “And last night you didn’t…”

  She frowned at him. “Fake it? Hell no. Last night broke the drought.” She wiggled her fingers at him. “Magic fingers, remember?”

  Ordinarily Doyle would have said he could tell if a woman was faking it or not. In fact, he’d stake his reputation on no one ever having left his bed unsatisfied. But she’d just blown that all to hell.

  “And I’m supposed to believe you after you just admitted to being very good at faking it?”

  “I’m standing in front of you telling you I haven’t been able to achieve orgasm in a while. I’ve come this far into some pretty personal territory, why would I lie about the details? I don’t know whether you’ve noticed this or not, but I do tend to speak my mind.”

  “Yeah.” He smiled. “I noticed. But I still don’t understand. Why fake it? Why not just…expect more? Demand more?”

  “You think I want a guy who can’t get me there within a reasonable time frame to stick around in my bed? When his sole purpose for being there in the first place is to get me there? It’s much easier to just get it over with. A little bit of panting and screaming and he goes away happy, and then I can take care of things from there.”

  Doyle tried not to think about Sal touching herself. Or possibly owning some kind of mechanical aid used in such circumstances. Especially as she seemed to have dropped her hostility and they were actually talking. An erection right now might just put them back to square one.

  But still, the horndog inside couldn’t help but wonder if she owned a vibrator. Something told him she probably had an entire collection. Now that could be fun.

  “So why not just do that in the first place? Why involve men at all?”

  The microwave dinged again and Sal gave him a small smile. “It’s better when I share with a friend. The experience is more…”

  “Emotionally fulfilling?”

  “Fun,” she said flippantly before twirling away, heading for the microwave, but not before Doyle caught the shadow flitting through her expressive blue eyes. One that told him she craved human connection, too, no matter how brief.

  It gave him hope.

  Doyle took his time admiring her back view as she stirred her meal. Her navy work pants clung very nicely to her hips and arse, but were baggy around thighs he knew full well were pale and slender but surprisingly strong. Last night they’d squeezed his thigh between them like a bloody boa constrictor and he couldn’t help but wonder how’d they feel locked around his waist.

  “Is that why you chose me last night?”

  She turned back to face him, using a towel to cradle the bowl hot from the microwave
. “Well, I don’t know whether you’d noticed it or not, but there was tequila involved. Tequila and I have a very long history of poor decisions.”

  Doyle shook his head. That was bullshit. She’d been drinking, but she wasn’t falling down drunk—he would have put her straight to bed if she had been. There was more to it than that. “So I was a poor decision, was I?”

  She smiled at him as she placed her meal on the counter in front of them. “Yes and no.”

  “Surely you could have easily gone and put yourself to sleep. What do they call it? Self-soothing?” She shook her head at him and suddenly he got it. “Oh. That not working for you, either?”

  “Nope.”

  Doyle couldn’t quite believe he was discussing something so intimate with a woman who up until yesterday had kept him well and truly at arm’s length. He guessed breaking her drought had earned him certain privileges.

  Or broken down certain barriers, anyway.

  And if she could discuss it so matter-of-factly, so clinically, then so could he—he did have a medical degree, after all. Not that they’d ever studied the human female orgasm during animal anatomy 101.

  Clearly the course had been the poorer for it.

  “So how long has this been going on?” he asked.

  “I don’t know.” She shrugged, shoving the fork into the pasta. Steam billowed out of the dish as she lifted it to her mouth and blew. “A few months, I guess.”

  “What do you think brought it on?”

  “No idea.” She shoved the food in her mouth.

  “Has it ever happened before?”

  She shook her head vehemently as she chewed, then swallowed. “Never.”

  “Maybe there’s something medical going on?”

  She lifted another forkful to her mouth. “Maybe.”

  But she didn’t sound very convinced to him. He regarded her for a few moments. “You think it’s more…psychological?”

  She dropped her gaze to the bowl. “Probably.”

  And that probably was no doubt the closest he was likely to ever get to an admission Sal had some serious baggage.

  The blond tips of her pixie cut caught the light as he inspected her downcast head. “Why do you find it hard to sleep, Sal?” Maybe both of her problems were interrelated?

  She shrugged but didn’t look up from the bowl where she was making a big deal out of moving her pasta around. “It’s been a…long-term thing.”

  How long? What the hell had happened to her? “They have pills for that.”

  She looked up and shook her head. “Leaves me woolly-headed and hungover. So does tequila. An orgasm, on the other hand, is much more natural and has none of the side effects. Except perhaps for embarrassment when you”—she smiled a surprisingly shy smile that took his breath away—“realize you disgraced yourself in front of your employee and housemate.”

  Doyle shook his head slowly. “You didn’t disgrace yourself, Sal. You were magnificent. I’ve never seen anything as hot as you getting off on me. I don’t think I ever will.”

  The intense blueness of her eyes locked with his, the fork stilled in her meal. “You were pretty damn magnificent, too,” she murmured.

  Her gaze dropped to his mouth and Doyle’s heart banged like gunfire against his ribs. Her breath sounded ragged in the silence growing between them. So, probably, did his. She licked her lips and it tightened his groin.

  His gaze dropped to follow the agitated rise and fall of her chest, the rise and fall of her breasts. They weren’t big—they were proportional to her petiteness—but he could see her erect nipples through the thick fabric of her red scrub top, and he remembered vividly how she’d smelled like tequila and cookie dough and how good the hard nub of her nipple had felt against his tongue.

  His cock surged inside his pants at the thought.

  “Yes, well, anyway…” She picked up her bowl. “I didn’t really thank you for…helping me out of my rut. In fact, I may have come across as a little ungrateful.” She smiled at his low chuckle. “So thanks…”

  He grinned. “Any time.”

  She laughed, and he was taken aback by the spontaneity of it. “You are a sucker for punishment, Doyle Jackson.”

  He shook his head. “I just know what I want.”

  She looked at him speculatively. “And what do you want?”

  “You,” Doyle said, capturing her gaze and holding on. “On a date.”

  “Oh, come on, Doyle—just a date? You don’t want to see me naked?” She leaned forward. “You don’t want to kiss me? Suck both of my nipples?” She leaned closer, a small smile on her mouth. “You don’t want to feel your cock sliding into me?” she whispered.

  Doyle laughed despite the way his dick throbbed and his pulse leaped at her suggestions. She was teasing him. Mocking him a little, too. He knew she’d have a sense of humor under all those scowls.

  He leaned forward on his elbows. “Oh, I want all those things. I want to kiss you deep and hard, I want to ravage your nipples with my tongue, I want to bury my face between your legs, and I promise I’m going to be looking right into your eyes when my cock slides into you for the first time.” He sat back. “We’re just going to date a little first.”

  She rolled her eyes. “I’m going to bed.”

  He smiled as she turned on her heel and headed for the hallway, his gaze glued to the swing of her butt. “All good things come to those who wait,” he called after her.

  “Don’t hold your breath,” she countered.

  He grinned as she disappeared from view. He wouldn’t. But he was definitely counting his chickens.

  Chapter Five

  Two hours later, Sal thought about Doyle ravaging her nipples and sliding into her as she came. After not being able to self-soothe for ages, it was almost as earth-shattering as the orgasm he’d given her last night.

  She thought about him as she drifted off to sleep in the floaty aftermath and even dreamed about him.

  It was a shocking realization when she woke the next morning with the dream still lingering in her subconsciousness. The only person she’d dreamed about for the past five years had been Ben. Sometimes the baby. But mostly Ben.

  Ben, looking at her, his head covered in blood. Ben, dead in the car beside her for two hours.

  She hated those dreams, those memories. Hated the way they cranked up this time of year. Did all she could to avoid them. For God’s sake, she’d humped Doyle’s leg looking for a way to a dreamless sleep. But the thought they might be gone altogether was just as unsettling.

  Doyle had no right to be in her dreams. For fuck’s sake, she’d known him for four lousy months! And she’d deliberately kept him at a distance for three months and twenty-nine days.

  Damn the man—he had no business being in her head like that.

  She knew he was going to be trouble from the second she’d clapped eyes on him and felt that strange stirring inside her. He’d looked at her the way men had a habit of looking at her, and instead of returning his copulatory gaze with one of her own, something had twisted inside her, something she hadn’t felt in a long time, and she’d gone into complete shutdown.

  And stayed there as the man had invaded every corner of her life.

  Hell, she’d even forced herself to be quieter when she came because she was conscious of him sleeping just across the hall.

  Sal blinked suddenly at the thought. Wait…what the hell? That couldn’t be the reason her orgasms had stopped, could it? The good will she’d felt toward him last night started to dwindle as she tried to think back to the last time she’d had one and correlate it with Doyle’s arriving on the scene.

  She knew for sure he’d cramped her style in the bedroom department from day one. He’d told her two nights ago that he was all for freedom of sexual expression, and he’d seemed sincere enough, but he always seemed to be…there.

  There when her dates arrived. There all sweaty from his jog, bursting into the apartment just when things were getting interesting. There lur
king in the kitchen when her dates left a few hours later. There the next morning all polite and pleasant and not saying a goddamn word about it but somehow still, somewhere in her mind, coming across as judgy.

  Sure, Mack had been there as well, but he’d never judged. He’d lived through that year with her when she could barely get out of bed—he hadn’t complained one iota when she’d used that bed to exorcise her demons.

  It was definitely after Doyle arrived. Soon after. The more Sal thought about it, the more certain she was. Bloody hell. In an attempt to quiet her sexual pleasure for Mr. Always-There-Hot-Stuff, had she silenced it altogether?

  Son of a bitch.

  It was all Doyle’s fault. He’d put some kind of a sexual hex on her. And here she was all grateful about the orgasm he’d given her the other night when, goddamn it, he’d owed her one.

  …

  “Morning.”

  Sal glared at Doyle, looking all strong and sexy and unshaven sitting in her kitchen taking up all the space, her traitorous cat rubbing herself against his legs. She hated that he always looked so good in the morning. Even the spiky buzz cut outlining the perfect shape of his head annoyed her.

  He held up his hands. “Whoa. Whatever it is, I didn’t do it.”

  She snorted as she headed for the coffeepot. “Oh, yes you bloody did.”

  He picked up his mug. “You’re really not a morning person, are you?”

  “I had a revelation just now,” she said as she poured strong black coffee into her mug and turned to face him, resting her butt against the edge of the counter.

  “Oh really?” He looked wary. And so he damn well should.

  “You stole my orgasms.”

  A small smile played on his mouth. “Oh? How do you figure that? I thought I was the solution.”

  “No, you’re the problem. You’ve been the problem all along.”

  “Okay.” Doyle put his mug down. “Well, this should be interesting.”

  “The minute you took up residence across the hall from me, I started trying to keep my voice down in the throes of passion and pretty soon, what do you know? Can’t come at all.”

  He quirked an eyebrow. “That was you keeping it down?”