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  “No, that was me faking it because I couldn’t get there anymore. No point having a fake silent orgasm is there?”

  He chuckled. “No, I suppose not.”

  His chuckle made her crankier. Easy for him to be amused. He’d obviously never had his mojo muted.

  “So.” He picked up his mug again. “This is all my fault somehow?”

  “Well, you do the math. I was perfectly fine before you got here.”

  His brows drew together, and the look he gave her seemed to see right inside her. “Something tells me you haven’t been fine in a long time.”

  Sal glared at him. She was not going to get into a deep-and-meaningful with him. “I was perfectly fine in the bedroom department until you took my orgasms away,” she snapped.

  He chuckled and his eyes crinkled at the corners. “Yeah, but at least I gave them back again.”

  Sal drew herself up to her full five feet two inches. “This is not funny. How would you like to have your sexy times ripped away from you?”

  He sighed and put his mug down. “Okay, Sal, explain to me how I took them away?”

  “Because by trying to suppress my response, I somehow managed to suppress them altogether. Plus…you’re judging me.”

  He shook his head. “No, I’m not.”

  Sal nodded. “Oh yes you are. While I’m in there trying to enjoy myself”—she hooked her thumb in the direction of her bedroom—“you’re out here all sweaty and sexy and…hot stuff and judging my morals.”

  He laughed. “Sweaty and sexy and hot stuff?”

  “Yes.” She glared.

  “Sal…” He stood, picking up his mug, and headed over to the coffee percolator. “I’m not judging you. I don’t give a rat’s arse how many men you slept with prior to now. I couldn’t care less if you’d banged every guy within the Brisbane city limits. I care that one of them obviously hurt you. But I’m not keeping score.”

  He filled up his mug, then turned on his side, his hip resting against the counter. He was a little too close for comfort for Sal with all this talk of banging and orgasms. She could just reach out, grab his scrub top, and pull him forward.

  If she wanted to.

  Which she didn’t.

  “But you’d better damn well believe that I care about who you see now. You still got that date tonight?”

  Sal swallowed. His voice had gone all growly and gravelly and she felt dizzy from the sudden waft of testosterone that oozed off him. A part of her wanted to step back from him altogether.

  But she was damned if she was going to back down when he was getting all Cro-Magnon on her. “Yes.”

  “You’re going to want to cancel that.”

  Sal almost choked on Doyle’s audacity. How dare he? There wasn’t anything between them. He didn’t own her. They weren’t exclusive. “Yeah, like that’s going to happen.”

  “You know you’re just going to spend all that time comparing him to me and then I’ll be right outside being all sexy and sweaty and hot stuff and you know you’re never getting across that line.”

  Sal knew he was right, but goddamn it, she wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction. “Don’t bet on it.”

  “Come on, Sal, is it fair to the poor guy to be in bed with him when you’re thinking about me? Because you and I both know that thinking about me and my fingers inside you and my mouth on your breast is the only thing that’s going to get you off from now on.”

  “Oh my God.” Sal blustered to hide the first stirrings of arousal and the fact that he was right. Wasn’t that exactly how she’d made herself come last night? Even long after he was gone, Doyle and what they’d done right here in this kitchen was going to be her go-to sexual fantasy. “I didn’t realize how arrogant you were until right now.”

  He shrugged and waggled his fingers at her. “Magic fingers, remember?”

  Remember? The bigger problem was how she was ever going to forget.

  “I’m going to work,” she said, plonking her half-finished mug on the counter and storming out of the kitchen—she could get another one downstairs. What she couldn’t do was stand here and talk to him about the magic in his fingers. It made her want to see if he could replicate the experience, and she didn’t do repeat performances.

  Being hard-line had worked for her. She was a healthy, active, contributing member of society—comparatively—but that had been hard won, and she knew the path to tread to stay that way.

  If she dived over the edge into a space where dating Doyle and his magic fingers existed, that could turn her whole world upside down again. Not like six years ago, granted, but Sal liked the status quo.

  Or respected it, at least.

  …

  The next time Sal caught more than just a passing glimpse of Doyle, it was midafternoon and he was standing in the waiting room, a little girl looking up at him adoringly as he petted a tiny gray kitten snuggled up to his chest.

  Sal stopped in her tracks. Hell, every woman—young or old—with a pulse stopped and stared. It was way too much cute and sexy to be true.

  There was just something about a big, hulking man with a tiny, defenseless animal that got all her engines revving. Ben, a veterinary student, had had an affinity with animals, and although he hadn’t been as large as Doyle, watching him with a puppy or a kitten had always turned her on.

  Watching Doyle scratch behind the kitten’s ears was practically pornographic.

  The kitten shut its eyes on what looked like a note of ecstasy and extended its neck just like Matilda did when Doyle gave her some love, and Sal could hear it purring all the way across the room.

  Hell, she wanted to purr just watching it.

  Gemma, who came out of the treatment room door, also became distracted by the display and almost crashed into her. A female version of Doyle standing behind the little girl grinned at the near-collision.

  “Oh, Lordy,” Gemma muttered under her breath as she stared agape at the spectacle. “I think I just came.”

  “Gemma,” Sal chided quietly, still staring.

  Gemma wasn’t perturbed. She may only be twenty-one, but she’d been at the practice in one capacity or another since she’d started volunteering after school at the age of fourteen, and she was indispensable as far as Sal was concerned.

  Doyle looked down at the little girl, oblivious. “Come on, Harry, let’s see what’s bothering Archie.”

  That was their cue to skedaddle, which they both managed with difficulty. Gemma scuttled away just before Doyle caught them gawking. Sal feigned interest in the medication she was holding in her hand.

  “Sal,” he said, slowing as he passed, still petting the kitten, a loud electric purring like a tiny rumbling engine coming from its throat. She steeled herself against the ecstatic hum. “This is my sister, Abigail, and my niece, Harriet.”

  Ahh. Sister. Made sense. Now if she could just hang on to a little bit of that sense to help her make polite conversation. “Nice to meet you,” she said, nodding at both of them.

  The little girl blinked up at Sal, freckles across her nose, glossy black hair falling down her back. “Are you a vet like my uncle Doyle?” she asked.

  Sal had paid very little attention to the girl up to now. She did that with kids because it was easier to not involve them in her world than having to deal with the gut-wrenching unfairness of her loss. But two shrewd little eyes had her fully in their sights and didn’t look like they were going to be easily ignored.

  “Yes.” She nodded stiffly, trying really hard to still the thrumming of her heart. Harriet looked about five or six.

  The exact age her daughter would have been.

  “So you can fix animals, too?”

  Sal glanced at Doyle, who quirked an eyebrow at her, knowing how sensitive she was to the F-word. “Yes,” she said, looking back at the child.

  “Are you his girlfriend?”

  “Harry,” her mother warned as Doyle laughed and said, “Okay, moving right along,” smiling apologetically as he dra
gged his niece into the treatment room.

  Sal was still lost for a reply as they disappeared. What on earth made a child ask such an out-of-left-field question? Was it one of those random ones that sometimes flew out of a kid’s mouth for no reason anyone could fathom, or had she seen something in the way that Sal talked or acted that suggested there was something intimate between her and Doyle?

  And if so, what?

  Had Harriet seen the way she’d practically drooled all over the floor like a French mastiff when he’d been petting the kitten?

  Kids were supposed to be intuitive, weren’t they?

  “Sal,” Gemma called from the waiting room, shaking her out of her reverie.

  “Coming,” she called back, grabbing the interruption like the lifeline it was.

  …

  The afternoon clinic ran overtime as per usual, and it was six before they’d cleared the backlog. Sal and Doyle were in the treatment room disinfecting counters. He was whistling and she was doing her best to ignore him.

  And the way he’d looked with a tiny kitten and a cute little girl.

  “You don’t like kids?”

  Sal had been concentrating so hard on what she was doing she didn’t realize the whistling had stopped until his question penetrated the thick wall of silence.

  She looked up, her wiping arm stopping abruptly, her gaze ranging over his wide shoulders and the way his body narrowed down to his hips. Damn the man—why did he have to be so bloody…big?

  She started wiping again in circular movements. “They’re fine.”

  He blinked. “Fine?”

  She nodded, her pulse picking up a little at his line of questioning. “Sure.”

  He laughed. “That’s very subdued of you. Most people have stronger opinions.”

  Sal shrugged. What did he want to hear? That seeing Harry, seeing any child, was like a knife to her chest? That she’d so nearly been a mother? That she preferred not to even think about children now for fear that the blackness she’d existed in for so long would come back to claim her?

  She shrugged again. “I’m not most people.”

  She might not be little Suzy homemaker dreaming of home and hearth and family, but she’d worked hard to make a new life out of the ashes of her old one. She’d kept busy starting a program for rescue dogs to be placed in aged care facilities for pet therapy, she’d been instrumental in setting up local wildlife zones, she volunteered every month at the animal shelter, she campaigned for the RSPCA. And she’d taken over the practice full-time from Mack when he’d left without skipping a beat.

  Sure, her personal life might not pass strict moral judgment, but she was living her life her way. Hell, she was living. And she didn’t give a rat’s arse what anyone else thought.

  Or hadn’t, anyway…

  “No. You’re not.”

  Sal didn’t know what to say to that or the way his eyes roved over her face and zeroed in on the spot where her top gaped as she leaned over. She did know she wanted to vault across the two metal examination tables and lift her scrub top and push his face right into her breasts.

  Jesus. This couldn’t be happening to her.

  “Sal,” Gemma said, poking her head in the door of the treatment room, and Sal almost kissed her for her timing as she dragged her eyes off Doyle. “Your date’s here. He’s in the waiting room.”

  Her date. Shit. She’d forgotten about her damn date. Plus, she checked her watch; she was running late and he was a little early. “Er…thanks,” she said, straightening up. “Tell him I won’t be long.”

  Gemma nodded and went on her way. When Sal looked back at Doyle, he had his hands shoved on his hips and was staring at her. “Date, huh?”

  He moved over to one of the small windows that looked out onto the waiting area, leaning his shoulder into the wall and folding his arms. “That’s your date?”

  Sal went and stood beside Doyle, her eyes wandering to Brett, who was blond, just shy of six feet, and was in his third year of medicine. “What’s wrong with him?”

  “Where’d you meet him? Kindergarten?”

  She’d met him through a friend of a friend, and yes, he did look a little baby-faced, but he was cute and interested and well above the age of consent. “He’s only a few years younger than me,” she protested.

  “He doesn’t look like he knows what he’s doing if you”—Doyle turned to face her—“know what I mean.”

  Sal refused to look at Doyle, keeping her eyes firmly fixed on the lovely Brett, who’d told her the night they’d met a week ago that take-charge women were his favorite type. He was sweet, up for it, and knew the score. “He has everything I need.”

  “He has everything you need?” Doyle said, turning back to the window. “He looks like he still lives at home with his mother. And she probably does his laundry and makes his bed. He doesn’t look like he’s figured out what he wants for himself, let alone how to give you what you want.”

  Sal shrugged. “Most men are happy to follow direction in my experience.” Not that she’d needed to give Doyle any direction. Hell no. He’d just boldly taken control.

  He looked at her again, and Sal’s neck prickled as the heat of his gaze fanned over her chest and throat and face.

  “Is that what you want? You want someone to follow?” His voice dropped an octave or two and rumbled all over her, coarse like sea salt, floating like spa bubbles. “Or you want someone to lead?”

  Sal couldn’t not look at him then. He was close, his breath warm on her neck, and his chest was just there; she could put out her hand and touch it if she wanted.

  And oh dear God, she wanted.

  “I…” Sal swallowed, her throat parched as her gaze became fixated on the tanned hollow at the base of his throat. Warm saliva coated her mouth just thinking about putting her tongue to it.

  “You want someone who’ll do this?” he asked as he stroked a finger across her mouth. “Or this?” The finger dropped to her chin, then down her throat to her chest in a straight line to her cleavage where it reached the vee of her scrubs and stopped.

  He held her gaze as he moved it in a straight line to the left, over the slight swell of her breast circling around the nipple. “This?”

  “Doyle.”

  It was meant to come out as a warning but sounded all husky and needy, and she sank her teeth into her bottom lip to stop from crying out when his finger stroked directly over her achingly taut nipple.

  “What about this?” he asked as his other hand slid onto her hip and continued around to cup her bottom, kneading it, hitching her closer.

  “Doyle,” she murmured again. Weak like her knees. Needy like her libido.

  She put her hand on his chest, trying to keep some space, some sanity, between them as her head spun with the smell of antiseptic and eau du Cro-Magnon, the situation rapidly devolving to some kind of primal level where resistance became futile, where only the demands of hormones and the urge to mate mattered.

  His dark eyes burned into hers, then dropped to her mouth. “And you definitely need someone who can do this,” he muttered, grabbing her hip and jerking her the last little bit toward him.

  Sal’s breath stuck in her throat as her chest collided with his. Her pulse beat a loud tango through her head and her breasts and her thighs. “Doyle, I—”

  But he didn’t give her time to speak, to clarify, to collect herself, to gather any sanity. He just swooped down and claimed her mouth, cutting off any half-feeble protest she’d been about to mount, pushing her flush against the wall with the force of his hot, hard body, pinning her there, pushing her head back, with the force of his hot, hard mouth.

  He groaned against her lips and she felt it deep down inside, where everything clenched and tightened, the hot lash of his tongue plucking those fibers into a frenzy as surely as if he’d reached inside her and licked them.

  She almost fell in a heap when he pulled abruptly away, taking a step back, his chest heaving. “That kid out there”—he pointe
d in the general direction of the window—“can’t give you that.”

  Sal was too stupefied, too sexually paralyzed to deny his arrogant claim. She just held on to the wall and nodded. Because he was right.

  He nodded back. “Good. I’m glad we’re both on the same page,” he said before turning away and disappearing out the room.

  Sal drew in a ragged breath, still not trusting herself to leave the safety of the wall with her knees trembling so damn hard.

  They were trembling, for fuck’s sake!

  But just as soon as they stopped, she had to go and tell Brett the date was off.

  Then go and make a voodoo doll in the likeness of Doyle. And she knew exactly where she was sticking the first pin.

  Chapter Six

  Doyle wasn’t sure how either of them got to Monday night without killing or jumping each other. When Sal had come home after that kiss, he’d definitely wanted to jump her, but she’d been pissed and scowly again and had essentially maintained it all weekend.

  Fine by him.

  The thought that she was actually going to go through with seeing another guy after what they’d done, after the intimacy they’d shared, had made him see red.

  Blood red.

  And yeah, maybe he didn’t have a right to go marking her like she was his territory—they weren’t in a relationship; hell, she wouldn’t even agree to a date with him!—and maybe he had crossed a line with that no-holds-barred kiss, but they seemed to be doing a lot of that lately, and the mere thought of Blond Boy touching her, kissing her, had brought out the primitive in him.

  His head had been so full of red the only choice apart from kissing her had been to turn green and rip his shirt off or beat his chest like goddamn Tarzan, King of the Jungle.

  Consequently, he’d been happy to accept her silent treatment as punishment this weekend. It was far preferable to going out of his mind wondering what she was getting up to on her date. But he also sensed something else under her barrage of scowls. He could feel her eyes on him when she thought he wasn’t looking, detect her stare from way across the room.

  When he looked up, she looked away, but there were those split seconds when he could see something in her eyes that he recognized on a primal level.