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  “Carytown.”

  “Ooh, Car-ytown. Snob much?”

  She pokes me in the stomach. “Carytown’s nice! Don’t make fun of it.”

  “Well, at least now I know why you’re driving a junker that’s fifteen years old.”

  She shrugs. “The Camry runs, I’ve pretty much paid off my student loans, and I have a mortgage on a fixer-upper that my brother Jeff is rehabbing for me on weekends. It’s a trade-off.”

  “All right, I’ll move into your house. I can sublet this place.”

  “Soon?”

  “Soon. Now lie back and prepare to be adored, woman.”

  “Don’t I get a chance to kiss you all over too?”

  “Sure. Although I really only care about you kissing this part.” I pat my groin, then reach to pull the elastic out of her hair. It’s already mostly fallen down, but now her glorious hair is cascading down over her shoulders and we’re all loose and wild and free, laughing together.

  She gets on her knees and goes straight for my dick. It grows and hardens in her grip, while she rolls my balls in her hand, and I take deep breaths and enjoy the pull of her hot mouth. She looks up at me from under her long lashes, lips stretched around my eight inches, and I can’t help getting even harder at the sight. “Don’t you dare make me come too fast,” I insist, gathering her hair in my fist. “I have to be inside you again.”

  “What’s ‘too fast’?” she says, around my cock, and goes back to sucking and stroking.

  I groan. “That’s too fast. Stop for a minute and let me take care of you.”

  “Uhn-uh,” she says, mouth full, and strokes faster.

  “Fuck. Deena. Seriously, stop.” I pull on the ponytail in my hand—not hard, just enough to let her know I mean business. She lets my cock go with a pop, and grins at me. “On your stomach, woman.”

  “On my stomach?” she protests, but I flip her onto her belly, shoving a pillow under her hips so her pretty pink pussy, with its blonde bush trimmed down to barely-there proportions, is open to be plundered from behind.

  I plunder it. With my tongue, my fingers, my lips, my whole mouth, even rubbing at her clit with my nose and smelling her sweet musky feminine smell. She’s moaning, and dripping with arousal, by the time I get on my knees behind her and press my cockhead into that beautiful creamy-wet cunt. I rock into her, just at the opening, and rub her clit with my fingers until she’s writhing, shoving her hips back at me and begging me to fuck her. And then I do that. I shove my cock all the way in, all the way up to her cervix, bearing down toward the front wall where her G-spot is. The way her cunt walls grip me and the way her ass looks, tilted up for my pleasure, I have to count under my breath to keep from spurting my jizz right away. She has to come first—but I hope it’s soon.

  I grab her hips and pump faster, and it’s not long before her back arches and she screams out her climax, her pussy squeezing me in rhythmic bursts. I let go of my own control, and my hardness explodes inside her, filling her with my seed.

  I am never letting this woman go.

  I collapse onto my bed again, and pull her into my side. We hold on to each other for long moments, and then I remember. I jump off the bed and open the top drawer of the nightstand. “Should be in here. It was the last time I saw it . . .”

  I kneel beside the bed and hand her the dusty ring box. “I know it’s too soon to ask. I still have to prove myself to you, and it may take time to do that. It’s okay, I can wait. I just want you to know that I kept it for you, and I hope to give it back to you someda—”

  “Yes,” she says.

  I’m stunned. “Yes? Already?”

  “Yes,” she says, and pulls me back onto the bed for another kiss.

  EPILOGUE

  Deena, three years later

  I reach up to adjust the lapel of my gorgeous husband’s jacket. Even with me in these heels, he’s got four inches on me, but in his dark suit he looks even taller. And sexier than ever.

  “You look amazing,” he says, and tucks a lock of my hair behind my ear. “That dress is like . . . moonlight.”

  “I love this dress,” I say, smoothing the silvery blue lace. I will have to be careful not to lean too far forward at dinner, because the low v-neck of my wrap dress displays my breasts to a generous degree. I may not be able to wear it much longer, though, so I’m taking the opportunity.

  “Are you ever going to tell me what we’re celebrating this evening?” he asks, putting his cufflinks in.

  “I’ll tell you at dinner!” I exclaim, and shove his shoulder playfully.

  He shoves back, pushing me backwards onto the bed and settling between my legs. He runs his warm hands up my thighs, under the skirt. “Stop!” I order him. He shouldn’t discover my surprise before dinner—but it’s already too late. His clever fingers have pulled my skirt completely up and found the pearl thong I’m wearing underneath it.

  “What the hell is this? This can’t be underwear,” he says, and tugs my skirt up. “Holy fucking hell, that is sexy, baby.” Before I can stop him, he’s touching my pussy lips, feeling how wet I already am under the cool pearl beads. “We’ve got time,” he says, breathless. His cock is tenting his suit pants, and a moan of need escapes my mouth.

  “No, we don’t!”

  “We have time for an appetizer!” he contradicts me, and bends to lick my thrilled ladybits.

  I moan again, trying to regain control. “Stop. Please.”

  “You don’t mean that,” he says against my clit, and goes back to gently sucking at it. I squirm on the bed, trying to get away from him. But I already know there’s no getting away from a man his size, and I also know I don’t really want to. He touches my wet cunt all along the strand of pearls, making me writhe. When he slides two fingers into my vagina and massages my g-spot while his fingers rub at my clit, I lose control entirely, crying out when I gush my pleasure.

  “Won’t take me long,” he says, stepping back and wiping his face before unzipping his pants.

  “Troy, we really can’t! Not now, or we’ll be late for dinner.”

  “Screw dinner,” he says, and kisses me. Very thoroughly. I love the taste of myself on his tongue.

  “No, sir,” I say, and roll away to sit up. “I had to practically beg to get these reservations at Chez Trang. We’re not going to miss it. Sooner we get there, sooner we finish eating, sooner we can come home and go to bed.”

  Troy sighs and shakes his hair back. It’s considerably longer now, and whereas once I would have thought long hair inappropriate on a man, I’ve changed my mind. He looked great as a young clean-cut athlete, but with that mane of chestnut-brown hair cascading down to his shoulders, he’s sexy as all hell. I almost moan, just looking at him. His green eyes are sensual and amused. “Sure you don’t want to just get headbanging sex and pizza delivered?”

  I take a deep breath and shake off the knee-weakening effect of my husband up close. “Nope. We can do that anytime. It’s our anniversary and we’re going to the French-Thai fusion place.”

  “We could have waited for the weekend to celebrate,” Troy says, getting up and adjusting himself in his pants.

  I swallow, thinking of the feel of his solid length in my hand, the silken texture of him. “I wanted to go out tonight.”

  “Stubborn.” He laughs. “You got some serious JBF hair there, Deena.”

  “What?” I demand, and get off the bed, alarmed. It took me a while to do my hair.

  “I mean, you do look just the slightest bit tousled, Dr. McLean.”

  I roll my eyes and go to the mirror to see. I do look postcoital: my lipstick is long gone, my cheeks are red, and some of my hair is coming down from my neat updo. I tweak a few tendrils, then I decide my hair will just be disco-sexy, sort of like Jennifer Lawrence’s hair in “American Hustle.”

  I’m only slightly disappointed when Troy behaves himself in the car.

  Chez Trang is gorgeous with white lilies and bamboo, silk wall hangings, gilded candlesticks. We
eat spring rolls with mustard sauce as an appetizer. Troy orders steak au poivre et gingembre, and I go for the tamarind lamb.

  The meal is excellent.

  “So,” he says, cutting into the last third of his steak, “what is it that we’re celebrating, besides our anniversary?”

  I smile. “That isn’t enough?”

  He pauses with a bite of steak on his fork, giving me a heavy-lidded look that makes me press my thighs together and squirm. “Us together, that’s always enough to celebrate.” His voice is low, and my nipples perk up. I squirm again in my chair, feeling the moisture flow. “I can’t wait to go home and have you for dessert.” It’s all I can do to keep from losing control and moaning out loud, and he can tell. “Deena,” he whispers across the table, “just looking at you, you’re making me so hard. Thinking of those fucking pearls . . . Damn it, I can’t wait to be in you.”

  This time I shudder, and I squirm again so that my panties rub me in exactly the right way, letting out a little gasp. “I want you too. I want you so bad.”

  “So how about you just tell me what’s going on? Tell me about the cool thing you did at work, and then let’s finish up here and go fuck each other’s brains out.”

  I go lust-blind for a second, and have to shake it off. I take a deep breath. “Well, you are looking at an official orthopedic surgeon.” I do a pretend curtsy.

  He laughs the way you do when someone you love has good news. “I always knew you’d do it! Congratulations, babe.”

  I take another deep breath. “But. I might have to take some time off work next year.”

  He blinks and leans toward me. “Why? You’ve worked so hard for this.”

  I shrug. “They usually let you have maternity leave.”

  He blinks again. “Mater—” Then his whole face relaxes into a smile of complete joy. “We’re having a baby?”

  I nod, and the happy tears come out of nowhere, down my cheeks. Thank heavens for waterproof mascara. “I’m right at three months. I wanted to be sure before I told you.”

  He lunges across the table to kiss me, fork forgotten on the pristine cloth, and then we forget where we are for a few moments, lost in each other. When we come up for air, I hold his face between my hands. “I love you so much. I can’t wait to have our baby in my arms.”

  “I can’t wait to have both of you in my arms,” he whispers to me, and raw need thunders through my body. “Guess I’ll have to start with just you tonight.”

  And then we go home, and celebrate—all night.

  MADDOX

  HEART DOCTORS BOOK 3

  CARLY KEENE

  THISTLE KNOLL PUBLISHING

  This one is for Queen Stevie herself.

  ONE: Rhiannon

  Maddox, four years ago

  She walked into that bar, and I just knew. I saw her standing just inside the doorway, in this dress that looked like something out of Lord of the Rings, or Stevie Nicks’ concert attire: creamy white, with long drapey sleeves and flowy skirt, all boho chic with her big locket and her cloud of long dark hair held back by ribbons. A tall girl, graceful but solid, with presence. A goddess. While I was staring at her over my glass of Jamesons, she turned her head idly and caught my gaze, and I swear to fuck, looking into her eyes was like falling into a midnight sky. They were dark, endless, with tiny points of light.

  I started hearing Stevie herself singing about Rhiannon ringing like a bell through the night, and right that minute, I was hers. Who will be her lover? Me.

  In those days, I was such a dudebro. I wanted to be the hot-doctor version of Don Draper, charming the panties off every Tinder cutie impressed by my bio and my pecs. I would hit up the bar solo after my day shift at the ER, trying to forget the little boy who nearly died after eating a whole bottle of vitamins thinking they were candy, and the woman with the battered face who walked like her insides were full of broken glass. Those days, I could only take so much of that shit before I wanted to escape into some good booze and a Brazilian-waxed pussy, preferably one with no baggage.

  I could usually pull both at Lucky’s on a Saturday night, when the music got hot and the Instagram babes flooded the place.

  But that night, there was the goddess herself. And she changed everything.

  I picked up my drink and walked over to her, not taking my eyes off her. When I stopped in front of her, she just looked at me with those night-sky eyes, eyebrows raised. I wet my lips, and I spoke. “What tribute may I bring you, Rhiannon, o my goddess?”

  Then she tipped her head in acknowledgment and smiled, and it was everything I had dreamed of, that smile. Knowing, sexual, gracious on those soft pink lips. “Chrysanthemum on the rocks, please.” Her voice was pitched low and a bit husky.

  Walking away to get her drink felt like leaving the warm center of the world. The bartender looked at me funny, and pulled out her phone to look up the recipe. I watched her pour it: absinthe, brandy, dry vermouth, a strip of orange peel. Unusual and powerful, a good choice for a goddess. I was already half hard in my khaki pants when I took the drink back to her, and when she sipped at the glass and licked her top lip, I went full boner.

  God, I wanted her.

  “You look like you came from another world,” I said, and finished my own drink. No more alcohol for me, I was drunk on her.

  She blinked. “Just came from Rennaissance Faire with some friends. They went to do an errand and then they were going to join me, but they’re not here yet.”

  So she was real. She sipped at her drink again, and I decided it was even better that she was real. She was everything: magic but real, ethereal but solid, ageless, knowing and unknowable.

  This kind of reaction, this weird poetry in my head, was not me. If anyone had asked me earlier in the evening what my type was, I’d have said something like, “blonde, young, slender with big tits.” But the goddess had changed my world.

  “Rhiannon,” I said again.

  “Rhiannon? You just decided to call me that?” She tilted her head to look at me. “Are you a big Fleetwood Mac fan? A Stevie fan?”

  “Not particularly. You just . . . you look the way I always pictured Rhiannon.”

  She smiled that secret smile. “And what shall I call you? Are you Mabon?”

  “I’ll answer to anything you call me.” Then I reconsidered. “Who’s Mabon, anyway?”

  She looked me up and down. “Well, your clothes are a little conservative for him—”

  I interrupted her. “I just got off work.”

  “But if you didn’t know you were the Celtic god of prophecy and power, sex and love? I can overlook the fraternity-boy uniform.” The tip of her pink tongue just came out to touch the amber liquid in her glass, and my cock started trying to escape my pants.

  “Sex and love?” I asked, breathless. “I know you’re a goddess. Goddess of what, exactly? Because I would say you were the goddess of everything.”

  “Rhiannon,” she said, and sipped again, “is the goddess of beauty and artistic inspiration. Also transformation, fertility, and magic.” She smiled at me over the rim of her glass. “Plus a few other things.”

  “What’s that like?” I asked, nodding at her drink. “Absinthe and brandy.”

  She held the glass out to me. “Taste it.”

  I took the glass. Turned it around in my hand so I could drink from where her lips had been. It was a potent drink, warm and cool at the same time, both sweet and dry. I almost laughed because it was so perfect for her, but I didn’t because I had the taste of her in my own mouth.

  “Good, mm?” she asked. I just nodded.

  The jukebox stopped playing Fleetwood Mac, and The Weeknd started singing about not feeling his face when he’s with you, and the energy of the place changed. It was shifting from Saturday twilight to Saturday deep night, with all the attendant hormones and alcohol and hookup vibes. And yes, we had those things, but we were outside this world. We were in that magic groove in reality, a place all our own.

  She said so
mething I couldn’t hear. “What?”

  She leaned closer, and I could smell her perfume: flowers and leather, something dark and compelling underneath to contrast with the angel-sleeve dress and the ribbons in her hair. “Do you want to get out of here?”

  Oh, did I.

  TWO: Rings Like a Bell Through the Night

  Rachel, four years ago

  Rhiannon, he called me.

  I’d had a great time with Lia and Simon and Brett at Ren Faire, at what I thought of as my last totally free day before I sacrificed my free time and my career—I wouldn’t say my life, that would be too dramatic—to take care of my nephew like I would my own child. My brother Noah, widowed a few months before, was still reeling from Abby’s death, and he could barely scrape himself out of bed to go to work, much less take care of a two-year-old on top of those long shifts at the hospital ER.

  I loved Noah, and I loved little James, but I wouldn’t deny that I was willingly putting my own life on hold to help out. Noah had gone out of his way to let me set up his giant seven-bedroom house any way I wanted, including turning the room over the garage into my sculpting studio, and that made me feel better. Still, I knew it was going to be tough to get the chance to create.

  So that Saturday, while Noah did his fatherly job and looked after James, I escaped. I put on my costume from my high school Madrigal Dinner and let my hair dangle long and wavy down my back. I listened to troubadours and ate a turkey leg. I drank mulled cider, watched the jousting, and danced around the Maypole. I knew it would be cheesy, but I spent five bucks to have my palm read, only to be told that I would meet a tall fair stranger soon, and that I would have my heart and other body parts pierced.

  Riiiiight, I thought. I already had two piercings in each ear, and one in my nostril, and I’d long ago decided that I’d done enough. Too Much is never true Art. But the palm reader said the stranger would bring me joy and pain, and that was such a satisfying fortune that I tipped her.