Читать книгу Indecent - Tori Carrington - Страница 9

COLIN COULDN’T REMEMBER a time when his tie had felt tighter.

“Thank you, Dr. McKenna,” Doris Borgdoff said as she passed him on her way out the door. Forty-five years old, mother of two grown boys, secretary at Owen-Illinois, he found it interesting that she still had trouble meeting his eyes when she spoke. “I got a lot out of today’s session.”

Colin forced a smile and said something he hoped was acceptable as his gaze shifted to the final member of the group. The reason for the peculiar tightness of his throat. The sole participant who had not participated, but who had accomplished what she’d set out to do, which was to drive him to distraction.

Sexy Lucky Clayborn glided, rather than walked, to stand in front of him and he was aware of every inch of her shapely legs, her lithe body, her full breasts under her thin shirt.

She smiled up at him, a seductive mixture of fearless feline and mesmerizing minx. He wasn’t even aware that she’d slid her hand against the door to close it until he heard the soft click of the catch hit home, essentially leaving them alone in his office.

“I was hoping to have a word…alone with you for a minute,” she said quietly, her deep-green-eyed gaze trapping his.

Colin’s tie was no longer tight, it was choking him. Everything that was male in him responded to everything that was female in her. A kind of primal reaction that elevated his heart rate and made him all too aware of how long he’d gone without sex.

And how much he wanted to have sex with her.

During the session he’d been overly aware of every move Lucky had made, the sound of her bare thighs sliding together as she crossed and recrossed her legs seeming to grow louder until he’d sworn he could smell the musk of her sex and had imagined what kind of underwear she had or didn’t have on. His gaze dropped to her plump lips, devoid of anything but a hint of gloss and moisture from where she’d just licked them.

Dear God, she was a patient. And he’d had attractive patients before. Even attractive patients that had come on to him.

But no one had made his groin ache the way Lucky Clayborn did.

He broke eye contact and moved to stand behind his desk. The more distance between them the better. “What is it, Miss Clayborn?” he asked, pleased that his voice still sounded like his voice.

She stood still for a long moment, apparently considering his movements, then she crossed to the desk—behind, not in front—and smoothly sat on top of it, giving him a peek of hot-pink panties under the short black skirt.

“You call all the other patients by their first name,” she didn’t say so much as purr. “Why not me?”

She sat not a foot away from where he stood and he was certain now that he could smell her unique musk. An intriguing mix of ginger and one-hundred-percent turned-on woman.

“You’re new,” he managed to push past his tight throat. “I generally address new patients by their proper names until a doctor-patient relationship has had a chance to develop.”

“Mmm.” She slowly scooted over until she sat in front of him.

Despite his best intentions, Colin’s gaze dropped to her sleek thighs, watching as her skirt hitched up a little farther. His mouth watered with the desire to put his tongue right there where a lone mole sat an inch or so away from the pink edge of her panties.

“Miss Clayborn,” he said, trying to keep things light though he felt anything but. He met her gaze, noting the widening of her pupils, the unmistakable desire to be kissed tinting her alluring features. “It’s my duty to remind you that as long as you’re my patient, there can be nothing of a personal nature between us.”

The way she was sitting directly in front of him, with her legs slightly spread, it would be all too easy to slide between those supple thighs, put his arms around her curvy body, then claim that decadent mouth of hers with a kiss that he knew would lead to so much more.

And boy did he want that. He wanted that bad.

She gave him a sexy half smile that suggested she knew exactly what he was thinking. “Shame,” she whispered, though she stayed right where she was.

“Mmm,” he admitted.

He forced his gaze away from her face, and his thoughts away from the voice that urged him to kiss her. Just once. Just touch his tongue to hers to see if she tasted as good as she looked. Slide his fingers up to see if her panties were damp.

“You didn’t participate in the session much,” he said, focusing on his Medical College of Ohio degree and his Ohio license to practice which hung in customized frames on the far wall. He’d worked hard to obtain both and wasn’t about to throw them away because of one electrifying temptress. “I can’t force you to, but you understand that I’m to submit progress reports to the court.”

That seemed to urge her into action. She slowly slid from the desk, putting her luscious body flush up against his.

Making her all the more irresistible.

Colin froze, trying not to notice the way her hips pressed against his, the graze of her hardened nipples against his chest through her shirt and his. His erection pulsed and twitched. There was no doubt she was aware of his aroused state. Their physical closeness allowed for few secrets.

He didn’t dare move. To do so would be to tip his hand, to let her know she had control. And he couldn’t give that to her. To do so would be to undermine their professional affiliation.

To do so would be to lose control, period. Not just over his desires, but over his entire life. Because to kiss Lucky, with those false charges hanging over his head, would be akin to kissing his career goodbye.

“Well, we all do what we have to in the end, don’t we?” she finally said.

She stepped away, but not before brushing against him in a way that made him grit his back teeth to keep from shuddering with need.

She smiled at him, picked up her purse from the desk, then let herself out the exit door.

Colin swallowed hard, and he was pretty sure sweat dotted his brow as he collapsed into his desk chair and made a mental note to himself never again to be alone in a room with Miss Lucky Clayborn.

LUCKY WAS LATE for work. Again.

Of course, it hadn’t helped that she’d lingered at Dr. Colin McKenna’s office after the group session, acting on an explosive attraction she hadn’t felt in a long, long time.

She knew enough about men to know that not many of them had the strength to do what the sexy doc had. Oh, yes, involvement with her would very surely put his career in jeopardy. But she’d seen the fiery attraction in his eyes. Had felt his erection, long and thick, pressing against her sex. And she’d known he had read her own signals clearly. Not that she’d been subtle about it. No, subtle would have been easy to ignore for a man like Colin McKenna. So she’d laid it out there for him…literally.

And he’d had the strength to refuse her when another guy would have shoved up her skirt and taken her right then and there on the desk.

A shiver ran the length of her spine as she rushed inside Harry’s Sports Bar.

Lucky waved a quick hello to the head cashier as she hurried back to the employee lockers just to the right of the kitchen and then shoved her purse inside the one marked with her name. She was aware that a couple of the male waiters stood in the corner watching her strip down to her bra and shimmy into her Harry’s T-shirt and apron. She barely glanced their way as she closed her tank inside the locker then twirled the attached combination lock.

“You’re late.”

The manager’s name was Harry, although he wasn’t the Harry on the sign, no matter how much he liked to pretend he was, especially when introducing himself to customers. “Hi, I’m Harry. Are you enjoying your meal?” he would say, leaving them to think he was the Harry of note.

He was somewhere in his mid-forties, was at least that many pounds overweight, and more often than not could do with a shower.

Lucky caught the way he stared at her breasts under the tight T-shirt and put her hand on her hip. “I told you I had an appointment.”

“You also told me you’d make it here on time,” he said to her breasts.

Since she’d landed the job four months ago, Harry had come on to her no fewer than ten times, usually when she worked closing and after all the staff had shared a wind-down beer. Now she usually opted for the earlier shifts even though the tips were better later, her patience for his unwanted attention wearing thin.

As she looked at him now, she suspected the same could be said for Harry. He looked a broken plate away from firing her and hiring another waitress that might be more open to his advances, despite the wedding ring on his left hand that he tried to hide with his class ring.

“I’m sorry. The session ran over,” Lucky said then reached around him to pick up a tray so she could bus a table in her station nearby.

He caught her arm when she tried to pass. “Consider this your second warning, Lucky.” He smiled at her in a way that made her skin crawl. “I don’t think I need to tell you there won’t be a third.”

“Understood,” she said as Connie, another waitress, came up on Harry from behind. Since Connie had been there over a year, she was apparently more open to Harry’s attentions.

She was glad when Harry moved his gaze from her breasts to Connie’s, and she left to go clear the table and take an order from a couple of guys who were sliding into a booth near one of the big-screen televisions on the back wall.

Lucky had been waitressing since she was seventeen and the job was second nature to her. She liked the noisy atmosphere, the nonstop movement, the odd hours. If every now and again her feet felt swollen a point beyond pain and her back ached, she just treated herself to a long, hot bath and a day spent reading then rushed right back into the fray. She’d never given much consideration to doing anything else. She liked her life the way it was. Uncomplicated. Routine. Familiar. With a little spice like the delectable Dr. Colin McKenna thrown in to liven things up from time to time.

Just thinking of him made her smile.

“What’ll it be?” she asked the next table as she straightened the condiment caddy and took out her order pad.

She was doing pretty much the same thing an hour later when two men walked in and took a booth in the next station. She usually gave customers only a cursory glance, but one of the two warranted a double take. Simply because he was one unmistakable Dr. Colin McKenna.

Lucky stood staring in his direction. Of all the gin joints in all the towns in the world…of course, he would have chosen Connie’s station to sit in.

“Are you going to take our order or not?” the guy in the booth next to her asked.

“Not,” she said, walking away.

COLIN ACCEPTED a menu from the girl who had seated him and his best friend, Will Sexton, then stared at the five big-screen televisions on the walls tuned in to different sporting events. He raised a brow at an archery competition then settled his gaze on Will.

“Come here a lot?” he asked.

Will and he had roomed together in college and had remained best friends ever since. While he’d gone the psychiatric route, Will was now a surgeon at St. Vincent-Mercy’s Trauma I Center.

“Don’t you?” Will asked in his thick British accent, cocking a grin at him. “Reminds me of the pubs back home.”

Colin highly doubted that, but didn’t say anything. Mirroring their choice in careers, Colin liked things quiet and subdued while Will’s motto was the more chaotic the better. At least in most things. When it came to their sex lives Colin usually liked things a little more wild, while Will had always chosen the sorority girls with the pink ribbons in their hair. Even now he was dating a sweet little resident who planned to go into pediatrics.

Of course, Colin’s preference had made turning down Lucky Clayborn in his office earlier all the more difficult.

Merely thinking of the hot, seductive woman made him tug at his collar, something he was free to do now that she was no longer in front of him.

“Welcome to Harry’s, gentlemen. Can I get you something from the bar?”

Colin looked up and nearly choked for the second time that day when he found himself staring at none other than the woman in question.

As soon as he had verified that not only wasn’t she a figment of his imagination, but that she was a waitress, he noticed that Lucky didn’t look anywhere near surprised. In fact, her predatory smile told him she’d probably spotted him the moment he’d walked in.

“Hello, Dr. McKenna,” she said with that sexy, throaty voice of hers. “Or may I call you Colin now that we’re no longer in the office?”

Will raised a brow at him. “Friends, are we? And here I thought you’d avoid a place like this like the plague.”

Colin dropped his hand from his tie. “Actually, we met elsewhere. Will, this is Lucky Clayborn.”

Will briefly offered his hand to Lucky. “Such an auspicious name. Nice. Very nice.”

Lucky stared at Will’s hand for a long moment then finally put her own into it and gave a brief shake, apparently not used to the greeting. “Nice to meet you,” she said, her gaze immediately re turning to Colin.

He tried not to notice the way her T-shirt hugged her just as tightly as her tank had earlier, the green fabric making her eyes look huge in her pale face.

“Can I bring you a draft?” she asked. “Harry brews his own.”

Colin swallowed hard and forced his gaze to his menu. “I’ll have bottled water.”

Will winked at her good-naturedly. “I’ll take a draft. Unlike the stuffed shirt here, I’m just knocking off work.”

Another waitress neared the table and stopped next to Lucky. Her whisper was none too subtle. “What are you doing? This is my table.”

Lucky shrugged her away. “Would you guys like to order now or would you like a few more minutes to go over the menu?”

Colin got the definite impression that if he so wanted, he could order her up with no problem.

His tie wasn’t the only item of clothing that suddenly felt tight.

The other waitress strode away toward the back of the restaurant. Colin looked around Lucky to watch the other woman strike up a conversation with a man he guessed was the manager or the owner.

“We’ll order now,” he said, thinking the less interaction with Lucky the better.

“Are you in some sort of trouble?” he asked after he and Will had made their choices.

Lucky glanced back to where the manager was staring at her while the waitress pointed in her direction.

She smiled as she accepted their menus. “Nothing I can’t handle.”

She walked away. As soon as she was out of earshot, Will pulled at his own collar. “Did the temperature just get a little hotter in here or is it my imagination?”

Colin grimaced as he straightened his silverware. “It’s your imagination.”

“Well, I certainly hope so because I’m guessing she’s a patient of yours. And you don’t want to be taking any chances right now. Not with everything that’s hanging in the balance.” His gaze trailed back to Lucky. “That’s one hot number, though. I don’t know what I would do if a patient of her caliber came on to me the way she’s coming on to you. A package like that has a way of making you forget about medical degrees. Pass her on to one of your colleagues quick, mate.”

Colin had considered and discarded the option earlier. To pass her on to one of his partners wouldn’t look good. And right now he couldn’t afford even a hint of impropriety. “So why did you pass Miss Clayborn onto your partner?” he could hear himself being asked during a legal deposition. What would he say? “I wanted to screw her so bad my balls ached, that’s why.”

The sound of raised voices caught his attention. He looked over to where Lucky was facing off with the manager, the other waitress standing nearby with her arms crossed under her impressive chest. Colin couldn’t make out what was being said, but given the man’s stern expression he didn’t think it was good.

And when Lucky took off her apron and then peeled off her T-shirt and draped both over the manager’s head, he knew he’d guessed correctly.

There were hoots and hollers as Lucky strode, as casual as you please, toward the kitchen where she disappeared behind the doors.

“Whoa,” Will said, his eyes wide. “Something tells me I won’t be getting that ale any time soon.”

Colin watched as Lucky came back out of the kitchen wearing the same tank she’d had on earlier. She ignored the manager as she walked through the place then out the front door.

He started to push from the table.

Will caught his arm, his expression stern. “I wouldn’t if I were you, Col.”

Colin considered him. “I know. But you’re not me.”

And then he went out after Lucky.