Night Games (The Storm Inside #6) Read online

  Holding back, analyzing, doubting—none of these were natural to me. It confused and flustered me so I always avoided it. What would happen if I let my knee-jerk reactions loose with something as deeply personal as feelings?

  That was actually pretty easy to predict. I’d piss a lot of people off.

  But everyone else? The people who preferred frank honesty? They appreciated me. Wes appreciated me.

  “I wanted to touch you.”

  His eyes warmed. “You should do that.”

  I ran my fingers across his brow and into his hair. I immediately felt better. The tension melted away and was replaced by warmth. Wes leaned into my touch and sighed.

  I didn’t need words and I didn’t think he wanted them, anyway. A touch. A connection. That was all the situation called for.

  “You had surgery.” He kissed my knee again, right over my scar.

  The abrupt change in conversation threw me, but I think he was trying to lessen the blow of my emotions. “I did. I was fifteen.”

  “You have several scars. Are they all from the same thing?”

  He noticed. All of them. No one ever noticed, or at least never bothered to mention them. “Yes. I had a pretty nasty mountain biking accident.” And right now I was having a pretty nasty emotional meltdown as he traveled from scar to scar as if he’d memorized their locations. “Changed my life, actually.”

  He hovered over the jagged scar on the side of my thigh—the one that changed everything. “How so?”

  I held my breath while he kissed the scar. Kissed it as if he could somehow heal it with his lips.

  Wow.

  “Fun fact: I was a pretty damn good softball player in high school.”

  “Until this?”

  “Until I got too big for my britches and took on an expert level course and shattered my leg. Yep.”

  “And your arm?”

  I turned my elbow over, stunned that he’d noticed the faint line on the outside of my arm. “Just a simple break. It healed quickly and easily.”

  “But not the leg?”

  Sometimes I heard my patients say that when discussing their injuries they feel like they’re reliving the moment. I never felt that way, not even now. I was locked in the here-and-now with Wes, keenly aware that he was caring and touching me in ways no one else had ever done before in my life. I was even more aware of the fact that I liked it. No, liked was too weak of a word for what I was feeling.

  I craved it.

  “It’s a long story.”

  He slid a hand over my belly button and rested it there. The simple action calmed me. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed or not, but we’re both kind of naked.”

  “I did notice that.”

  He winked. “You’re a smart one.”

  Smart. “You really want to know?”

  “I really do.”

  And damn it all, I wanted to tell him. What was happening to me? “So I’m from a little town in South Carolina. My dad grew up there and mom might as well have. Plus she’s pretty set in her ways. We’ve all used the same doctor since before I was born. Doc Woodward. And yes, we called him Doc.” Wes grinned. “Anyway, Mom called him when I was hurt and he met us at the hospital. He disagreed with the treatment plan the doctors at the hospital had already started on my leg—the first round of repairs. I was hurt and scared, but also really curious, you know? They spoke to me like an adult and I understood most of what they were explaining, which they thought was pretty cool for a hurt teenager alone in an emergency situation.”

  “This in no way surprises me. It sounds like Carrie Anne Walker has always been a smart, sassy, sexy, pain in the ass.”

  God I loved it when he said stuff like that. It was as if he knew exactly what made me tick. Smart, sassy, and sexy was like my life goal. Trifecta of female awesomness, and Wes saw it.

  “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome. So the Doc guy? He’s the villain in the story, isn’t he?” I don’t know if Wes was aware of it, but he’d started rubbing my jagged scar with his thumb. Over and over.

  “Yes and no. Mom thought Doc Woodward walked on water. Whatever he said was the gospel. It didn’t matter that every other doctor disagreed. It didn’t matter that he was the family physician and not a surgeon with little to no experience with injuries like mine. Mom wanted Doc to take care of me. Period, end of story. That was the day the lights went on for me.”

  That thumb of his kept up the pattern of rubbing no matter where he looked or what he said, burning a hole through my skin and into my soul. As if we were somehow connecting in a new way that was more than physical. Normally I’d pull back and shutdown, but I liked what Wes said about me. That my instincts were good and I should always follow them.

  And since I didn’t want to feel that uncertainty that always came with shutting my emotions off, I did the exact opposite of what I’d normally do. I kept going and I didn’t ask Wes to stop touching me.

  “I was young still and I’d always tried to be good and obedient daughter. I cared about manners and propriety, but I also knew that a lot of things felt wrong. I never said anything or contradicted my parents because I was taught not to. In the hospital that day I realized I was smarter than my parents and that I should have spoken up, but I didn’t know how to yet and I didn’t have the courage to stand up to them.”

  For years I wished I could go back in time and insist on the original treatment plan. Maybe I could have gone back to softball, gotten those scholarships the recruiters had started tossing around in conversations. It took me a long time to realize softball wasn’t my gift.

  “That was the day the lights went on in my head. It was like someone flipped a switch and opened all the windows and suddenly I could see a whole new world that had been right there all this time. I went to rehab and asked lots of questions. I learned a lot, but it was one therapist in particular. She was the only woman there—Annie Rayburn—and she was the one who told me I had a knack for medicine. Not just therapy, she said. More. She suggested I look into being a surgeon.”

  Wes smiled. A genuine, earth-shattering smile. “Your injury led you to your calling.”

  “How do you know it’s my calling?” I whispered. Where had my voice gone? It was like the look in his eyes had stolen it right from my throat.

  “Oh, babe. Anyone who’s spent five seconds with you knows.” He moved between my legs and kissed my belly. “You are wicked smart. I’ve never seen anyone calculate stats like you do. It’s so fucking hot.”

  All the blood rushed south. Everything below my belly button tingled with warmth and need. Touch me. Kiss me again.

  And he did. Just once, but he lingered this time. “That’s it.” His eyes heated as he looked up at me. “You light up just like that when you talk about your work. And that’s pretty fucking hot too.”

  Now I felt heavy. Weighed down by all the blood pounding into every limb, every pleasure point. “It is?” Breathy. I sounded breathy. I mean, who wouldn’t if they had a hot catcher between their legs saying they were hot? But whoa. It took me by surprise just how turned on he made me.

  “Considering you light up like that for work and for me . . . ” he swallowed long and hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing, “yeah, hot doesn’t even cover it.”

  With his hand splayed across my belly, holding my hips still, he dipped his mouth to my most sensitive flesh, teasing and turning me on with his gentle sucks and nudges.

  Somehow my fingers wound up in his hair. It was a soft head of hair and I liked touching it. Wes loved it when I used my nails to scrape along his scalp and I’d started to use it to my advantage. First during sex to ramp up the pleasure, but also in conversation when I wanted him to be pliant.

  He moved over me, his arms firm on either side of my body and his naked cock pressing at my entrance. “In the mood for another orgasm?”

  He loved asking questions that had obvious answers because he needed constant affirmation. As in, constant. “Yes, Wes. I want you
.”

  He reached to the box on the nightstand and selected another condom. “I’d do just about anything to keep that look on your face, Carrie. Fuck, it’s addictive.”

  He was addictive. This fling wasn’t going very well.

  Relationship. We weren’t a couple and he sure as hell wasn’t my boyfriend, but this had moved well beyond a weekend or two of banging. I felt things when I was around Wes—things I liked feeling.

  “Addictions are dangerous.”

  He positioned the head of his thick cock at my entrance with his fist, then glanced up to meet my gaze. “I don’t fucking care.” He surged forward, that first bite of stretch almost painful, and paused, giving me time to adjust. “I’ll do anything for another fix of you.” Then he dropped his head between his shoulders to place a sweet kiss on my lips as he rocked into my heat. Slowly. “I’ll even tell you about my mom—and I don’t tell anyone that shit.”

  “I don’t think now is—”

  “Now is the only time I can.” He pressed his forehead into mine, panting as his cock seated deep inside me. “I want to tell you because I think you need to know I’m not one of your usual pieces of ass. I’m a guy. A regular guy addicted to a dream woman,” his eyes drifted south over our connected, naked bodies, “and I’m hoping if you get to know me a little better you’ll let me stick around.”

  Then he surged against me, driving his cock that little bit deeper.

  “Oh.” The word rushed out of me on a gasp of absolute pleasure.

  He reared back, stopping just inside me. I didn’t know what he was planning. Would he slam into me or would he slide slowly so I could feel every single inch of his erection as it moved inside me?

  “What do you want, Carrie?” His lids hung heavy over his eyes, partially hiding them from me.

  “Is this ‘choose your own adventure’ sex?” Slow or fast? Hard or soft? Fuck, I didn’t know what I wanted. It was always good with Wes. Everything was always so good.

  “Maybe just this once?” He kissed my forehead. “Tell me what you want, babe. I want to give it to you.”

  Sex earlier had been a little bit frantic. Rough. Dirty. It was exactly what we needed. But now? Now I wanted different.

  “Slow.”

  His breath hitched.

  Had he wanted the same thing but was too afraid to go for it? It sounded that way. Inch by inch it sounded that way. It looked that way, too. The strain of holding back, of being forced to feel everything in real time. It was a torturous pleasure.

  “Breast cancer,” he whispered against my ear. “They found it when I was eight, she died when I was ten.” His voice cracked at the end and this time I didn’t shy away from the weird need to soothe him with my touch. I placed both my palms on his back and held him close.

  “I’m sorry.”

  He nodded, rocking into me. “Dad moved us to Tallahassee after, so we could be close to his sister. Aunt Violet is my ‘other mother’ and her three daughters are my defacto sisters. Her husband is a long-haul trucker on I-10 so in a weird way it worked out for everyone.” He nibbled and kissed his way from my ear to my lips, then ran his nose along mine. “I have never seen my dad with another woman, not even all these years later. If there’s such a thing as soul mates, that’s what my mom and dad were. They were best friends. Always touching. She was his world and when she died we had no center.” His voice cracked a split second before he groaned in pleasure as my inner muscles began to flutter.

  “That sounds nice. I always thought that was what love should be like.” I shied away from connections because I couldn’t handle the emotional overload that comes from trusting someone else with your delicate parts, but it didn’t mean I was broken.

  Oh no. It was actually the opposite. I felt so much when I let myself feel. It overwhelmed me to the point I lost control.

  It was one of the things that confused me most about my parents. They felt nothing. There was no love between them, not that I could see. And I certainly didn’t feel it directed toward me. Their lives were based on rules and propriety. Love was nearly a dirty word.

  It made it hard to feel so much when the two people in my life couldn’t feel a thing.

  “It’s the only kind I know.” His words came out on ragged breaths. “I think that’s why Pop never remarried. His heart belonged to Mom. He didn’t know how to love any differently and that kind . . . well, it’s a lot for most people.”

  That was part of what scared me. I could feel pain just as strongly as I felt joy. Losing a lover would be unbearably painful. My heart went out to his dad.

  Wes thrust hard and deep. “I’m a lot for most people.” His eyes danced but I think he was trying to play off what he really meant with a dick joke. Yes, he had a large cock that was probably too much for a lot of women, but what he really meant, what he was afraid to say out loud, was that he loved just as hard as his dad.

  He lived his whole life that way.

  That’s exactly what I found so attractive about Wes.

  For once I didn’t have to explain myself or try to contain anything. I could let it all out when I was with him.

  “I can handle you.”

  He thrust harder. Deeper. “You sure about that?”

  Yes. “Can you handle me?”

  “I think so.”

  I smirked, cocking my hips up to meet him. “Think or know? You might want to be sure.”

  He slid one arm under my waist and brought my hips up to his, holding me in place. “Let’s see.”

  And then he started to pound me harder and faster, holding me right where he wanted me, right where his cock hit me in all the right places. He slammed deep and ground against me, stimulating my clit with the pressure of our two bodies pressed together.

  “How does that feel, Carrie? Are you ready for more?”

  “I want more.” He hadn’t been lying about his knowledge of orgasms. He constantly surprised me with the variety of ways he suggested we play.

  “On your knees.” He released me and moved back.

  I flipped over and waited as he re-entered me. Slowly. Making me feel just how much he stretched me wide. Then he gently nudged me up until I was lying back against his chest, both of us kneeling on the bed, my knees outside of his.

  “Relax,” he whispered in my ear as he pressed my head against his shoulder. “Close your eyes. Tell me what you like.”

  He kept one arm wrapped around my waist while we adjusted to the new position. Then with his other hand he ran his thumb over the very tip of my nipple. Back and forth, back and forth, until I was panting again.

  Then he braced my shoulder while the hand on my waist moved south to my clit. He parted my folds and ran his fingers inside like a V, stimulating the entire clitoris, not just the tip.

  With his cock inside me I could feel the way my core reacted to the stimulation. At first the flutters came, then the pulses that rode up and down his length looking for a way to burst free. He was so big and thick inside me that I’d come to prefer him from behind. It meant there was always an insane amount of pressure against my G-spot.

  Plus he usually used his hands to do many, many other things I found insanely enjoyable.

  “I want to bend you over and fuck you so hard right now . . . ”

  I was so close now. The early contractions of my orgasm had to be torture for him as my inner muscles squeezed him.

  “So close.”

  “I know, babe. I can feel you. It’s amazing.”

  His fingers massaged up and down my clit, driving me insane. And then I was there. “Now, Wes. Now!”

  He bent me forward just as I started to come apart, slamming into me so deep I saw stars. “Yes! More!”

  My orgasm ripped through me, tensing my muscles, turning my skin to electricity that sizzled with each slam of his body against mine. “Yes,” he grunted.

  “Harder.”

  He took my hips in his hands and pumped even harder and faster than he already was. My orgasm took fligh
t and my mind went to another plane, very similar to the night in the bathtub. Suddenly I wasn’t in bed with Wes anymore. I was floating above my body, relaxed, my limbs like jelly.

  “I’m coming.” His moans lit me up as he came hard inside me, finally slamming home one last time. I slid forward on the bed until we were lying down, then he rolled us to the side and withdrew. “Don’t go. Stay the night. Please?”

  I had early appointments. He knew I needed to leave.

  But the way he pleaded . . . “I can’t.”

  “I’ll wake you up early. Make you pancakes before you go. I’ll even wake you up with my tongue. Just stay. Please?”

  I didn’t want to move but it would be stupid to stay. I shouldn’t even have made the trip for the night, but I did. This would push things too far.

  But then he curled his arm over my hip and nuzzled into my back. “Please?”

  I gave in.

  I ROLLED OVER, touching cold, empty sheets and light streaming into the bedroom

  Fuck! I grabbed my phone and discovered that not only had I not set the stupid fucking alarm, but I was now late to get on the road.

  And where the hell was Wes?

  I shot out of bed cursing his name and my stupidity. I shouldn’t have stayed. It was one thing to indulge a physical need, but something else entirely to jeopardize my job. I’d gone too far.

  All because he asked.

  Rookie mistake.

  Finally, I found a note next to the coffee maker. Forgot I had an early morning workout. Sorry. x

  He begged me to stay the night against my better judgment. I had a busy day today and instead of taking care of myself and getting home at a reasonable hour I’d been seduced by pleasure.

  And my reward for my lack of judgment? A one-line note. No “see you later, thanks for a great night” no kiss goodbye, no acknowledgement of any kind that I’d made a difference in his life by staying.

  It was bullshit.

  What was I thinking? That a night of amazing sex filled with feelings and sharing would somehow transform either of us into something we weren’t? That was my mistake and I was ready to own it. Wes wasn’t a romantic and I didn’t want him to be. We were banging because it was fun. Sure we were developing this friendship thing on the side, but that didn’t mean our physical relationship was going to change.