Staten Island, New York
“Just this one time,” Ava Cannon whispered as his hands cupped her butt.
“Once is enough,” Gage Taylor murmured while moving them farther into her trailer.
He kicked the door closed with his foot, pausing a second to reach back and lock it. Then his hands were on her once more, his mouth crashing down over hers. The kiss took her breath away, every stroke of his tongue sending searing bolts of desire through her system until her fingers were gripping his shirt. The feel of his strong biceps through the cotton material, coupled with the hardness of his body, now pressed closely against hers, caused Ava’s knees to tremble.
This was what she’d been fighting for over the last couple of months. Each day she’d stepped onto the set of Doctor’s Orders, knowing that he would be there. The strong hands that she’d seen holding her script as he’d checked the words she’d written, monitoring them for medical accuracy, now touched her body.
“It will be enough,” Ava whispered when he tore his mouth away from hers and she could take a breath.
He tugged the hem of her shirt from her pants. She lifted her arms up over her head, and he pulled the shirt off. His hands immediately went around her to the clasp of her bra, which he quickly unhooked before removing and tossing it somewhere on the trailer floor.
“Enough,” he mumbled as he dipped his head. “More than enough.”
His lips were on her breast then, teeth holding a turgid nipple before he sucked her in deep. Ava arched her back, her hands going to his shoulders as she tried to hold on to him. When he moved to the other breast she let her head lull back, her eyes closing to the delicious sensations rippling throughout her body.
Dr. Gage Taylor was a brilliant obstetrician and researcher. He’d come highly recommended when she’d asked who in the New York area would be a good consultant for her show. And when he arrived in her office that first day, she’d been rewarded with how jaw-dropping handsome the guy was. Ava should have known then that she was in trouble.
Now, she was pulling at his shirt until the buttons popped off. He grunted and hurried to unsnap his pants while she did the same, toed off her flats and pushed her pants and panties down her legs. His shirt was on the floor, his pants undone, his hands moving quickly to pull a condom packet from his wallet. She pushed his pants and his boxers down as he ripped the condom packet open and then smoothed the latex over his length. He wore leather loafers that he kicked off his feet before stepping out of his pants.
Ava sat on the couch. She scooted back on the wide pillows and looked up at all of the heavenly goodness that was Gage Taylor. Six feet one inch of golden honey-hued skin, ripped abs, muscled limbs and a thick, long erection. She swallowed as her gaze rested there.
“Just this once,” he said, his voice deep and husky in the confined space of the trailer.
Ava licked her lips and nodded. “Yes, just this once.”
He was over her by then, his lips on hers, his knee spreading her legs apart. She opened her mouth to his persistence, clasped her hands to the back of his head to hold him there. He pushed them both back to a lying position on the couch, arranging himself between her legs. He said something, but Ava couldn’t hear him over the pounding of her heart and the rush of desire.
Her legs were already trembling by the time the crest of his erection touched her entrance. He pressed harder.
She moaned deeper, and their “one time” began.
New York City Three weeks later
Gage stepped out onto the sidewalk on a warm September morning, three weeks after they’d wrapped up shooting on Doctor’s Orders. Despite the strange hours he’d been keeping during the seven weeks he served as an on-site consultant for the network medical drama, this morning he was expected at the hospital by nine. That meant he was taking his usual four-block walk to the Nancy Links Medical Center, where he’d worked as an obstetrician for the last four years.
He held his briefcase in one hand, cell phone in the other as he walked away from the thirty-story condo building, his Italian leather dress shoes clicking on the sidewalk. This afternoon he was seeing patients, but this morning was relatively free, he noted as he looked at his mobile calendar.
Gage had discovered early in life that being organized was a necessity. Growing up in a household with five siblings meant he had to know what was his and where his personal belongings were at all times. He’d learned a lot growing up as one of the infamous Taylor sextuplets, enough to make not repeating past mistakes one of his main priorities in life.
He looked up in time to see the light changing and then crossed the street just before his phone rang.
“Dr. Taylor,” he answered because he could see from the caller ID that it was the hospital calling.
“Good morning,” his assistant, Carrie, replied.
Carrie had been with him for the last six months. For his first two years at the medical center he’d been in residency, and then his inaugural research paper on infertility and the strides that had been made in the field had been published. That had propelled his career forward, and Gage became a staff obstetrician as well as a grant recipient in the following weeks to continue his research. With those dual titles, he’d been given a corner office on the hospital’s fourth floor, an administrative assistant and, just recently, a lab assistant. His first admin had gone on maternity leave just weeks before his father’s death last September. Since then, he’d gone through three more assistants, who had been sent to him via an employment agency.
Who would have thought that after all this time out of the spotlight, there would still be someone—actually three someones, all female—who not only knew who he was, but were also ready to claim their place in the spotlight by either working for him, or possibly sleeping with him.
Gage blamed his father’s death a year ago for the renewed interest in the first African American sextuplets to be born in Temptation, Virginia, thirty years ago. After leaving his wife and seven-year-old children, Theodor Taylor had gone on to become the CEO of Taylor Manufacturing, building an empire that designed engines for a Japanese automotive company. Stock in the company had soared at the time of Theodor’s death, and when it was announced that the estate would be handled by the children, Gage recalled fielding calls from newspaper reporters to investors asking about their plans for the