Did he realise how much he sounded like a petulant child? ‘Does it affect your tough guy image, Ethan? I wouldn’t have thought you so vain.’
Ethan snorted. Did she really think this was about vanity? ‘No, it’s just …’ He shook his head, shut his eyes, rested his head back again as he realised he was about to admit the truth. ‘It … invites conversations I just don’t want to have.’
The heaviness in his voice reached right inside her gut and squeezed. Hard. She knew all too well how hard rehashing things could be—talking about stuff that sometimes you just didn’t want to talk about. Especially with people who had no connection to you.
So many people had wanted to talk to her after what had happened to her parents, had wanted to reminisce, lament, vent. And she’d spent an awful lot of time avoiding them.
Without thinking about it she slid a hand onto his knee. The fine wool of his trousers was soft against her palm, the contours of his knee hard.
‘Ethan …’
Ethan lifted his head again as her touch caused a riot of sensations up his aching leg. Good sensations. She was barely touching him at all, but still it felt as if she’d injected pop rocks into his thigh. He looked at her neat fingernails and remembered how good they’d felt on other parts of his body. How good they’d been together. How much they’d sizzled.
How insatiable they’d been.
His reasons for being with Olivia might not have been exactly altruistic, but they’d been amazingly compatible in the bedroom.
Which reminded him how long it had been since he’d been with a woman. A year.
Not since Aaliyah.
He dragged his eyes off her hand and looked up. Their gazes locked. The worst thing about her touch was how familiar it felt. Here in this clinic, with this woman from his past looking at him with patience and compassion, it would be so easy to grab hold and travel back to a time when he’d been able to lose himself in her and have everything else fade to black.
But it felt … disloyal. To Aaliyah. And he despised himself just a little bit more.
‘Just go, Olivia.’
Go before I kiss you. Before I haul you up on the couch beside me. Before I beg you to stay.
Before I use you one more time.
Olivia’s belly clenched at the flare of heat that fired Ethan’s dull gaze. She’d seen that look before. She knew what it meant. She knew what he wanted. Her breath grew thick in her throat as things south of her waistband stirred and strained, demanding she respond in the most primal way.
His nostrils flared as the silence stretched between them and she could feel the coiled intensity of his muscles. He wanted her. She could see that. Hell, half an hour in his company and she wanted him too.
But, unlike last time, she wanted all of him. She wanted his story and his sadness and his shadows. And she wasn’t going to settle for scraps. For some quick roll in the hay while he made love to her with dead eyes. Because having sex with Ethan had never been a onetime thing for her and she needed to protect herself better than last time.
She was here for Ama. And then she was leaving.
She was not having sex with Ethan Hunter.
Olivia pushed herself shakily to her feet. She was standing between his knees now and an image of her straddling him played in glorious Technicolor inside her head.
She took a step back. ‘Are you—?’ She cleared her throat of its sudden wobble. ‘Are you heading home soon?’
Ethan shook his head. He probably hadn’t been very capable of standing prior to Olivia touching him; he for damn sure wasn’t now. ‘I’ll sleep here tonight.’
Olivia nodded. It seemed best, considering walking had been a monumental effort. ‘Are you … will you be okay?’
‘Dandy,’ he said sarcastically, annoyed at her distant propriety—a far cry from the heat of the look they’d just exchanged.
Olivia ignored his terseness. ‘What time do you want to meet in the morning?’ she asked.
‘Be here at nine.’ His tone was dismissive and he hoped she got the message—get the hell out.
Olivia got the message. It rankled, but she didn’t want to get into anything more with him tonight. It seemed their incendiary attraction still simmered and she didn’t trust that the line between angry and passionate wouldn’t blur and they wouldn’t do something they’d both regret in the morning.
She turned on her heel and headed towards the desk, where her bag had been dumped when Ethan had fallen. She reached for it, her gaze falling on the decanter of whisky. She snatched it up. It could leave with her as well.
Out of sight, out of mind.
‘You don’t have to take it,’ he said derisively from behind her. ‘Even if I was capable of hauling my butt off this couch, I’m done with drinking tonight.’
Olivia turned, slinging the straps of her handbag over her shoulder. ‘Consider this as my way of delivering you from temptation.’ And with that she headed for the door.
Ethan tracked her progress, her clinging jeans, the swish of her honey-brown hair down the back of her coat way too fascinating for his own peace of mind.
A surge of what felt like good old-fashioned lust swept through his system.
He didn’t feel very delivered at all.
Ethan was woken by a hard shake to his shoulder who knew how many hours later? Except where there had been darkness there was now light. Way too much light.
Daylight streamed like glory from heaven through the open slats of the dark wooden blinds dressing the window under which the chesterfield sat, piercing like needles into his eyeballs.
‘Ugh,’ he groaned, shutting his eyes tight. ‘Somebody turn down the sun.’
‘What the hell are you doing here?’ Leo demanded, ignoring his brother’s protests as he yanked up the blind, causing a tsunami of sunlight.
Ethan groaned louder. ‘It was late,’ he said, shielding his eyes. ‘I crashed here.’
‘I should start charging you rent,’ Leo muttered.
Ethan cracked an eyelid open to find his brother lounging against the far arm of the couch. He squinted at his watch. It was six-thirty in the morning. ‘Lizzie kick you out of bed?’
Leo grinned, which was way too much for Ethan at this hour of the morning. ‘She’s not sleeping very well,—has to keep getting up to go to the bathroom. I’m trying to give her as much room as possible.’
Ethan was pleased his brother had found love, but such happiness was a bit hard to take—especially hard on the heels of his less than stellar reunion with Olivia. He sat and swung his legs over the edge of the couch, pleased to feel the strength back in his quads.
‘You look like hell,’ Leo said cheerfully.
‘Gee … thanks.’ Compared to last night he felt like a million dollars.
‘You going to head home or shower here?’
Ethan ran his hands through his hair. ‘I’ll use your bathroom.’ He always kept spare clothes in his office, and a private bathroom was one of the perks of being the director—or related to him anyway.
Ethan owned the clinic jointly with his brother, but had gladly ceded control to him when he’d decided to leave everything tainted with the Hunter name behind and put his medical degree to good use in the army. Leo had been angry that he was skipping out on his family responsibilities, especially with the clinic in such trouble after his father’s scandal, and had spent the next ten years trying to involve