Luke

'Ouch,' Shelby agreed, then caught Faith's glaring expression. 'Oops, would you look at the time? Better get moving.'

Faith watched Shelby leave, then turned on Luke. 'Okay, why are you really here?'

'Last I checked I was a doctor, willing and able to work.'

'Yes, but you're not required to work here anymore, remember?'

'I remember.' He slid his hands into his pockets, rocking back on his heels. 'I also remember I like to repay my debts.'

'There's no debt.'

'Yes, there is.' He let out a slow breath and his shoulders dropped slightly. 'Look, even though the newspapers exaggerated what I said, I spoke without the facts when I talked about this place. And if you think that's easy to admit, think again. I still believe in scientific and conventional medicine, I still believe that what I do, what the hospital does, can't be replaced by alternative methods of medicine. But I can admit…'

'Yes?'

'That what you're doing here has a place. That it's important to the people you see.' He turned in a slow, frustrated circle, one hundred and eighty pounds of tightly coiled male. 'And I did you a great disservice by so carelessly shrugging it off. People listen to us, they listen to me. So in light of that, I want to keep working here, for the rest of the two months, or whatever it is.'

'Two months, one week.'

'Two months, one week,' he repeated slowly. 'For that long, people can see I believe in what you're doing.'

'Even if you don't believe?'

He winced. 'Why can't you just be happy to see me?'

'Maybe I am,' she whispered, and had the satisfaction of rendering him speechless.

* * *

It wasn't like before, working with Luke. Before, they'd not talked, not really. They certainly hadn't touched.

Or kissed.

But now, every time they passed in the hallway, brushed shoulders or hands, no matter how accidentally, it brought it all back.

The tension grew between them, tighter and tighter, until it became this tangible thing she could have reached out and touched.

Throughout the day, it only got worse. Going in to see a woman with severe arthritis, they'd accidentally bumped shoulders in the doorway. It had taken her breath. He'd taken her breath, so much she nearly forgot how to treat the woman's arthritis.

They saw a nine-months pregnant woman suffering false labor pangs thanks to the can of olives she'd consumed, and leaving the room together, they'd brushed hands…

Faith's legs had tightened. So had her nipples.

Had he noticed?

Hard to tell, but she would have sworn on her life that his breathing changed every time he caught her staring at him.

Probably nothing more than regret that he'd come back. Yeah, that had to be it, because surely he didn't feel as she did, as if she were a firecracker with a lit fuse. She could hardly look into his eyes, afraid he'd see it. She certainly couldn't talk to him. In fact, she'd avoided being anywhere near him for over an hour now, thinking that would help.

It hadn't.

A little off balance, she entered the storage closet, planning on restocking, catching her breath-

But suddenly, Luke was in there with her, crowding into her space, looking at her in a way that made all the thoughts scatter right out of her head.

He took the stack of fresh towels out of her unresisting hands, then with mouth grim and tense, slid his hands to her shoulders and backed her to a wall.

'Wh-what are you doing?'

'What I should have done long before now,' he growled, and crushed his mouth down on hers.

Chapter 6

The intense, sizzling heat had been building between them all day. So much so, that having Luke's mouth on hers now, after thinking about it, dreaming about it, made her come just a little undone, just enough that she didn't care that they stood in an open closet, hands grappling for purchase on each other's bodies, the passion growing between them by leaps and bounds.

Then Luke pulled back and stared at her. 'What the hell is this?'

'I have no idea…'

Swearing reverently, he came at her again, as if he meant to inhale her.

She let him. Wanted him. 'More.'

'Yeah.' Luke slid his hands down her sides, gripped her hips, pushed her back to a shelving unit, pressing his body along the length of hers. 'More.'

Again, when they needed air, they pulled back, gasping, staring, then unable to keep apart, lunged at each other yet again. A stack of paper gowns rained over them, then some other supplies, but nothing mattered save this. It was delicious, brain-cell destroying, and she needed more, still more. Shoving him around so she could press him against the shelving unit as he had done to her, she raced her hands up his chest, around his neck… fisted them in his hair.

More supplies fell. She didn't care. She'd have crawled up his body if she could, and given the low, rough growl that came from deep in his throat, he felt the same way.

Arching into him, she lifted a leg, tried to wrap it around his hip. He whipped them around again, pressed her hard to the wall. 'Yeah. God.' Gripping her thigh, he held her open to his slow, purposeful thrust.

Her head thunked back, hit the wall.

He ate at her neck; hot, wet, openmouthed bites that had her whimpering, gasping for more but neither of them spoke, words weren't necessary. Nothing was necessary except this, not even air.

Obeying the vicious need, she simply melted into him as he continued to ravage, a long, deep, wet, devouring kiss that cloaked them in intimacy, in desperate, hungry desire. She kissed him back the same way, giving everything she had, her mouth open to meet his in a mindless beat out of time, slipping her hands beneath his shirt and over his smooth, sleek back, rippled with tension.

His fingers opened the white lab coat she wore and danced beneath her blouse, over the quivering muscles of her belly, then higher, to just the bottom curves of her breasts.

Her toes curled. Her nipples had long ago hardened into two aching buds. And what was happening between her thighs required the same attention as a five-alarm fire. Arching up into him as much as she could, irresistibly drawn by the slow, sexy forays of his tongue into her mouth, she moaned.

Slow and deliberate, he continued to kiss her, spreading the aching heat in her belly, in her breasts, between her thighs.

But then he drew back, just a fraction of an inch, and chest heaving, stared at her as if he'd never seen her before.

She felt the same way. 'I… I'm not sure where that came from.'

'Yeah.' He was breathing too hard, so was she, she could hear the air chopping in and out of both their lungs. His hands slid down to curl into her hips, holding her against his rock-hard body.