Jill Shalvis - Luke

The back door opened and, as if he'd been sent from heaven, in walked Luke.

"Morning," he said to their startled faces. When they continued to just stare at him, he lifted his covered coffee mug, still steaming, and looked at it. "I know it's not any fancy tea, and that it's store-bought, but a guy's gotta have his vices."

"Are you… here to work?" Shelby asked. "Because if you are, I'll kiss you, right here, right now."

"I'm here to work, yeah, if you don't mind. No kiss required."

"Mind?" Shelby laughed. "Do we mind, Faith?"

Did she? Ha! Luke was watching her, waiting, and the silence stretched out.

"Okay, she's not going to admit this because she's stubborn as hell," Shelby confided. "But I'll tell you. We're short-staffed and overbooked today."

Luke never took his eyes off Faith. "Really."

"Yeah, and another thing she won't tell you, if you hadn't shown up, we'd have had to turn away patients."

"Ouch."

"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.

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.

Her hands were still tangled in his dark, silky hair.

Not an inch separated chest or belly or thighs, as she stood there weaving slightly, flushed with passion and quivering with need.

He looked as shell-shocked as she felt. "I should tell you," he said. "I've been thinking about that for a while now." His voice was rough and scratchy. And so damned sexy she could close her eyes and listen to him for the rest of the day.

Instead, she stared into his light blue eyes and saw more questions than answers. "I thought we figured this for a bad idea."

"Oh, it is. A really, really bad idea." Too bad Luke wasn't thinking with his heart at the moment.

Or even his brain.

It made no sense, no sense at all, why just looking at her made him ache all the time, why the feel of her beneath his hands nearly drove him wild.

Maybe it'd been too long since he'd had sex, but that was just an excuse. It was her, Faith, and horrifying or not, he'd have to face that.

Later. Much, much later.

"Luke…" She licked her lips and made him groan. Stared at his mouth and made his knees weak.

"I know." But he didn't, not really. He didn't have a clue, and he badly needed one.

"Are we going to do that again?"

"No." But he captured her mouth again anyway, because not getting another taste of her, when the first was still driving him out of his living mind, wasn't an option.

Her lips parted with a soft moan, and then her hands moved on his bare, heated flesh. Having her hands on him, hearing her pant softly, helplessly, drove him straight to the edge. He opened his mouth wider, pressing himself into her, letting out a low, rough groan when her fingers dug into his skin as if she needed the grip on her faltering reality. She was so unexpectedly irresistible, so damned fascinating, he couldn't let her go.

It was shocking, how much he needed this, shocking and delicious, and carried the pack of a one-two punch. He hadn't come for this, damn it, he'd come just to do his time. He didn't fully understand this clinic, or the sense of hope it gave to patients he still felt could be better served by conventional medicine, and yet here he was, his mouth and hands fully occupied-