Chapter 18

I kissed him right back. Those lips. That tongue already exploring my mouth. The way he smelled like cedar and wood smoke and himself. It was all I could do not to wind myself around his body and purr like a cat.

I pulled my face away. We were at work, God damn it. I mean gosh darn it. I mean…I kissed him again and again, until we ran out of air.

I yanked my lips backwards, out of reach, but the look on his face gave me permission to press my body against his for one hot second. I could feel his heart thumping through our clothes. And that wasn’t all I could feel.

Then, like a child’s game, I took a giant step backwards and said, breathless, “Thank you for coming. I mean…”

Ryan laughed. “I know what you mean.” He glanced at the patients watching us with avid eyes. Even the security guards peered in our direction. I turned crimson while Ryan said, “Could I drive you home?”

“Yes! Oh, wait. I biked today.”

“I can fit your bike in my trunk.”

I know that’s not a sexy thing to say, but his calm tone, and the way he eyed me up and down while he was saying it, made my cheeks flare again. “Okay. Thanks! Let me just grab my stuff. It’s upstairs, in the residents’ lounge.”

“I’ll come with you.”

I licked my lips. I hadn’t seen Tucker all day. That wasn’t unusual. He was on family medicine, which meant he spent most of his time at the FMC, which was in a separate four-story building called the Annex, instead of the main hospital building. Sometimes he went to Outremont to do clinics at the CLSC, the community clinics where you actually got to see kids and young women. But he hadn’t texted me all day, which was a little more unusual, and made me wonder if he was ignoring me on purpose while he took over my case.

It bugged me, but right now, I kept my fingers crossed that he’d stay away just long enough for me to escape with Ryan.

I took Ryan’s left hand in my right and pointed toward the central staircase. He manoeuvred his arm around me instead, so we could press our hips together while he rested his hand on my outer hip (the iliac crest, for the anatomy geeks). His hand burned through the thin grey cloth of my dress pants. And we walked like that, hip to hip, pressed against each other. All I could think of was getting him alone. Like, into my apartment just a few minutes’ drive away.

He could feel this, right? He wouldn’t say no. He wouldn’t invoke the church and Jesus and all that jazz. He would just bend me over.

Even lock-stepped as we were, we managed to get to the residents’ room and back without running into Tucker, which meant the goddesses still had my back. A celestial sign that we were destined to knock boots together.

When he drove, he draped his hand on my inner thigh like it belonged there.

I spread my legs wider, just a fraction of an inch, but Ryan grinned at me.

When we got to my apartment, he glanced up at the eighteen-story black glass tower and said, “This place is so much better.”

“Yeah,” I said, even though a tiny part of me missed Mimosa Manor and its grotty Art Deco style.

He insisted on carrying both our backpacks in and somehow still managed to keep me by his side. I nodded at the guard, hoping he wouldn’t notice that I had company.

I was kind of hoping we could make out in the elevator. You know how Grey’s Anatomy uses the elevator for character development? But an old couple waited for the elevator with us, and they smelled like stale breath. I know that’s a terrible thing to say, and there are lots of vibrant old people out there, but these two kind of killed the buzz.

Which just meant that I was simmering along at 3 on 10 instead of ten, but I kept glancing at Ryan in the elevator: his long, strong, brown fingers flexing by his side; the way he tossed his hair and grinned at me; how he smelled so god damned good, I could eat him up, and soon I would be.

The elevator dinged, and the old couple shuffled off.

I rested my hand on Ryan’s hip. He was wearing a belt, so I couldn’t feel his skin at all, but I knew he was under there, and I pressed hard.

“Stop,” said Ryan, but he was breathing hard, and I already had my hand on him, outlining him through the fabric of his pants.

I squeezed him lightly.

His hips bucked.

“Damn it, Hope,” he said, shoving my hand away and standing away from me, even though we were now alone in a steel cage for a few more minutes.

“Hope,” he said.

His voice was muffled. I ignored him. Can’t talk. Fucking. Make love, not talk.

“Hope,” he said again, and this time, his voice was stronger, although strained. “Let’s go out.”

“Out?” I said.

“Yeah. You want something to eat?”

I reached for his belt buckle.

He laughed even as he knocked my hand away. “Can’t do it, Hope. You know that.”

I could barely hear him over my breathing and my heart pounding, but I managed, “Don’t do this to me.”

“Hope. I want to be with you. We just have to…make it official first.”

The elevator dinged and slid open for my floor. No witnesses, but I barely spoke to him as I stalked down the hall toward my apartment. I threw open the door, barely caring that he followed me, because he kept a careful distance from me.

I didn’t bother to give him the tour. I just said, “Why?” Fully aware that I sounded like some sulky jock trying to talk a cheerleader out of her panties. That just made it more humiliating.

“Because it’s the right thing to do. Now come on. I can’t stay here without ravishing you. We’ve got to get out in public.”

“What?” I was still two hundred steps behind.

“It’s my Odysseus contract. You know the story of Odysseus, how he wanted to hear the sirens singing, but every sailor who did that ended up crashing his boat on the rocks and dying?”

“Yeah, yeah,” I said, sidling up to him.

Ryan pulled away from me enough that our bodies were no longer touching. “He stopped his men’s ears up with wax and had them tie him to the mast so that he could hear the sirens’ song, but they couldn’t. They kept on rowing past the island, no matter how he begged them to untie him.”

I stroked his hair. I felt like I’d been starving for his touch, while he babbled about Greek myths. “So?”

“So in my behavioural economics course, Dan Ariely says, Look. We’re all terrible at self control, so you have to make a deal with yourself. An Odysseus contract. I don’t have much self-control around you, but I’ll be able to keep my hands off of you in public. So we gotta go out. Now.”

“I don’t want to go out now.” I leaned in so I could smell him.

“Stop that,” he said under his breath. “Seriously, Hope. I’m thinking about the future, here.”

“Me too.”

He yanked my hand. “Look. You made me wait two years before we did it the first time.”

“Six months.”

“It felt like two years. So now I’m saying, Hang on a few weeks until you move to Ottawa—”

My breath hissed out. “I don’t know if my residency program will let me go.”

“It’ll happen. We’ll make it work. And once we’re both on the same page…”

I covered my face with my hands. “You’re still waiting for marriage?”

“Yup.”

“Ryan. Please.” The word hitched in my throat. It was so goddamned humiliating, but I was willing to beg. I hadn’t been with him for years. I needed him. Not just his body, but I needed him to hold me, and tell me that I was beautiful and that he was mine and I was his. At least for one night.

He took my face in his and kissed me so soundly, my head spun a little. My heart soared. He couldn’t kiss me like that and walk away. He—

Ryan detached himself. “You want to grab some Indian food this time?”

I was so pissed, I told him, “You think this is payback.”

“What? No!”

“Sure you do. All the times I made you wait, now you’re making me wait.”

“Hope. I try not to talk about this stuff with you, but I’m looking out for both of us. For our souls. For eternity. That’s worth sacrificing one night, right?”

“Fuck eternity,” I said, but the words crumbled on my lips. “Oh, Ryan, I’m sorry, but I’m so mortified and turned on right now. I really feel sorry for guys like I never did before.”

“There’s gotta be something we can do that would take your mind off this.”

I looked him up and down.

“Besides that,” he said easily. “Come on. You want to eat?”

“No, damn it,” I said, which was highly unusual for me, but it just made me so spitting mad that Ryan was here, within arms’ reach, and I couldn’t ride him until sunrise.

“You want to watch a movie?”

I looked him up and down. I would grope him in any movie theatre, and he knew it.

“Yoga?” he said, desperate, but all I could picture was me lying on the ground, trying to be his sticky mat, while he contorted above me.

“There’s just one thing,” I said finally. “You would hate it.”

“Try me.”

I sighed. “If only I could.” And I proceeded to call Archer to iron out the details.