Dare Me: Red Hot Weekend Read online

  “The perfect fit, Emily,” he whispered with another nip at her earlobe, withdrawing his cock slowly from her sex until just its head remained engulfed by her heat.

  She arched beneath him, her hands travelling his back. “Robert…” She shook her head, her leg muscles coiling as she tried to drive him back into her. “Don’t…”

  He tilted his hips forward, inching a fraction back into her pussy, dragging his length against her clit. “Don’t what?” He withdrew again, his blood roaring at the rapture etching Emily’s face. “Don’t tell you we are perfect together?”

  He slid back into her again, a little farther this time. A little deeper.

  “No.” The word left Emily in a rasping pant, her body quivering beneath him as she once again tried to pull him into her upward thrust. Her nails scratched at his hips, her eyes ablaze. “Don’t torture me.”

  He chuckled, sliding out of her folds a little. “Greedy woman.” He pushed back in, letting the domed head of his cock linger at the mouth of her pussy. “You’ve had three orgasms already.”

  “I want more.”

  The raw confession sent a surge of fresh blood into Rob’s balls. The fire dancing up his spine grew hotter, a rising inferno he couldn’t fight for much longer. “So do I,” he answered.

  His heart slammed into his throat at the three words. He wasn’t just talking about orgasms. He was talking about his life. Their life.

  “Tell me we are perfect together, Emily. Tell me we are the perfect fit and I will let you come.”

  “You know we are,” she panted, staring up at him as she writhed beneath his pinning weight. “Please…”

  He smoothed his hand over her torso to capture the perfect curve of her breast. She closed her eyes and pushed her hips higher to his, her hand joining his on her breast, helping him squeeze and massage its soft form. “Tell me I’m not just a patient to you anymore.”

  She shook her head, her legs tugging him closer, her nails digging into his flesh. “Oh God, Robert,” she moaned, a frown of escalating pleasure pulling at her forehead, “I don’t think you ever were.”

  It was all he needed to hear. For now.

  He drove his cock into her in one savage thrust, burying himself to the hilt. His balls slapped against her arse, a painful blow so pleasurable he cried out. Liquid fire spiked through him, his head swam, he closed his eyes and slammed into her again, again, the sheath of her tight vagina driving him wild.

  “Fuck, yes!” Emily clung to him, bucking her hips into every stabbing penetration. She mauled her breast with his fingers, her face contorting with what Rob knew was unadulterated rapture. It consumed him too. Made him weak, made him breathless.

  Made him invincible. For the woman in his arms, he would defy not just death, but definition. She was his everything. She was his life.

  “Christ, Emily,” he ground out, gazing into her face as he pumped into her, “I can’t…I can’t hold on. I’m going to come. I’m going to—”

  Her eyes flung open. A split second before her pussy contracted around his cock in a gripping pulse and a scream burst from her lips. “Yes, Rob! Yes yes yes!”

  She came. And so did he, thick wads of come spurting from his cock, oozing from their joined sex as rhythm deserted him and his climax consumed him. He laughed, he cried, sweat stinging his closed eyes, his balls throbbing as his release poured from his soul into Emily’s very core. Filling her until he couldn’t thrust anymore, couldn’t move anymore.

  Heart pounding, he collapsed on top of her, claiming her lips with his as he did so, making love to her mouth with his tongue as his spent cock continued to spasm inside her pussy. Wanting to give her pleasure even as the steel left his length.

  She wrapped her arms around his back, tangling her legs with his as she returned his kiss. The pulsing pressure of her fading orgasm on his dick was an unbearable caress he would willingly endure until the end of time. An affirmation of the pleasure he gave her.

  A confirmation of what his heart had been telling him since he’d first laid eyes on her: he was hers. Irrevocably and unquestionably.

  With one last nibbling kiss on her bottom lip, he raised his head, resting on his elbows to frame her face with his hands. He’d done it. He’d made love to her. He hadn’t passed out, his vision had stayed clear and he’d made love to her. Glorious, passionate, wild love. A grin pulled at his lips. “Now tell me I’m not healthy enough, Doctor Knox.”

  She rolled her eyes, her fingers trailing little patterns up and down his spine, the corners of her mouth curling. “I’ll have to look at your chart,” she answered.

  He laughed, rolling to the side and tugging her into the curve of his body. He let his hand roam the dip and rise of her hip and waist before cupping her breast, playing his thumb over her distended nipple. “The chart can go to hell.”

  She stilled for a moment, her breath caught in her throat.

  Rob frowned, feeling the unexpected tension claim her muscles. “What did I say wrong?”

  She didn’t answer him. Not straight away, at least. Releasing a sigh, she twisted in his arms, turning her head until her gaze met his. “The chart can’t go to hell, Rob,” she said. “It will always exist. You must know that?”

  Her words sent a dull shard of something cold and dark into Rob’s gut. He shook his head, drawing her closer into his embrace. “I’m not going to let those fucking sick brain cells rule my life, Emily. I’m not. And after what we just did, you should know that.”

  With another sigh, Emily pushed herself away from his body, positioning herself in a sitting position before him, her knees tucked under her chin. She looked down at him, an unreadable expression playing over her face. “I will always be a doctor, Robert. And you will always be a cancer survivor. Those two things will never change no matter how many times you make love to me.”

  “What are you saying? That you’re going to check my vitals every time we fool around? Hold a mirror under my nose every morning when you wake up?”

  The cold darkness in Rob’s belly knotted and he rolled onto his back, glaring at his bedroom’s ceiling. Not once since the specialists here in Sydney told him he had inoperable brain cancer, almost a year ago, had he ever let self-pity get the better of him. He knew all about the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance, and couldn’t give any of them a fucking toss. The simple fact of the matter was, he had cancer, he’d dealt with cancer, and now he was cancer-free. Now he was getting on with his life and be damned if he was going to let that life be dictated by the illness he’d beaten. If the woman perched on his bed thought otherwise, then she didn’t know him like he thought she did.

  And maybe he didn’t know her either.

  Which made the cold in his gut colder.

  “Robert?”

  Emily’s warm hand on his chest, directly above his heart, made him clench his jaw. Christ, why was she here? Just to make him doubt everything?

  “Robert, look at me.”

  The command was spoken in a tone he recognized all too well. The oncologist was in the room with him.

  “Look at me.”

  He turned his head, fixing her with a level stare.

  “I’m glad you had anaplastic astrocytoma,” she said, her face serious. “Because if you didn’t, I never would have met you. But before there can be an us, Robert, you need to come to terms with who you are now.”

  “I know who I am now,” he stated, his pulse thumping in his neck. “I’m the same bloke I’ve always been. Nothing’s changed about me except I’ve got a funky new buzz cut and I’m packing blanks.”

  Emily shook her head. “You’re wrong. Everything’s changed about you.” She leant forward, enough to brush her lips over his with gentle pressure before climbing off the bed to gaze down at him. “I love you, Robert Thorton. You have turned my world upside down, but I’m still a cancer specialist and if you can’t acknowledge the man who survived cancer, if you can’t dare to see him, how can I li
ve with him?”

  She turned and walked from his bedroom, not looking back, her spine straight, her steps steady, and despite every fibre of Rob’s being screaming at him to get off his fucking arse and go after her, he didn’t. Not even when he heard the apartment door close softly, leaving his townhouse as still as a crypt.

  He pressed his hands to his face, driving his fingertips hard against his forehead. “Jesus, Rob. You surely screwed this one up, didn’t you?”

  The low sounds of Bon Jovi’s “Bad Medicine” wafted from his mobile phone somewhere on the floor and Rob sat up, swinging his feet off the bed. Whoever the hell was calling him, they had perfect bloody timing.

  He leant forward and snagged his tuxedo trousers—so recently tossed aside in the heat of frantic passion—from the floor, digging around in the first one hip pocket and then the other until he found his phone.

  Joseph’s image filled the screen, doofus grin plastered over his face, and Rob’s chest tightened. It wasn’t the first time his best friend had called right at the most perfect moment. The man had an uncanny knack for knowing when to call. Swiping his thumb across the screen, he lifted the phone to his ear. “What the hell are you doing calling me?” he growled. “It’s your wedding night for fuck’s sake. Aren’t you meant to be bonking your new wife silly?”

  Joseph laughed on the other end of the connection and for one brief painful second Rob longed for the days when he and Hudo were stupid teenagers with nothing to worry about except who was going to try and buy the beer on the weekend. “Just taking a breather, Thorton,” Joseph chuckled. “Just taking a breather. Besides, I felt the need to check in with my best man. See if he’s being a fucking legend or just a fuckwit.” He paused. “And by the amount of profanity coming out of your mouth, I’m guessing fuckwit.”

  “How’s fuck off sound?”

  “Like a typical Thorton response when he knows he’s being a wanker.”

  Slumping backward onto the bed, Rob let out a sigh, studying the ceiling with a blank stare. “I don’t know what the hell I’m doing, Joe,” he muttered, dragging a hand through his hair. “Jesus, I don’t have a fucking clue who I am anymore. Am I the bloke who scaled the Harbour Bridge buck naked because you said I didn’t have the balls, or am I the bloke who’ll need regular check-ups just to make sure I’m not going to kick the bucket tomorrow?”

  “Why can’t you be both?”

  Joseph’s question came without hesitation, a confused note to his words.

  Rob ground his teeth. “Because one’s not afraid of anything and the other’s apparently too fucking feeble to walk out his front door.”

  “Says who?”

  “Says me.”

  “Then you truly are a fuckwit,” Joseph shot back. “And you deserve to be alone.”

  “Hey there, mate,” Rob snapped. “Aren’t you meant to be making your best man feel better?”

  “Not when he’s being a dickhead,” Joseph answered, his voice blunt. “I take it the good doctor is no longer in your presence?”

  Huffing out another sigh, Rob scrubbed at his face with his free hand. “No. After the most amazing sex of my life, she told me I had to accept I was a cancer survivor and up and left.”

  “I don’t see the problem,” Joseph said, nothing in his tone glib or joking. “You are a cancer survivor.”

  Rob stared at the ceiling, his blood roaring in his ears. “I love her, Joe,” he blurted out, the unexpected but undeniable words tearing at his heart. “I really do. So fucking much it hurts, but no matter how hard I try, every time I look at her I can’t help but remember why we met, and that scares the shit out of me.”

  “Why?”

  Joseph’s quiet question made Rob’s already pounding heart thump harder. “Because what if it comes back? What if the cancer comes back and takes me away from her? What if I’m only given a taste of heaven before I’m thrown into hell?”

  Joseph was silent. Long enough for Rob to wonder if his best mate had given up on him for the pathetic joke he was.

  “You’re not going to hell, Rob,” Joseph finally said, each syllable a calm note of certainty. “The Devil would kick you out for being a bad influence.”

  Rob snorted. “You’re not helping me here, mate.”

  Joseph let out a sigh. “You’ve never been afraid of anything. Now’s not the time to be afraid of life. Especially a life you almost had denied you.”

  Rob closed his eyes, an image of Emily filling his head immediately, her lips curled in a soft smile, her eyes filled with patient compassion and undeniable passion. It wasn’t just his doctor he saw, but the woman he’d desired since the night she’d dared him to fight for his life. The last thing she said to him whispered through his mind—if you can’t acknowledge the man who survived cancer, if you can’t dare to see him, how can I live with him?

  He uttered a low groan. He knew who exactly who he was. Right at this very moment he, Robert Thorton, was a fucking moron.

  “Rob?”

  Joseph’s voice jerked him back to the now and he opened his eyes, jolting upright on the bed, “I gotta go, mate,” he said into the phone, scurrying to his feet.

  “Yeah,” Joseph chuckled, “thought you—”

  Rob didn’t hear the rest. He tossed his phone onto the bed, grabbed his tux trousers from the floor and shoved his legs into them, hopping across the floor as he did so.

  Damn it, he had to catch his doctor. It was a matter of life or fucking-moron death.

  Standing on the curb, her fingers curled tightly around the strap of her satchel, her dress a crumpled mess clinging to her body, Emily blinked back tears. Tears, of all things. Lord, where was the detached English doctor when she was needed?

  I do believe you left her somewhere back in Barcelona, Emily. Along with your career and professional ethics.

  She bit back a disgusted growl, chewing harder on her lip. That was correct. All she’d packed to bring to Australia was her passport, a clean pair of underpants—currently rubbing against her still swollen, sodden folds—and her foolish heart. Look where that had got her. Hurting the one man she loved, the only person who mattered to her, and pretty much destroying any chance she had of being with him.

  She closed her eyes and let out a sigh. Why couldn’t she have kept her mouth shut? Why couldn’t she have told Rob the chart didn’t matter? Damn it, why couldn’t she have told him she loved him before telling him he had no clue about himself?

  Because despite the excruciating agony in her chest, the numb emptiness in her soul, she was correct. She couldn’t be with Robert if he denied what he’d been through. She would always, always, spend every day thinking about what he’d beaten. It was who she was. She couldn’t switch that off. She didn’t want to. She only wished Rob could understand that. And know acknowledging what he’d been through didn’t make him less the man he’d been before.

  It had always surprised her he’d never seemed distraught over the likely sterilization his treatment could cause. He’d banked samples of his semen of course, it was part of the pre-treatment procedure, but it was only on her insistence. In the early stages of their relationship—the doctor/patient stage—she’d put it down to bravado. Now, she realized it wasn’t Rob’s sexual prowess that defined him, unlike so many of her male patients that had come before him, but his ability to thumb his nose at fear. By denying what he’d survived, Robert was, essentially, telling not only death, but fear itself it had no power over him. But that couldn’t work in this situation. She knew that. Robert had to take the cancer and make it a part of who he was now. If he didn’t he wasn’t denying fear, he was denying life.

  And he burned far, far too brightly to deny life.

  “Oh Lord, Emily,” she muttered, scrubbing her face with her hand, “why couldn’t you have become a dog walker instead?”

  “Because I don’t own a dog,” a deep voice said behind her and she spun around, staring at Rob where he stood on the sidewalk a few feet away, dressed in nothing but th
ose powder blue tuxedo trousers. “Which means we never would have met,” he continued. “Well, that and the fact we would be living on opposite sides of the world.”

  She studied him, her throat thick, her chest tight.

  A grin—sheepish and hesitant—pulled at the edges of his lip, the dimple in his right cheek barely visible. He didn’t move, waiting for her to say the next word.

  She couldn’t. She didn’t know what it was.

  Grin faltering a little, he pushed his hands into the back pockets of his trousers. “I don’t suppose you’ll consider coming back upstairs, would you?”

  She caught her bottom lip with her teeth, a frown pulling at her eyebrows.

  “Please?”

  She almost said yes. It wasn’t the word that changed her mind, but the way Rob said it: a raw growl of urgency. Unlike any she’d heard from him before. And completely not what she’d expected. No flippant sarcasm, no cheeky I dare you. Just one word spoken with undeniable need.

  And she couldn’t deny that need. It smoldered inside her as well.

  But she couldn’t go to him. Not yet. Not until he answered a question.

  She studied him, her whole body aching. “Why did you follow me out here?”

  He blinked. “Because…” He stopped, looking around the dark street as if searching for the answer. “Because I can’t stand the thought of you going.”

  Emily’s throat grew thick. She shook her head. “That’s not enough. I need more.”

  Rob’s jaw clenched. “More? A ring?”

  Her belly knotted. “That’s not what I mean and you know it.”

  Rob let out a hissed breath, dragging his hands through his hair. Once again his gaze jumped around the street before finally returning to her face. “You want me to say I’m a different person now?”

  She nodded, keeping her expression calm. Poised. Inside, her stomach churned, her heart hammered and her pulse raced.

  “You want me to say I’m a wanker who thought he could just go back to his normal way of life after surviving something so few do?”