The Vixen and the Vet (18 page)

“I’m so sorry that happened to you, baby. I’m so sorry.”

She sniffled, one of her hands clutching at his shirt, and he felt her breath hitch.

“I shouldn’t have been drinking so much,” she said in a soft voice, full of self-recrimination.

“No!” he said sharply, leaning back to look down at her face. “Don’t do that. You didn’t do anything wrong. He’s a goddamned pig, Savannah. You didn’t do—”

“I knew who he was, Asher. I had no business being alone with him. I knew what he did to Serena Shepherd.”

“What?” he asked. “Jock Shepherd’s little sister? What did he do to her?”

“Best I know? He raped her. When we were seniors.”

“Rape,” said Asher, hating the taste of the ugly word in his mouth.

“Minimally there was very strong coercion.” Savannah paused. “No, that’s total crap. It was rape.”

“You’re sure?”

Savannah nodded against his chest. “I overheard her in the girl’s room talking to her best friend. I didn’t want to leave the stall, so I lifted my feet up and pretended I wasn’t there. I heard the whole blow-by-blow. But she was drunk, and he wasn’t. And she said no, but he kept going.”

Asher’s mind reeled. Serena had been the youngest of the four Shepherd siblings, littlest sister of Jock Shepherd, with whom Asher had played lacrosse in high school.

“Jock and Tim Shepherd would’ve beat him stupid if they’d known.” Actually
he knew Jock and Tim would’ve killed him and wouldn’t have said sorry either.

“It’s not something a girl advertises.” She took a ragged breath, and her hand on his chest flexed again. “If I’d known you were coming over, I’d have …”

“What? Tried to cover it up?”

Savannah leaned up, looking into his eyes and nodding. “I was drinking, Asher. It was a bad decision to walk on the beach with him.”

Maybe she’d been flirting with Lance? Given him the wrong idea? It felt like she was holding something back. “Did you
want
to be alone with him?”

“No! I swear it. I called him an asshole just before I stood up to leave. But then the world swam, and he steadied me with an arm around my waist. I didn’t want Scarlet to know I was so buzzed, and he offered to take a walk with me so I could clear my head, so I—”

“Wait. Why’d you call him an asshole? What was happening just before you got up?”

He watched a tear roll out of her eye and travel down her face. And then he knew. He knew what she was holding back, and it felt like someone had just sucker-punched him in the heart.

“He was talking about me,” he said quietly.

She stared down at her hands and nodded.

“He was talking about me, and you called him an asshole, and he attacked you on the beach ten minutes later.”

Savannah didn’t say anything, but one of her shoulders shrugged lightly, and he knew he was right. It made sense. Someone with the ego of Lance Hamilton wouldn’t be able to handle the fact that Savannah was sleeping with a cripple, a freak, and not with him. Asher clenched his jaw so hard it ached. The woman he loved had been assaulted because of his presence in her life. It made his heart twist, and he fisted his hand so hard, his
short nails bit into his palm.

Savannah’s shoulders crumpled forward, and he could tell from the way they were shaking that she was crying again, so he shoved thoughts of Lance Hamilton to the back of his head and gathered her against him, lying back on the couch and pulling her down beside him.

“No, darlin’, no. Don’t cry. It’s okay. You’re safe now.”

He kicked off his shoes and lay flat on his back with Savannah on her side sandwiched between him and the couch cushions. She reached up and pulled a blanket from the back of the couch, spreading it over them, and let her head drop wearily to his chest. He rubbed her back in soothing strokes, whispering that she was safe, and within minutes he heard her breathing normalize, deeply in, deeply out. She was asleep.

It tugged at his heart that she was so exhausted. She must not have slept much last night between her abrupt departure from Myrtle Beach and early-morning car ride back to Virginia. Come to think of it, she hadn’t slept much on Thursday night either. He stroked her hair gently, and knowing she couldn’t hear him, whispered, “I love you, Savannah. I’m so sorry, baby.”

He would deal with Lance Hamilton on Monday. For now, all that mattered was Savannah, and all he wanted to do was take care of her.

***

Savannah’s fingers curled around the soft blanket, and she sighed as her eyes fluttered open. The light was weak and dying in her parents’ living room, and she was alone on the couch, wrapped up carefully in a blanket. But the most heavenly smells were coming from the kitchen.

She sat up, remembering that Asher had been by and she’d told him everything before crying her eyes out and falling asleep on his chest. She took a deep breath and realized she felt better than she’d felt in two days, like a weight had been lifted in telling her story to Asher. Just being with him felt safer and better than being anywhere else. She tried a smile and found that her lips still hurt, but the pain was fading.

“Well, that’s a good sign,” he said from the living room doorway. “Waking up with a smile.”

“I feel so much better now that I told you.”

He crossed the room and squatted down in front of her, taking her hand and bringing it to his lips. “Wish
I
did.”

“Sorry to burden you with it.”

His eyes shot up and held hers, intense and angry. “You think I’m upset with
you
? Nuh-uh, darlin’. But I’d like to kill Lance Hamilton. He’s a goddamned menace.”

Despite the hot, hard, genuine anger infused into his words, her brain got stuck on the way he said
darlin’
. It was the second time he’d used that endearment, and the way he drawled it sounded so sexy and so right, it made her swoon inside a little.

“You’re my girl, Savannah. You’re not burdening me. Nothing’s off-limits. I love—I love
it when you talk to me. About anything.”

She took a deep breath, letting the blanket fall from her shoulders.

“Anything?” she asked, lowering her voice just a touch.

He nodded. His eyes didn’t give much away, but she could have sworn she saw a bit of heat flare up behind them.

She leaned forward. “Asher, I don’t want to talk about Lance Hamilton anymore.” She licked her lips and looked up at Asher. “Call me darlin’ again.”

His eyes darkened, capturing hers as he leaned forward until she felt his breath on her lips. “
Darlin’.”

Shivers cascaded down her back. “How gently do you think you could kiss me?”

“Oh,” he sighed, smiling at her with his lips opened softly. “I think I could try.”

His fingers threaded through her hair, pulling her closer, and she closed her eyes and felt the feather-light brush of his lips across hers. For such a tender caress, a surprisingly strong bolt of heat shot down from her face to right between her thighs, which opened to him.

He dropped to his knees, scooting forward, then sitting back on his haunches as his arms wrapped around her waist and he pulled her down onto his lap. She straddled him with her back against the couch and her ankles locked around his back as their lips touched. She bowed her body forward, into him, as the kiss deepened, still gentle, but their tongues were touching now, swirling and circling.

She nudged her hips forward, brushing over his erection, and he groaned into her mouth. Savannah swallowed the sound,
threading her fingers through his hair, gathering it all at the nape of his neck and tilting his head back to brush her lips against the exposed skin of his throat.

Ding-ding. Ding-ding. Ding-ding.

“Fuuuu…,” he growled as she ran her tongue over his skin, tasting him. “Baby, that’s the oven,” he said through gritted teeth.

“The oven?” She pressed her breasts against him as her hands laced behind his neck and her lips lingered on the warm spot at the base of his neck.

Ding-ding.

“I made you dinner,” he said in a strained voice.

“What?” She was snapped out of her lust coma by his words and leaned back, slack jawed, to stare at him.

“Dinner,” he said, panting against her cheek. “I made you a casserole.”

“You made me a
casserole
?” she asked, trying to get her head around this information. No boyfriend had been sweet enough to make dinner for her. Never. It was a totally new experience.

“French toast casserole,” he explained, his hand gently rubbing her back. “It’s the only thing I really know how to make, and I thought you might be hungry.”

I am hungry
, she realized.
For food first, then for you.

She wiggled off his lap and stood up, then dangled her hand by his face to help him up too. He took her hand, and once he was standing in front of her, she took his face between her hands. “No one’s ever made me dinner before, Asher.”

His face transformed from slightly confused to very pleased, and he grinned at her.

“My gratitude.” She kissed his lips. “Might be.” She kissed him again. “Endless.”

“Endless?” he asked, staring at her almost like he was surprised he managed to speak at all.

“Mm-
hm,” she said, pushing her hips into the hardness behind his jeans as her tongue flicked out to lick his lips one last time.

“How, um, how endless?” he asked, his eyes dark and wide and a little drugged.

“The sort of gratitude that lasts … All. Night. Long,” she whispered with a healthy bit of saucy. Then she bit his lower lip, stepped around him, and headed for the kitchen.

When he woke up in her bed the next morning, it took him a few seconds to figure out where he was. The early-morning light filtering through the gauzy white curtains made her whole room feel sweet and dreamy, and he pulled her closer, hardening on contact when the soft skin of her backside shoved into his hips.

She sighed lightly, but he could tell she was still asleep from the way her chest swelled and relaxed under his hand beneath her breasts. He kissed her hair, breathing in the familiar scent of lemons, thinking about last night.

They’d eaten his French toast casserole at her parents’ kitchen table, smothering the golden pieces with warm maple syrup and talking about whatever popped into their heads. At one point, she’d gestured to a white cross on the wall, surrounded by blue ribbons, and told him it was his mother’s cross. Damn if his eyes didn’t burn a little looking at it. The casserole was his mother’s recipe, and he felt how pleased she would have been to see him sitting in Judy Carmichael’s kitchen with her beautiful daughter. He felt his mother’s hand on his life, in his growing love for Savannah, and it made her seem even more like a missing puzzle piece, like something he didn’t even know was missing until she arrived fully formed in his life.

He’d asked her about the article, and again she demurred, telling him she’d show him when it was all done. It didn’t bother him that she was shy about it, though his curiosity was starting to get the better of him. Anyway, she’d quickly distracted him, taking his hand and pulling him upstairs to her bedroom, where she demonstrated what “endless gratitude” looked like.

Their physical relationship was practically mind-bending. Before his injuries, he’d had a healthy sex life, but nothing he’d ever experienced compared to sex with Savannah. She blew everything that had come before totally and completely out of the water. It touched him deeply that she didn’t seem to see his imperfections and disfigurement—she either saw beyond them or simply accepted them—and it made him want to kneel at her feet in gratitude and devotion after so many lonely years.

But second to their scorching chemistry was how easily he could talk to her. Growing up in provincial Danvers had its benefits: safety and community, fresh air, green grass, and kissing behind the bleachers. He’d had the typical all-American childhood, complete with doting parents and the additional promise of a sizable trust fund. But spending time in
Charlottesville and in the Army had shown Asher a lot more of the world than sleepy little Danvers could offer. He’d been exposed to so many different ideas and cultures, alternate ways of looking at things. Even upon returning to Danvers, he’d read copiously, keeping himself—mentally, at least—of and in the world as much as possible. Not that it really mattered at this point in Asher’s life, but even if he wanted to mix it up with the locals, it was unlikely that the sensibilities of small-town Danvers would jibe very well with the man he had become.

Which is why Savannah, who had studied in New York, reported on important world events and kept her mind sharp and current, was so amazing and bewildering and exciting to him. In a very small pond, they were two alike fish, and it drew him to her. She was his lover, yes, but in a surprisingly short amount of time, she’d also become his best friend.

“What’re you thinking about?” she asked, arching back against him and making shivers run down his spine.

“You,” he said, leaning forward to kiss her neck. “How much better my life is with you in it.”

A long moment passed when they simply lay together in the quiet of her bedroom, skin to skin, his heart pumping against her back and his lips resting lazily on her shoulder.

“I’m falling in love with you too,” she finally said quietly with her back to him.

Her words ricocheted in his brain like too much awesome to bear. He didn’t expect them, didn’t anticipate them, and his heart—which had quietly longed for the words for days—didn’t know how to believe it was possible that a creature as lovely as Savannah could fall for a creature as broken as him.

“Say it again,” he whispered, closing his burning eyes so that all that existed was her voice in his ears.

She rolled back, and he moved slightly so that she could lie on her back beside him. He opened his eyes to look at her, and with her messy hair and fat lip, she was the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen. “I’m falling in love with you, Asher.”

Without breaking eye contact with her, he reached out to push her hair gently off her forehead. “You take my breath away.”

“I need you,” she said, her breasts rising and falling quickly as her nipples puckered under his intense gaze.

“What do you need,
darlin’?” he asked, as his fingers traced the side of her face, pausing briefly on her lips, which opened for him. He slipped a finger between her teeth and her tongue cradled him from underneath while she sucked strongly. Heat shot unerringly from his finger to his groin, swelling his erection as he remembered what it felt like when she hadn’t been sucking on his finger.

“You.” The sound was low and gravelly, delivered from the far back of her throat.

“Savannah,” he breathed, withdrawing his finger.

“I need you to touch me,” she said, wetting then biting her lower lip.

“Where? Here?”

His fingers trailed down to her breasts, one slick digit slowly circling her nipple, while he watched her eyes.

“Mm-hm. More,” she said breathlessly, and he dipped his head to take her swollen flesh between his lips. He suckled deeply, greedily, just as she had, and her back bowed, lifting off the bed, pushing her breast into his mouth.

She whimpered, and he switched to the other breast, kneading the abandoned one passionately, almost roughly, rolling her erect nipple between his fingers until she cried out.

“More?” he panted.

“More,” she dared him, her eyes dark and wild as she leaned up on bent elbows to watch him kiss a trail from her breasts. He lingered on the soft, warm skin of her tummy, kissing and nuzzling as she grew impatient beneath him.

“Please,” she sighed. Her knees were bent and spread, inviting him, waiting for him.

“Here?” he murmured, sliding down between her thighs, kissing the soft white skin before spreading her nether lips with his fingers. He paused.

“Please, Asher,” she gasped.

He took the entire bead of swollen sex between his lips.

She cried out as he sucked on her, swirling his tongue around the inflamed nub of nerves as she wound her fingers in the sheets by her sides, twisting them. Her muscles bunched and tensed beneath him as he laved the sweetness of her skin, sucking on her until he knew she could barely stand it another instant.

“I … I have to …,” she whimpered, thrashing her head on the pillow, and he lifted his mouth, sliding his body up quickly and thrusting deeply into her with one smooth stroke. She was so hot and so wet, he groaned, the strangled sound from the back of his throat almost inhuman.

“Come for me, darlin’,” he rasped.

Savannah opened her eyes to look into his and bucked off the bed to slam her hips into his, her fingernails drawing blood from his back as she climaxed beneath him. Her muscles flexed and released like a storm around his sex, pulling him deeper and milking him into the fastest orgasm he’d experienced in his entire adult life. He cried out as he shuddered and pulsed within her, demanding her lips and kissing her until they were both languid and spent. Their bodies bound by sweat and exhaustion, they held each other close until they both fell back to sleep.

***

“
Vanna? Vanna, you here?”

Savannah’s eyes flew open, and she looked over at Asher, naked beside her, asleep on his stomach. She pushed on his back, and his arm reached for her.

“Scarlet’s home,” she hissed, swatting his hand away. Good lord, her parents would not understand about her having a man overnight in their house. She’d hoped to have Asher on his way before Scarlet or her parents got home.

“So what?” he asked, looking up at her before closing his eyes and nestling back into her pillow.

Savannah slipped out of bed and grabbed a pair of panties off the floor, found some jeans on her window seat, and quickly wiggled an NYU sweatshirt over her head.

“Asher! Will you get dressed?” she whispered loudly in his ear.

“Vanna?”

There was a light rap on her door, and Savannah tripped over Asher’s shoe and opened the door a crack to look out at Scarlet. “Just waking up, Scarlet.”

“Lazybones! We ended up taking the eight a.m. flight instead. Trent had a last-minute conference call today.”

“Oh.”

Scarlet furrowed her brows as she looked at Savannah through the crack of the door. “Are you going to let me in?”

“Umm … well, I—”

“Morning, Scarlet.”

Scarlet’s mouth shaped into a surprised O before looking back at Savannah with curiosity and amusement. She flicked a quick glance beyond Savannah. “
Mornin’, Asher.”

Savannah looked around to find Asher standing behind her, wearing nothing but jeans and a smile. He wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled her back against his chest, kissing the top of her head. As he dragged her back, she opened the door for Scarlet.

“Mind I don’t tell Mama and Daddy, now.”

“You wouldn’t!” said Savannah, feeling like a teenager.

“Wouldn’t I?” Scarlet teased, walking into Savannah’s room. She sat down at her sister’s dressing table, and her face grew serious, as she pointed to her own lip. “You okay, honey?”

Savannah peeled herself out of Asher’s embrace and sat on the edge of the bed.

“We have to talk, Scarlet. About what happened on the beach.”

Scarlet glanced toward Asher, who watched the girls with his arms crossed over his chest.

“Asher stays,” Savannah said, reaching her hand to him.

He took her hand and laced their fingers together. Scarlet watched this interaction with interest and … what else? wondered Savannah. Envy? Yes. It looked like envy.

“Scarlet,” Savannah started.

“Now, honey,” said Scarlet. “Trent talked to Lance, and they already explained everything to me. You were a bit in your cups and clanged heads as you were
bendin’ down to vomit on the sand. Poor Lance, caught in the crossfire of you feelin’ sick—”

“Stop it!” Savannah’s fingers gripped Asher’s like iron. “You know it didn’t go like that. And if you ask Goosey and Jen—”

“Oh, honey, Goosey doesn’t want to get involved in some little ol’ family quarrel.” Scarlet had shifted slightly to fuss with the brush and comb on Savannah’s vanity, unable or unwilling to meet her sister’s eyes. “You were drunk in the van, Vanna. You drank too much beer at the barbecue. You can’t go blamin’ someone else for your poor choices. Why, if—”

“Have you gone utterly, completely insane? He would have raped me, Scarlet, if Goosey and Jenny hadn’t come along. That’s all there is to it.”

Scarlet still stared down at the brush and comb, but her hands had stilled, and her chest heaved with the force of her breathing. “Well, now, I—”

“Scarlet. You tell me right now—right the hell now—that you believe me, that you know what was about to happen, what
would
have happened if those girls hadn’t come along. You look at me and tell me you know that Lance Hamilton would have assaulted your own sister, because you know it’s the truth. You
know
it is, Katie Scarlet Carmichael!”

Asher moved slightly so that his hip was pressed against hers, and he pulled their hands into his lap protectively, but he was otherwise silent. He was letting her know he was on her side, that he believed her and believed
in
her, but he was also giving her the space to work things out with her sister, and she loved him for it.

“He is a letch and a pervert and a
rapist
, Scarlet.”

Scarlet’s eyes rose to meet Savannah’s, and to Savannah’s dismay, they were cold and furious. “You are
talkin’ about the brother of my fiancé, Savannah. Trent’s brother. Trent. The man I’m going to marry.”

“And I am your
sister
,” said Savannah in a quiet, almost disbelieving voice.

Scarlet stood and said, “I wasn’t there. I didn’t see what happened, honey. Lance says one thing. You say another. You were both a little drunk and both ended up
bleedin’. Can’t we just leave well enough alone? Even if he got fresh, you got a swing in, didn’t you? I’m sure he learned his lesson. Let’s just leave it be.”

Savannah stared at her sister, slack jawed and shocked, as though she were looking at a stranger. There had always been a significant age difference between them, and Scarlet had
always been a hometown girly-girl next to Savannah’s more independent, sophisticated woman. But never did Savannah believe that a scumbag like Lance Hamilton could drive a wedge between them.

“Scarlet,” she said, wincing at the anguish in her voice.

Scarlet smoothed the skirt of her sundress. “It’s in the past, Vanna.”

“That’s all you have to say?”