Page 8 of My Reluctant Valentine

“I hate you,” I muttered, but I was smiling as I headed for the door.

The truth was, Cole did make me feel safe. Protected. And about a thousand other things my medical terminology couldn’t quite capture. Things that made my skin tingle and my heart race whenever I thought about him.

Which is exactly what happened when I spotted him in the waiting room. He was a wall of tactical-clad muscle, radiating lethal competence and barely restrained power.

And sex. He was walking, growling sex on a stick.

His head snapped up the moment I entered, those dark eyes locking onto me with predatory focus. My stomach did a flip that had nothing to do with medical conditions and everything to do with how he looked at me like he wanted to devour me whole.

“Mr. Sutton.” I was proud that my voice only shook a little. “I hope you weren’t waiting long.”

His jaw tightened. “No. Ready to go?”

That voice. Good heavens. It should have been classified as a controlled substance. Schedule I—highly addictive, no currently accepted medical use, high potential for abuse.

He didn’t touch me—hadn’t touched me since this morning—but his presence behind me as I walked to the parking lot was like a physical caress. I was so aware of him that I have to bite back a whimper.

Great. Now I was one of those romance novel heroines who whimpered. What was next? Swooning? Actually, given my current heart rate and the vasodilation occurring in myperipheral blood vessels, syncope wasn’t entirely out of the question.

“You’re doing it again,” he said as he opened my door.

“Doing what?”

“Thinking in medical terms. Are you avoiding thinking about this morning?”

Did that mean he’d been thinking about this morning? Deciding if he was going to... “It’s a coping mechanism.”

His lips twitched. “Get in the car, little doctor. Before you start quoting statistics about elevated heart rates.”

“Actually, the average resting heart rate is sixty to one hundred beats per minute, but in situations of acute arousal—”

“Ella.” Heaven help me, but I loved when he growled my name like that. Even if it made my panties distinctly wet.

“Right. Getting in the car now.”

CHAPTER FIVE

Cole

I settled Ella in the SUV, keeping my hands to myself through sheer military discipline.

I gripped the steering wheel hard, trying to focus on the road and not the way she was squirming in her seat. Every curve in the mountain road back to the lodge was torture. I’d thought about her proposal all day. I’d imagined pushing her knees apart, sliding my hand up her thigh, showing her exactly what those medical books had left out.

I’d thought about taking her virginity.

Of showing her all the deliciously wicked things that could happen between a man and a woman.

Between me and her.

“Are you grinding your teeth?” Her voice was both concerned and slightly amused. “That can lead to temporomandibular joint dysfunction, you know.”

“Are you always this doctorly when you’re nervous?”

She let out a small laugh. “Did you know that arousal can actually impair cognitive function? There’s a fascinating study about—”

“Ella.” I groaned her name.

“So. About this morning.” She was sitting there, hands clasped in her lap as if we were about to discuss the weather andall I could think about was fucking the prim and proper right out of her. Of turning her into a very naughty, ex-virgin.

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