Page 39 of A Sight to Behold
Nick pulled the covers over his ears and pressed his face into his pillow. Not that the pressure from the fluffy feather bunch could force him to sleep, but the image from his dream couldn’t be erased.
He groaned.
Every time he closed his eyes, he saw her in his dream, and his mind came up with a new variation of what he’d do to her next. Not that he ever would. Or could.
Well, he had.
But not really.
Definitely not as he had in his dream. He opened his eyes and blinked. If only…but he couldn’t. Nick closed his eyes again andthere she was. In this image, Pippa had just taken a bite of the pineapple, and the juice had spilled down her lips to her chin. Nick wrapped his hand around the back of her head and pulled her in, licking the sweet nectar off, kissing the juice away until she dropped her head backward and granted him access to her perky little breasts.
Nick pulled the covers tightly on his head to make sure the wicked images from his mind couldn’t fly out into the world. He mustn’t think it. He mustn’t imagine it.
And yet, the idea of nudging her breasts, one and then the other out of one of her little, thin silk dresses and taking them, each in turn, in his mouth made his body hard as a plank of wood. He wasn’t comfortable in the big bed, and his erection throbbed with the need to… no.No!
Pippa Pemberton, Lady Philippa Pemberton, was a well-born girl who was off limits.
But she was so beautiful.
Her eyes were marbled with hues of blues that Nick had never seen in nature.
Her hair was softer than unspun mulberry silk.
And her lush lips had been so hot when he felt them swell under his kiss.
She’d welcomed his tongue, and he could not help but return to the image in his dream: the moonlit greenhouse and nothing but the sound of their moans as he kissed her breasts. Glistening with the sweat of their exploration and the tingle of her skin on his, Nick returned to the land of his imagination. There, and only there, Nick could allow himself to lay the gorgeous beauty down on his coat, generously spread out on the table to cushion her as he climbed over her. He’d slowly but deliberately take each of her swollen nipples in his mouth, like berries he couldn’t resist.
He’d kissed her breasts as he peeled the rest of the clothes off her body. She’d moaned his name and wrapped her long,lithe legs around him, and suddenly—it was such a good dream—Nick was naked atop her. He’d propped himself up on his elbows on the sides of her head and looked into her beautiful eyes as he pushed himself into her. Engulfed in her heat and wetness, deeper and deeper, he sank into her and dropped his mouth back onto hers. He felt her tongue in his mouth, which he opened wide as he started to—
“Nick!” Someone called him. “Nick!”
The dream was over, but Nick was still in a daze. The morning light assaulted his tired eyes, and his head spun with the forbidden passion he’d imagined all night.
“Nick!” Wendy’s voice resonated through the hall. She knocked on his door and then burst in. “I’ve been calling you—”
He jumped out of bed and rubbed his eyes. She was his little sister, of course, but he didn’t want to tell her what he’d done lest she worry about their future and the consequences of his transgression.
“What happened here?” Wendy asked as she picked up his sleep shirt from the floor and eyed his covers in disarray. “Did you wrestle a bear in this bed?”
“A bear? No. A demon, yes. I couldn’t sleep,” he grumbled.
“Well, you have a patient waiting for you downstairs,” Wendy said as she tossed his shirt in the wicker basket for the laundress to wash.
At first, Nick’s impulse was to dress and hurry to his exam room, but then he realized there shouldn’t be anyone on his schedule. “It’s Saturday.” He walked to his nightstand and picked up his pocket watch. “And…it’s ten past seven in the morning!”
“Yes, that’s why I came to fetch you. It seems necessary for you to attend to this patient right away.” She smiled with an amused gleam in her eyes before she left the room. Sure, it could be funny to her—she didn’t toss and turn in frustration all night.He quickly dressed and stormed to the shared dressing room on the first floor, where Alfie was shaving his face over the wash bowl.
“Hey!” Alfie protested when Nick pushed him out of the way brushed his teeth, and stormed downstairs.
A patient had been waiting for him indeed.
He urgently needed to tend to this one.
But it wasn’t the emergency Wendy made it out to be.
*
When Nick walkedinto his office, buttoning the last button of his clean shirt, he was still thinking about the dream he’d had last night. It was unlike him to be so taken by a girl. In all his life, he’d been able to put his work first and focus on the tasks at hand, his studies, his apprenticeships, complicated cases, and calculations. But this week, he couldn’t recognize himself. He’d fallen over a girl and smashed a cream cake on her with custard and all. Then he’d walked across Town to bring her home safely, the cream still on his coat. She’d shown up to his office and he’d examined her eyes. And then he’d delivered the glasses she’d needed in person.
