The evening hours passed quickly with more cleaning and organization, but shortly after nine, I noticed Carter flagging.
“You’ve been at it for sixteen hours,” I said, reaching for the mop in his hands. “It’s time to sleep now.”
I could tell he wanted to argue with me, but he was too tired. By unspoken agreement, he used the small bathroom first. I heard the shower spray, followed by the sounds of him brushing his teeth. I tried not to imagine his slender muscles wet and dripping under the water. When he emerged, his blond hair was damp but tidy, he was dressed in thin cotton pajama shorts and a color-coordinated tank top, and he smelled clean and fruity.
My nose wanted to follow him straight to the bedroom and then sniff him for a solid three hours.
Instead, I followed the same scent to the bathroom, where I noticed he’d left a full-size bottle of bodywash in the tiny shower stall. It looked expensive, and the only word I recognized on the French label was “pamplemousse,” which meant the sweet smell was grapefruit.
I brazenly scrubbed my own body with the stuff since I hadn’t thought to bring my own bar of utilitarian soap. When I finished up, I brushed my teeth, slipped into a clean pair of boxer briefs, and padded back to the single bedroom that was mostly full of our supply boxes at this point.
Dr. Duchess was already laid out in the bed with some heretofore unseen bed pillow, an ivory satin eye mask, earplugs, and the finest fucking ass on this planet.
He lay on his stomach on top of the sheets with his arms under the pillow and his head turned toward the side. I stared at the curve of his back, the way it dipped down and then rose again. My eyes devoured the man’s muscular butt the way my mouth wanted to.
His skin was clean, and he smelled amazing. Something about his body chemistry made the bodywash smell a thousand times better on him than me. A peek of armpit hair made me itch to run my nose and tongue up the inside of his arm and see if there was any remaining scent there from the day of hard work and travel.
He’d barely done any work.
The reminder wasn’t really true. He’d worked plenty. For a man probably used to lifting nothing much more than a stethoscope and iPad, he’d done an impressive amount of heavy lifting. We wouldn’t have made it from the airport in Caracas onto several different buses if he hadn’t done his share of the work.
As I smoothed out the thin sleeping bag I’d brought, my eyes kept straying to his long, sexy form. There was no denying he was a gorgeous specimen. He obviously kept fit and healthy like many doctors I’d met over the years, even though it was a different kind of fit than my military friends. He was sleek rather than bulky, and I imagined exploring his long lines with my hands and mouth. I imagined him grinning up at me with those blue eyes of his, my rough fingers combing through the silky blond of his hair as I let him tease me. I imagined how it would feel to know his smile was because of me, and I wondered how his laughter would taste—
Inappropriate, Marine. Hands off.
This was going to be a problem. A serious problem.
I unzipped my bag and folded it open before lying down. We’d temporarily moved one of the fans into the tiny room, but it was still warm as hell.
Noises from the small town made their way through the bars on the open window as I reached up to click off the small bedside lamp on the stand between us. As the semi-darkness fell over the room, I became very aware of his nearness.
“You smell like my Blague bodywash,” he muttered without moving. “You’re welcome.”
“It was either that or bathe in the Acute-Kare shit in our supply boxes,” I said. “I’m saving that for your precious handwashing instead.”
“Mpfh.”
A floodlight from the corner of a nearby building was perfectly positioned to shine right in my left eyeball. “Fucking streetlight.”
“If only you’d thought to bring the eye mask from the airplane like I suggested,” he replied. His voice sounded deliciously sleepy, like if I were to roll him over and nuzzle into his neck, he’d be warm and pliable.
I gritted my teeth and squeezed my hands into fists. “Don’t need a face mask, Duchess. Marines can sleep anytime, anywhere.”
An hour later, Carter was deep in sleep, and I was still staring at the ceiling. I turned onto my side to face away from the window but came face-to-leg with one of Carter’s long shins.
His leg had fallen over the side of the bed, and my eyes followed the slender limb up the tight muscles of his calf, around the bend of his knee, along his toned quad, and… into the gap of his sleep shorts.
My heart thundered as I caught a peek of shadowy sac.
Holy fuck.
I was a creep. But I couldn’t stop looking.
My mouth pooled with saliva. He wasn’t wearing anything under those snooty pajama shorts. He was free-balling it only two feet away from me.
I squeezed my eyes closed, but the visual memory was seared on my brain. I imagined running my fingertips up his inner thigh and teasing the crease at the top. Great. Now I was panting.
There was no way I was going to rub one out with my principal only two feet away. Moreover, I wouldn’t give Carter Snob-face Rogers the satisfaction of knowing he’d turned me on this much.
Go to fucking sleep, Marine.
I finally gave up and tried the military method of falling asleep, which must have worked because three minutes later, the sunrise was lighting up the room with a golden glow and Carter was fully dressed in khaki cargo pants, a Doctors Across Continents polo shirt, and his doctor’s coat. “Wake up, slacker,” he said, nudging me with a sneakered foot. “There are breakfast sandwiches in a basket on the check-in table and a line of patients already waiting outside.”
I sat up so fast, I almost tumbled off the ridiculous chaise cushion. “You opened the door without me?” My heart thundered with worry before my brain reminded me he was safely standing here. No harm had come to him.
He lifted an eyebrow. “I didn’t open the outer door until I saw it was a woman who was eighty if she was a day. Pretty sure I could have taken her in hand-to-hand combat. The only way she’s going to kill us is with the carbs and fat in that sandwich, but it was worth it.”
I grunted and moved around him to find my own clothes. The feel of Carter’s eyes on my body was almost a physical thing. I might have taken my time sliding my pants on and leaned over a little more than was absolutely necessary, but when I finally turned around and saw his cheeks pinker than they’d been before, I realized it was well worth it.
“What are we waiting for?” I asked.
Carter looked everywhere but at me. “Yes, well. Right. Ah…”
“Patients,” I said, trying not to smirk.
Carter shot me a glare. “Of course. Patients.”
This was going to be fun.
4
Carter
“Could you be quiet, Duchess?” The deep rumble of Riggs’s disembodied voice floated up from his floor pallet. “I can hear you sighing from down here.”
I lay on my back on the right side of the double bed, which was marginally closer to the fan, and stared up at the ceiling in the muggy darkness. “I’m not sighing, Mr. Riggs. I’m breathing,” I informed him. “And I’m not planning to stop, so MacGyver yourself some damn earplugs.”