He ignored this, because of course he did.
A thought occurred to me, and I frowned down at him in the darkness. “Wait, how do you know the name of the drug I gave Lourdes?”
Not that it was a secret, of course. It was standard protocol for treating postpartum hemorrhage. But Riggs had mostly stayed outside the one-room home to give her privacy, so I wasn’t sure how he’d even had a chance to notice… unless he already knew the treatment protocol somehow.
Riggs said nothing, and he said it loudly.
“Have you had some kind of medical training? I know you know how to do vaccinations and first aid, but I figured that was some kind of Army basic training program—”
“Marines,” he corrected like I’d known he would. “And we don’t learn to give vaccines in basic training, no.”
“Okayyyy.” I pulled the word out into three full syllables. “So you have had medical training, then?”
Riggs clammed up once more.
“For God’s sake, Riggs. I’m not asking for your credit card number and sexual history here. I’m just trying to make small talk. I told you all about my family, didn’t I? About Kev and his Horn of Glory obsession? About my grandfather? And you can’t even… Ugh!” I blew out a breath. “Never mind.”
“I’m not here to be your BFF,” Riggs gritted out. “I’m here to protect you.”
“You can be friendly and still protect me!” I curled my abs and sat up straight in the bed. “And Jesus, protect me from what? There’s nothing here to protect me from!”
At that exact moment, as if on cue, a loud banging noise rent the still night air—the sound of the metal security door at the front of the clinic being shaken nearly off its hinges.
“What in the—?” Before I could finish the sentence, Riggs had grabbed my wrist with unerring accuracy despite the darkness, pulled me off the bed onto his pallet, and rolled himself on top of me, all in one smooth movement.
“Shhh,” he whispered, bracing himself over me on his hands and knees.
“Is it the guys from the other day? Are they robbers?” I demanded, not at all shushing. “Are they trying to get at the medical safe? Are they—?”
Riggs put his hand over my mouth. “Shhhh, Duchess. Trying to assess the threat. Be still while I listen,” he breathed in my ear.
He held himself perfectly still for one beat, then another, and I could make out just enough of his face in the shadowed light to see how fiercely he was concentrating.
In that moment, I realized for the first time on a visceral level that he was really, really here to protect me. That if an intruder came through the door, Riggs would step in front of me. That if I’d slid down that ravine, Riggs would have rappelled down and rescued me.
And yeah, he was motivated by his devotion to his job and his desire to please my grandfather, but it didn’t matter. It was a heady notion and a fucking hot one, and despite the danger in the air, I felt myself getting hard… or, more accurately, harder.
I felt around on the floor for anything I could use as a weapon and came up with a little round tin of antibiotic salve that I pressed against Riggs’s hand. “Here, take this. Your aim is probably better than mine. If they storm the room, you can hit them. I trust you, Riggs.”
Riggs exhaled a warm breath of air. I wanted to think he was overcome by my compliment but knew he was more likely stifling laughter because I was an idiot who thought we’d take down robbers by throwing something at them, a la David and Goliath, when he had a gun somewhere around here. His hand closed around the tin anyway.
Thirty seconds later, the metal door clanged again, but this time it was followed by a disembodied female voice singing Selena Gomez’s “Baila Conmigo” at the top of her lungs.
“¡Te quiero, Dr. Carter! Ven aquí! Eres tan sexy!” another woman’s voice slurred, followed by lots of high-pitched laughter that moved off down the street along with the drunken singing.
I did not require a translation app to know what that last word meant or to understand that the “intruder” was a group of village women who’d probably had too much aguardiente.
I stared up at Riggs for half a beat through the shadows, and he stared back, and then I started laughing—a deep belly laugh that felt like it had been trapped inside me for days.
“Hush,” Riggs said softly, his palm still against my lips. “We don’t know if they might—”
I grabbed his wrist in both of mine and yanked it away. “But we do, though!” I crowed. “They’re not here for medicine—they’re here for me. Because the only threat in this village is my sexiness!”
Riggs snorted. “You’re such an idiot.”
“All this time, you’ve only had to protect me from myself!” I said giddily.
Riggs laughed too, a deep rumble that came out of his chest, and I got the feeling that he was mostly laughing at my laughter, but I felt so free, so relieved I didn’t care.
And then he moved, just the slightest bit, and it rubbed his hard, naked chest against my tank top–covered chest in a way that made my nipples go hard. I stopped laughing altogether and sucked in a gasp instead.
We both went quiet, staring at each other in the almost-darkness, eyes wide, and the tension between us spun out and crystallized.
I was painfully hard, and the heat and strength of Riggs was mere inches away, tantalizing me. I tried to compel him with the power of my mind to move, to want this, to make it happen.
And miracle of miracles… it worked.
Slow as a glacier, telegraphing every micro movement of his body like I was a rabbit who might get scared off, he dipped his pelvis to rub against mine.
It was the lightest of touches. The barest friction. But I’d been storing up arousal like gunpowder for days, and that tiny movement was like a lit match.
“Fuck, yes,” I breathed. “More.”
Riggs blinked down at me helplessly. “Carter,” he began—not Duchess, not Dr. Rogers—“I don’t want to hurt you.”
Hurt me? How the hell could he hurt me except by leaving me wanting again? I lifted my hips off the floor to rub my aching shaft against his. “This hurts, Riggs. This hurts.”
“Fuck,” Riggs groaned, and I realized a second later that was the sound of a very controlled man slipping his leash.
In the next moment, his lips were on mine and we were kissing—hard, sucking, biting kisses, like he’d been ravenous for this as long as I had. When his tongue delved into my mouth, I could taste the tangy mint of his toothpaste, which seemed almost unbearably intimate. The grapefruit scent of my own bodywash rising off his sweat-damp skin amped my arousal so high, I could feel the precum soaking my shorts.
He rutted on top of me, the hard ridge of his cock perfectly aligned with mine, and it was glorious.
“You’re… fuck, you’re so hot. Get these off,” he whispered, tugging at the waistband of my shorts. “I want skin.”
“Oh yeah.” I twisted my body to help him yank them down, then stripped off my tank top and threw it somewhere on the bed while he got rid of his own boxers.
“Come back, come back, come back,” I hurried him, beyond caring how desperate that sounded. I felt desperate, because nothing else in the world would satisfy me except having his body laid out over mine.