In the hallway, he paused, trying to locate his landlady. There was a faint light under her door, but not Teddy’s. The kid cried again, a fretful, middle-of-the-night whimper. Without weighing the consequences, Leo knocked.
Seconds later, the door opened a crack. Phoebe peered out at him, her expression indiscernible in the gloom. “What’s wrong? What do you want?”
Her stage whisper was comical given the fact that Teddy was clearly awake.
“You need some backup?”
“I’m fine.” She started to close the door, but he stuck his foot in the gap, remembering at the last instant that he wasn’t wearing shoes.
She pushed harder than he anticipated, and his socks were less protection than he expected. Pain shot up his leg. He groaned, jerking backward and nearly falling on his ass. Hopping on one foot, he pounded his fist against the wall to keep from letting loose with a string of words definitely not rated for kid ears.
Now Phoebe flung the door open wide, her face etched in dismay. “Are you hurt? Oh, heavens, of course you are. Here,” she said. “Hold him while I get ice.”
Without warning, his arms were full of a squirmy little body that smelled of spit-up and Phoebe’s light floral scent. “But I...” He followed her down the hall, wincing at every step, even as Teddy’s grumbles grew louder.
By the time he made it to the living room, Phoebe had turned on a couple of lamps and filled a dish towel with ice cubes. Her fingers curled around his biceps. “Give me the baby and sit down,” she said, sounding frazzled and irritated, and anything but amorous. She pushed him toward the sofa. “Put your leg on the couch and let me see if you broke anything.”
Teddy objected to the jostling and cried in earnest. Leo lost his balance and flopped down onto the sofa so hard that the baby’s head and Leo’s chin made contact with jarring force.
“Damn it to hell.” He lay back, half-dazed, as Phoebe plucked Teddy from his arms and sat at the opposite end of the sofa. Before he could object, she had his leg in her lap and was peeling off his sock.
When slim, cool fingers closed around the bare arch of his foot, Leo groaned again. This time for a far different reason. Having Phoebe stroke his skin was damned arousing, even if he was in pain. Her thumb pressed gently, moving from side to side to assess the damage.
Leo hissed, a sharp involuntary inhalation. Phoebe winced. “Sorry. Am I hurting you too badly?”
She glanced sideways and her eyes grew big. His robe had opened when he lost his balance. Most of his chest was bare, and it was impossible to miss the erection that tented his sleep pants. He actually saw the muscles in her throat ripple as she swallowed.
“It feels good,” he muttered. “Don’t stop.”
But Teddy shrieked in earnest now, almost inconsolable.
Phoebe dropped Leo’s foot like it was a live grenade, scooting out from under his leg and standing. “Put the ice on it,” she said, sounding breathless and embarrassed. “I’ll be back.”
* * *
Phoebe sank into the rocker in Teddy’s room, her whole body trembling with awareness. The baby curled into her shoulder as she rubbed his back and sang to him quietly. He wasn’t hungry. She had given him a bottle barely an hour ago. His only problem now was that his mouth hurt. She’d felt the tiny sharp edge of a tooth on his bottom gum and knew it was giving him fits. “Poor darling,” she murmured. Reaching for the numbing drops, she rubbed a small amount on his sore mouth.
Teddy sucked her fingertip, snuffled and squirmed, then gradually subsided into sleep. She rocked him an extra five minutes just to make sure. When he was finally out, she laid him in his crib and tiptoed out of the room.
Her bed called out to her. She was weaving on her feet, wrapped in a thick blanket of exhaustion. But she had told Leo she would come back. And in truth, nothing but cowardice could keep her from fulfilling that promise.
When she returned to the living room, it was filled with shadows, only a single lamp burning, though Leo had started another fire in the grate that gave off some illumination. He was watching television, but he switched it off as soon as she appeared. She hovered in the doorway, abashed by the sexual currents drawing her to this enigma of a man. “How’s the foot?”
“See for yourself.”
It was a dare, and she recognized it as such. Her legs carried her forward, even as her brain shouted, Stop. Stop. She wasn’t so foolish this time as to sit down on the sofa. Instead, she knelt and removed the makeshift ice pack, setting it aside on a glass dish. Leo’s foot was bruising already. A thin red line marked where the sharp corner of the door had scraped him.
“How does it feel?” she asked quietly.
Leo sat up, wincing, as he pulled his thick wool sock into place over his foot and ankle. “I’ll live.”
When he leaned forward with his forearms resting on his knees, he was face-to-face with her. “Unless you have an objection,” he said, “I’m going to kiss you now.” A lock of hair fell over his forehead. His voice was husky and low, sending shivers down her spine. The hour was late, that crazy time when dawn was far away and the night spun on, seemingly forever.
She licked her lips, feeling her nipples furl tightly, even as everything else in her body loosened with the warm flow of honey. “No objections,” she whispered, wondering if he had woven some kind of spell over her while she was sleeping.
Slowly, gently, perhaps giving her time to resist, he cupped her cheeks with his hands, sliding his fingers into her hair and massaging her scalp. His thumbs ran along her jawline, pausing when he reached the little indentation beneath her ear.
“God, you’re beautiful,” he groaned, resting his forehead against hers. She could feel the heat radiating from his bare chest. All on their own, her hands came up to touch him, to flatten over his rib cage, to explore miles of warm, smooth skin. Well-defined pectoral muscles gave way to a thin line of hair that led to a flat belly corded with more muscles.
She felt drunk with pleasure. So long...it had been so long. And though she had encountered opportunities to be intimate with men during the past three years, none of them had been as tempting as Leo Cavallo. “What are we doing?” she asked raggedly, almost beyond the point of reason.
He gathered handfuls of her hair and played with it, pulling her closer. “Getting to know each other,” he whispered. His mouth settled over hers, lips firm and confident. She opened to him, greedy for more of the hot pleasure that built at the base of her abdomen and made her shift restlessly.
When his tongue moved lazily between her lips, she met it with hers, learning the taste of him as she had wanted to so badly, experimenting with the little motions that made him shudder and groan. He held her head tightly now, dragging her to him, forcing her neck to arch so he could deepen the kiss. He tasted of toothpaste and determination.
Her hands clung to his wrists. “You’re good at this,” she panted. “A little too good.”
“It’s you,” he whispered. “It’s you.” He moved down beside her so that they were chest to chest. “Tell me to stop, Phoebe.” Wildly he kissed her, his hands roving over her back and hips. They were so close, his erection pressed into her belly.
She was wearing her usual knit pajamas, nothing sexy about them. But when his big hands trespassed beneath the elastic waistband and cupped her butt, she felt like a desirable woman. It had been so long since a man had touched her. And this wasn’t just any man.
It was Leo. Big, brawny Leo, who looked as if he could move mountains for a woman, and yet paradoxically touched her so gently she wanted to melt into him and never leave his embrace. “Make love to me, Leo. Please. I need you so much....”
He dragged her to her feet and drew her closer