Free Hidden Heat by Amy Valenti Page B

stared at the table top as I tried to formulate a coherent response. “I’ve been more…ummm…”
    “Adventurous? Confident? Wanting to try things you’ve never had any interest in before?”
    “All of the above.” Grateful that she hadn’t made me say it, I fidgeted. “Is that bad?”
    Beth sealed away samples in her medical bag and tucked them out of sight, then looked up at me with a slight smile. “Not by itself. In fact, it sounds rather fun. But it is a symptom.”
    “Yay,” I muttered, and she reached out to take my hand. Surprised, I stared at her.
    “Holly. I’d like to get Scott in here for a few minutes and then take some more blood. Do you feel safe enough to try that?”
    Part of me felt like doing a happy dance at the thought of seeing Scott. Part of me was terrified my condition would worsen. “If it will help.”
    Beth squeezed my hand, then let go. “Any extra information we can get is good, right?”
    At my nod, she stood up and left the room. I wandered over to the kitchen window, nudging the blinds aside a little to check on the weather. It was still raining—more heavily now, as if the clouds sympathised with my plight.
    “Hey.”
    My pulse skipped at the sound of Scott’s voice, and I turned to watch him shut the door behind him. I leaned against the kitchen counter, unsure what to do for the best. “Hi.”
    His smile was a little crooked, but genuine. “Beth said not to hold back. She also said we shouldn’t have sex on the kitchen table. Anything in between those two extremes is fine.”
    Now that he’d said it, all I wanted was to have sex on the kitchen table. “How about sex up against the wall? Or on the kitchen counters?”
    His soft laughter sent a delicious tingle through my pussy. “No sex. But come here anyway.”
    He didn’t need to ask a second time. I crossed the room and pulled him into a kiss, and he returned it without restraint. I slipped my fingers up under his shirt, caressing his abs teasingly, then tried to work my hand into his pants. He grabbed my wrist before I could, breaking the kiss to tell me breathlessly, “You know what that’d lead to. Beth would kill us.”
    “At least we’d die happy…” I rested my head on his shoulder and my hand over his heart, smiling at the feel of it pounding against my palm.
    “Just let Beth do her thing, then we can do ours. Okay?”
    With a slight pout, I looked up at him. “So what do we have permission to do?”
    Scott kissed the pout away in response, and I tried not to do anything that would send either of us out of control. It was trickier than I’d have thought, since I was already on the brink of sexual insanity, but I put my arms around his neck and tried not to wriggle against him too much.
    Inevitably, though, he started to get hard, and with a groan of frustration I stepped back, trying to calm down. “Damn it, how long does Beth want us to not do this?”
    A knock at the door gave us our answer. Scott sat down at the table to hide his hard-on and I opened the door to admit an amused-looking Beth. “I take it from the scowl on your face that you don’t approve of my restrictions.”
    I felt bad for being angry with her—she was trying to help me, after all. “Sorry. It’s just hard.”
    In more ways than one.
    “Quite,” Beth said dryly, with a knowing look at Scott.
    “Screw you, Beth,” he said, his tone more relaxed than his words.
    Beth pulled out her tourniquet and syringe and tore into a fresh needle package. “Let’s get this blood, then.”
    I held still while she tightened the tourniquet, then winced as the needle pierced my flesh. I’d grown accustomed to being stuck with needles during my suppression procedures, but it seemed to hurt a little more this time. Was it a blood pressure thing?
    Once Beth had finished and I was applying pressure to the wound while the bleeding stopped, Scott asked, “What are you hoping to find?”
    “I don’t know, exactly. It’s just a