St Matthew's Passion - By Sam Archer Page 0,18

breasts, their slopes pushed forward by the dress and shadowed in between. Still lower, he took in her tight waist and the slowly swinging curves of her hips, down her long slender legs to the narrow ankles and feet.

Almost imperceptibly she advanced towards him, not walking so much as gliding. As she drew nearer he became aware of tiny pinprick beads of perspiration in the dip between her breasts. Mesmerised, he reached out a hand to run a finger across the moisture, but found that even though she was close enough to touch he somehow couldn’t quite reach her.

She smiled, showing beautiful even white teeth, her red tongue playing behind the upper row, teasing.

I want you, her voice breathed as if from far away.

Fin twisted awake with a cry. For a moment he heard a thumping in the stillness of his bedroom, before realising it was his heart trying to break free from his chest. His breathing came hoarse and guttural. The sweat was slick on his face and his bare chest and he noticed his fists were gripping sodden wads of sheet.

Lower down, under the bedclothes, he was painfully aroused.

He lay for a few minutes, swallowing to try to lubricate his dry mouth and throat, willing his pulse and breathing to slow down. Once his vital signs were back to normal, he realised he wasn’t going to go back to sleep any time soon, not under these circumstances. He swung his legs out of the bed and padded naked to the bathroom.

In the shower, Fin set the water to a few degrees above unbearably cold and turned the power up high. He grimaced as the stinging needles scoured the sweat from his body.

It had been so close. The tipping point had been reached, and although he could understand the reason for Melissa’s hesitation, Fin was certain she would have asked him up to her flat. He’d had to break the moment by saying goodnight and taking his leave, because he wouldn’t have been able to bear the look in her eyes if he’d turned her down, not just the immediate look but the hurt and shame that would linger there for the rest of her time working with him.

Fin knew, however, that that was only part of the reason he’d spoken before she could. If he was honest with himself, he was more afraid of what would have happened if he’d found himself saying yes to her.

He towelled himself dry; then, seeing it was already five-thirty in the morning, he decided he might as well stay up. He took particular care with shaving, concentrating on the quotidian task as if it were an especially complicated surgical procedure, in an attempt to focus his thoughts on something else. Just when he thought he’d got a grip, he peered at his face in the wall mirror and, unbidden, an image came to mind of Melissa stepping wet and nude from the shower behind him, her hair plastered darkly to her shoulders, her body completely exposed to his gaze...

Oh, for crying out loud, Fin, he thought, and went to grab a tracksuit and training shoes, deciding on a punishing ten-mile run in the cold.

***

It was an especially nasty injury. The man had fallen against the sharp spike of a railing and his bowel had been perforated. Once the mess in his abdominal cavity had been cleared up, he’d need part of his bowel resecting and a colostomy to be created. It would in all likelihood be reversible, but the man had several months of unpleasantness ahead of him.

Melissa was by now, more than three months into the job, confident and experienced enough to handle this kind of procedure herself, and she took charge as the lead surgeon on the operation with smooth ease. She’d returned from her long weekend at her parents’ with renewed energy, not least because she’d had a chance to see her brother again. Since her return she and Fin had been getting along better than ever, an easy camaraderie having developed between them which made her feel if nowhere near his equal, then at least less like his junior colleague, which of course she still was.

Neither of them had mentioned a word about the night he’d given her a lift home. She’d woken the next morning feeling frustrated as hell, yet strangely delighted at the same time. No, nothing had happened, and yes, he’d been the one to say goodnight. But far from feeling rejected, she felt validated