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“I don’t understand you. How can you be so sweet one minute and so remote the next?”
When he looked at her, his eyes were dark and intense.
Penny froze, every nerve in her body on high alert. “What is it? What’s wrong?” His expression shifted like he was deliberating something. “You can talk to me.”
He let out a deep breath and moved closer, lifting a hesitant hand to her face. She opened her mouth in surprise as his fingertips caressed her cheek. His eyes drilled into hers. Hypnotizing flecks of gold danced in the depths of his irises. His eyelashes lowered as his fingers slid into her hair. He tilted her head back.
“Penelope.”
The sound of her name on his lips sent an electric ripple through her body. She felt faint. Oxygen was a distant memory.
He let out a rough breath and pressed his mouth against hers.
Penny’s brain short-circuited. Hottie Barista was kissing her. Kissing! Her!
Fortunately, she didn’t need her brain for this. As his lips moved over hers, her body reacted instinctively. Her fingers curled into his arms and her mouth opened, angling against his. Lapping him up.
What had started out slow and careful quickly intensified into something much deeper. Hungrier. Teeth grazed her lips and she shuddered a sigh.
Caleb pulled back, his eyes searching her face like he was asking for forgiveness—or permission.
She answered by pulling his mouth to hers again with a hand curled around the back of his neck. His body pressed against hers, warming her from tip to toe. They were both panting and breathless. Gulping for air as their mouths melted together. She was dimly aware that he’d backed her up against the wall. That they were in the stairwell of a hospital that smelled like antiseptic. That someone could walk in on them any second.
She didn’t care. All she cared about was the feeling of his lips on hers. The hardness of his body. The heat building inside her.
Her fingernails scraped over his scalp and he made a huffing sound into her mouth. She kissed him harder, rising up on her toes. His hands clutched her hips, his fingers digging into her flesh.
A door slammed overhead and they jolted apart. They stared at each other, frozen, as footsteps echoed down toward them. There was a creak of a door being pulled open. Another slam. Silence.
Caleb’s face was flushed, his expression grave. Penny reached up to touch his cheek.
His long eyelashes fluttered closed. He caught her hand. Moved it off his face. “I should go.”
He started down the stairs without a backward glance. She wanted to go after him, but her legs were so wobbly she wasn’t convinced she could manage stairs. She was shaking. In shock. Her mouth opened but all that came out was a ragged gasp. She couldn’t even make herself call out after him.
Her chest heaved as she listened to his footsteps pounding away from her. All the way down, three flights of stairs to the ground floor. He must be sprinting. A door finally slammed at the bottom, and Penny was alone in the stairwell.
What just happened?
The cold cinderblock wall behind her started to seep into her bones, jerking her back to reality like a splash of ice water. Shivering inside Caleb’s hoodie, she pushed herself upright and ran a hand through her bedraggled hair, smoothing it back down where his fingers had been only moments ago.
His nearness had intensified his scent on the hoodie. She felt like she was drowning in it.
She wanted to drown in it even more.
Why did he kiss me?
More importantly: How can I get him to do it again?
Chapter Nine
Penny went back to the waiting room in a daze and made both her and Caleb’s goodbyes to Mike. As she rode downstairs in the elevator, her mind replayed the kiss with Caleb on an infinity loop.
That was…wow. Caleb had kissed her.
And it had been hot. Super hot.
Except then he’d just…left? Which sucked.
