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BREE
Iwas struck by lightning and felt entirely made of water.
Electrocuted. That was the word.
My body tried to surge upright but his splayed hand on my thigh held me firmly in place.
The heat of his kiss, the feel of his touch on my face… his respect and care for me. The mere idea of him wanting permission to touch me made me feel almost treasured in a way I’d never experienced.
But the greatest gift he had given me—besides the feel of his full, warm lips on mine—was clarity.
I wanted him. I wanted this.
And that reality was so much more alarming than what had before this moment only been a vague possibility.
I’d thought I wanted someone and something before, too recently for comfort. And even though it hadn’t been even remotely the same as this electricity, I’d still been burned.
I’m not sure if it was luck or the day’s greatest misfortune that Vinh pulled away before I could decide between deepening the kiss further and all-out fleeing. My body strained slightly forward, chasing his breath as if it were the only thing that could sustain me.
Which was enough of an answer of my wants. My brain was a few steps behind my body today, but at least they kept reaching the same conclusion.
I opened my eyes, not remembering when they had closed but thankful for it. No one wanted to break their first kiss with someone and find them staring wide-eyed like a psychopath. My fingers dug into his hard chest, another movement I hadn’t consciously authorized. The fabric of his shirt was bunched in my hands enough to reveal a sliver of skin above his jeans, and I allowed myself a quick glimpse of the sparse dark hair and surrounding smooth skin.
There was no way this man was meant to be mine.
The pulse in my ears thundered louder, and I took two deep, shuddering breaths to try to dispel the ugly thought. My gaze remained on my hands as I tried to force them to relax, willing my racing heart and mind to do the same.
It wasn’t working.
Vinh’s hand fell from my face and came to rest over one of mine, squeezing gently. I wasn’t sure if looking at him would have the same calming effects as it had before or if looking at the man who had given me the best kiss of my life would just ratchet my pulse up to heart-attack-level palpitations.
In the end, I risked it and was well rewarded when Vinh returned my flushed smile with one I’d never seen before. His eyes twinkled as he spoke, his voice like gravel. “I think your thoughts might’ve been too loud for you to hear me, Bree. So let me try again.”
And then I was lifted up and off the stool.
Vinh banded his forearm across my lower back and pressed me against his hard chest, my toes grazing the wood of the patio as I was partially suspended in the air. He smirked down at me, his fingers flexing lightly over the top of my ass. “I’ll try to be louder this time. Yes?”
I barely understood his meaning, but it didn’t matter because there was only one response sounding through my mind, but my words had vanished.
I nodded instead.
His coffee-brown eyes grew even darker as his pupils expanded, and then his lips were on mine again. His other arm went around my ass and hoisted me even closer as I ran both of my hands through his glorious, messy hair. Our mutual groans were so loud that I imagined the force of the sounds causing a ripple across the surface of the bay. Emboldened by his desire and wanting my own to be clear, I swept my tongue out in a brief, tentative question that was answered immediately by his own.
If our first kiss was an electrocution, this one was an escalating, brutal, precise, blissful lesson in torture.
We eventually had to break apart for air, or at least that’s what I did as Vinh trailed a series of kisses from the corner of my mouth to my ear and back. When he reached my mouth again, he locked his gaze with mine as he slowly, deliberately, snagged my bottom lip and sucked on it with the slightest pressure. Every bit of tension that I’d ever held in my body in my twenty-two years of existence melted through the patio floorboards.
I went limp in his arms, having truly given him my all, and he smiled warmly at me as he carefully put me back where he found me—right on the bar stool. His hands slid out from under me and blazed a path along the sides of my thighs and down my calves, leaving the nuclear equivalent of tingling in their wake.
He took a knee and positioned each of my feet to rest on the stool’s footrest, giving the task more time and care than was warranted, his back rising and falling with shuddering breaths as he worked. When he finished situating me, he clasped the back of one calf and stroked lightly before resting his forehead against my knee, making me wonder if he was feeling tortured too.
“Oh God, what did you already do that requires this level of groveling?”
My gaze snapped up as Liem sat a tray of food down on a high top by the door and bustled over to us. The only sign Vinh had heard his brother was the slight stiffening of his muscles and an exhaled breath that warmed my skin. He’d apparently decided playing dead was the best strategy.
“Oh! Are we pledging fealty? I don’t have a weapon for the occasion, but I—oh!” Liem ran back to his tray and came back with a packet of napkin-rolled silverware. And then to my horror but not surprise, he took a knee beside Vinh and held the utensils up to me in offering. With both hands.
Vinh knocked his head against my knee three times in rapid succession.
