Before I have time to obsess, someone clinks a spoon on a glass. “Okay, folks! Who’s ready to see the happy couple?”
Cheers go up. Phones appear. Clay’s hand locks at my lower back, steering me to the little stage. I curse him silently for the way his hand spreads wide and hot and possessive like that.
We step up.
Lights. People. Heat.
I paste on my big holiday grin.
Clay stands straight, broad, totally calm. He looks like not a single thing on earth can rattle him. Like a kiss is nothing.
My chest isallrattle.
“Let’s give them a sweet one!” Mrs. Pruitt trills. “For the scrapbook!”
I really hate that she said scrapbook.
I tilt up my face.
Clay turns to me.
His hand rises—slow, big, calloused—cupping my jaw like I’m something fragile. His thumb slides just under my ear. I swear to God my knees go soft on the spot.
“Relax,” he murmurs, just for me.
“Trying.”
“You’re shaking.”
“You’re hot.”
His eyes flash. “Ember.”
“Clay.”
He leans in.
I brace.
He doesn’t press a quick peck to my mouth.
No.
He kisses me like we’re not in a room full of our neighbors and his fire chief and the judge’s wife and literally the reporter who started this whole mess.
He kisses me like we’re alone.
Slow at first. Deliberate. His mouth covers mine, warm and firm, a test and a promise and a warning at once. I inhale him—pine, smoke, winter, him—and I swear I melt inside my own coat.
My fingers hook in his flannel without permission.
His lips angle, deepening, tongue teasing the seam of mine like he could take this further, like we both know what’s on the other side of pretend. A pulse of heat surges through me—low, hot, need.
I open.
He takes.
His tongue strokes mine once, heavy and sure and filthy good. My head spins. I cling to him because my center of gravity just movedintohim.
