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“I’m tougher than I look. I’ve taken it this long and I rose to the occasion. You can’t scare me off, Jake. Because I understand. I know the why of it. Don’t get me wrong—you’ll still get in trouble, but I’ll always forgive you.”
He didn’t respond, just watched me with that deep longing on his face.
“You still think it’s a bad idea?”
A nod. And then, “I just don’t know if I care enough to say no.”
Relief and possibility and utter joy lit me up. The door from apart to together opened. All we had to do was step through the threshold.
“Kiss me,” I said. When he didn’t, I added, “It’s inevitable—you said so yourself.”
He looked down at me again, his smile fading into something hotter, something darker. “It’s all I’ve thought about since I kissed you in the hayloft.”
I stepped into him, erasing the space between us. “Another gentle reminder that I kissed you. Which is why it’s your turn.”
Jake caught my chin in his thumb and forefinger, angling for my lips. “I don’t have a clue how much trouble I’m in, do I?”
“None whatsoever, but do it anyway,” I joked.
And with a passing smile, he did.
The last kiss we’d shared was hot and hard, a frantic, fleeting moment. A meteor streaking through the night sky, burning out in the atmosphere.
This kiss was altogether more.
It was a press of lips, both timid and firm, his mouth against mine, both unsure and absolutely certain. I could feel the fight leaving him with every flex and release of his lips, with every sweep of his tongue. I felt the moment he gave up the ghost. It rode a deep inhale through his nose, lived in his tightened grip on the back of my neck. His body curled around me, and he was everywhere—every slide of his hands, every heavy breath another consumption. We were as close as we could get, our bodies flush, mine held in place with his arm snaked around my back.
I stretched up on my toes to thread my arms around his neck, wanting to be level with him where I could appreciate the sweet heat of his mouth. A squeeze closed the circle of my arms, and he took the cue, picking me up by the ass. My legs wound around his waist to lessen the burden, and I held on tight when he blindly turned us, the world spinning before he marched us toward his bedroom with a hand out.
I heard the thump of his foot opening the door, felt gravity shift as he laid me down. He took advantage of the spread of my legs to press his length against me. When his hand trailed down my leg and found my rubber rain boot, he chuckled into my mouth and broke the kiss so he could reach the heel of one. I watched him as he pulled off the first, then the second. He was lit only by the rectangle of glowing light from the threshold. The silhouette of his long body as he reached over his shoulder and pulled off his shirt. The line of his profile, the light kissing the rolling curves of his shoulders, his biceps, the swell of his pecs and square planes and deep valleys of his abs.
The vision was gone when he descended again.
His skin radiated heat through my tank, and every brush of skin-to-skin contact triggered a frantic wave of desire. My legs locked around his hips again, my hands roaming his chest, his waist, the curious mounds of muscle on his back, but my attention was fully engrossed in charting the path his hand made on my body. His fingers on my neck, his thumb along my collarbone, the sweep of my tank over my shoulder so his fingertips could taste the curve without interruption. The graze of my breast when he trailed down my ribs tightened my legs, set a whimper in my throat. At the sound, his hand stopped, backtracked, brushed the curve as I willed him to touch me.
He granted my wish with his palm cupping my breast, testing its shape. Learning the feel of me in his hand. Thumbing the peak with nothing between his skin and mine but a slip of cotton. At the sound of the moan low in my throat, I earned an answering sound and a squeeze that shot a bolt of electricity to the place our hips connected.
And I lost my patience. I’d gone too long without him, without this, to appreciate anything short of naked.
I tugged at the hem of my tank, and he leaned out of the way, watching his hand slide up my torso as my skin was revealed, pausing when my breasts were exposed. I was too busy pulling it off to notice he’d stilled, his eyes drinking in what they found. For a handful of heartbeats, I didn’t move, only watched him watch me. And then I reached for him.
