CHAPTER
ONE
New Year’s Eve was a night for bad decisions.
Kissing her best friend in the hallway outside Dean and Jacs’ apartment was certainly at the top of the list. Madison would kick herself later. Right now, she was way too occupied with Kyle’s mouth.
Give the man a Michelin star for kissing.
His large hands gripped her with unbridled intensity, and she couldn’t suck in enough oxygen. Her breathlessness was probably also a result of rushing out of the apartment to find him, worried he’d ducked out of their friends’ New Year’s party early because of her. The possibility of him spending the last moments of the year alone had been unthinkable.
But she’d only made it a couple of steps before banging directly into him.
She’d barely had a second to process his presence or the bottle of champagne he was carrying before he’d pulled her into the hallway, his body an inferno against hers.
There’d been a choice—a moment when she could have pulled away—but instead, she’d finally leaned in to the feelings that had been growing between them for months. She’d fallen into his arms.
Her heart was going crazy, but it was hard to care with his mouth pressed against hers.
God, was the door to the apartment still open? She couldn’t make herself crane her head to look, so she reached back with her hand until she touched the door. Whew! They didn’t need their roommates finding them all tangled up with each other.
Her fingers tangled in Kyle’s thick ash brown hair as his gorgeous mouth redefined every kiss she’d ever had. Their hearts pumped in time with the maelstrom of feeling swirling between them. She should have known it would be this good.
This man.
Dear God, she didn’t write poetry like her friend Sawyer did, but if anything could inspire insanity, it was Kyle’s lips.
Kyle’s…well, everything.
She barely trusted anyone, even herself. But she did trust him. He’d earned it by always having her back. By listening to her dreams and making them a reality—all with a mixture of laughter and repressed heat.
And after so much waiting, so many months of denying herself, here they were, devouring each other. The skies could have started raining asteroids…the end of the world could have been upon them…and still nothing could drag her away.
She spurted out a laugh when her back hit the apartment wall along with the bottle in his hand, the kind of joyful unchoreographed move rampant lust and longing wreaked on usually reasonable people.
Again, ask her if she cared.
That sudden crash jolted Kyle though, who broke the lush contact with her tingling mouth and drew the bottle out from behind her before setting it down on the hardwood floor. She gaped at him.Was he stopping?Please, baby Jesus in the manger, say he wasn’t backing away. Then he was stepping closer again. His hands slid slowly around herwaist, giving soothing strokes to her back. She fought a whimper.
His breath was ragged and hot against her lips as he struggled for control. “Sorry, Mad.”
Oh no! Not that word. Apologies meant regret had landed, and she’d hoped for a little more time to enjoy this insanity.
“You okay?” he rasped out harshly. “I forgot I was holding the champagne. I didn’t hurt you, did I?”
A snort caught in her throat.Was she okay?At the moment she was cradling the most perfect human being ever created in male form. She was a freaking goddess, happy to be singed for the rest of her eternal life by this man and their white-hot attraction.
She tugged on his nape, holding his hard body in place as he shifted with a gentlemanly concern that made any remaining walls of resistance crash to the ground. Dammit, he was so decent. Kyle Taylor might have been the prom king, the high school quarterback, and the most popular person in any circle, but he was a nice guy at heart. If she didn’t know better, she’d think he was a freaking urban legend.
“Don’t you dare apologize,” she playfully hissed, tugging at his hair, “and don’t you dare stop.”
Since the bad decision had already been made, she figured they might as well make it count. His hands were soothing away the tension that had been building between them since August, soon after they’d returned to Paris to help Nanine relaunch her storied restaurant and recover from her heart attack. Kyle’s money-grubbing ex had shown up at the restaurant, trying to sucker him back in, and Madison had planted a spontaneouslet me help my friend outkiss on him. The woman had backed off, all right, but that kiss, which was supposed to be simple, had changed everything.
Because he really could win a Michelin star for kissing if the culinary gods created the category. He brought it all. Passion. Technique. Execution. All flawlessly delivered.
That stolen moment had hung over them for months, and now, finally, they’d repeated it with the kind of gusto a starving man had for a good meal. The rocket fuel behind these kisses was their tightknit bond. She and Kyle had always been close, implausibly close, ever since they’d spent the summer in Paris ten years ago. But the past few months had forged them even closer together.
His wicked mouth finally curved, and his heated eyes flickered with amusement. Sexy. She had the weirdest desire to purr. Her. Madison Garcia, who carried pepper spray and kept her kitchen cleaver sharpened because a girl never knew when she might need backup.
