Page 102 of The SEAL and the Sheriff

He kissed her as his hand moved. Her mouth, her jaw, the place below her ear where her pulse hammered against his lips. She kissed him back in fragments, kisses that broke apart when his fingers discovered the angle that made her breath stall, then found it again, until she stopped trying to kiss him at all because she couldn’t hold on to both.

A whimper caught low in her throat. So small it was barely there.

Every muscle in his body locked against the instinct to take more, push harder, hear it again.

Hudson lifted his head. Sarah looked right at him, hiding nothing.

For a long moment she held his gaze and let him see everything, her lips parted, color high across her cheeks. The intimacy of it almost destroyed him.

Her hand gripped his forearm. Her nails bit into the muscle and he didn’t care. He’d have let her draw blood if that was what she needed. Because she was still looking at him.

“Hudson—”

She tensed beneath him, her thighs closing around his hand, her fingers digging harder into his arm.

He pressed his forehead to her damp temple. “Sarah.”

Her body drew tight and then let go, the release starting deep and rolling through her in waves. He felt each one against his hand and his chest, his mouth pressed to her temple. Slowly, he gentled his touch without pulling away.

Her breathing returned in stages. Hudson stayed where he was. He would stay here forever if she’d let him.

Her fingers found his cheek and drew him back until he was looking at her. She kept reaching for him. And every time she did, the old certainty that he’d lost her forever loosened its grip a little more.

He turned his face into her palm and closed his eyes. He breathed in, and the breath was easy. He hadn’t had to fight for it.

Peace had always felt temporary.

With Sarah, for the first time, he wanted to stay and trust it.

41

Sarah lay still, her body slowly returning to her in pieces—the pulse still thudding between her thighs, the heat of his hand where it rested on her, the damp sheen of sweat cooling across her stomach.

His forehead rested against her temple.

She ran her tongue over her dry lower lip. “I’m thirsty.”

Hudson was out of the bed before she said anything more, the soft pad of his bare feet crossing the carpet. Water ran briefly in the bathroom. The quiet clink of glass.

Sarah rolled onto her side.

Hudson walked back carrying a glass of water, wearing nothing but his boxers and the low lamplight.

She drank him in. The broad line of his shoulders. The lean planes of his stomach, muscle shifting beneath skin. A scar zigzagged low along his left side, pale and neat as a signature.

His hair was wrecked, but his mouth was relaxed. She’d never seen him look like this. And the sight of him sent a slow pull of need through her all over again.

She took a long drink and handed it back. He set it on the nightstand and caught her staring. “What?”

Sarah pulled the sheet an inch higher, as though that might disguise the fact she’d been appreciating him.

“Nothing. Just appreciating the room service.”

His mouth curved as he climbed back into bed. The mattress dipped beneath his weight, and Sarah let herself move into the warmth of him.

Gravity, she told herself. The lie lasted less than a second.

She turned to him, her palm finding his chest. Warm skin. The steady percussion of his heart beneath her hand, still too fast, not quite recovered from what he’d just done to her.