Page 26 of Waste of Worth

“I’m only asking for a kiss.”

“We both know it’s not going to end at a kiss, Dino.”

Even as he leaned forward, closing the distance between them to catch her smiling lips with his own, he knew she was right.

It wasn’t the first time she had been, and he doubted it would be the last.

All those thoughts drifted away, and his mind quieted, as he felt her lips move against his. Soft and steady, slow and sweet.

It still burned him all over.

Suddenly, he was reminded what it felt like to be alive.

All because of a kiss.

KAREN had been right—entirely so.

One kiss was not enough once Dino had been given it. One kiss turned into two, and then three. Before he knew what had happened, he’d pulled her from the barstool and onto his lap where he could finish his beer while his hand grabbed tightly to her inner thigh under the skirt of her dress.

He thought they’d make their way to her place, maybe.

His was too far away.

A hotel for the night would work just fine, too.

Shit.

They didn’t make it past the parking lot.

Dino fell into the backseat of his car with a chuckle as Karen climbed into his lap and straddled his waist. With the door closed, the windows tinted dark, and the corner of the parking lot hidden in the shadows, he couldn’t find a single reason why not.

That was just fine for him.

The backseat wasn’t very big, and he didn’t have a great deal of room to move. Those reasons made his first few moves hesitant and stilted when he reached for Karen.

Or maybe it was because it’d been a while since he’d been in this situation.

Dino had plenty of opportunities for sex if he wanted it, and on the occasions when he felt the need, he acted on it and that was it. He rarely even asked those women’s names; he went into it with zero expectations, and so did his partner for the night.

Karen was not the same.

Not at all.

She also wasn’t having his hesitance.

“Dino,” Karen said, shifting on his lap in such a way that damn near made him groan. “Don’t think about this too much right now.”

“I can do that.”

He was sure he could.

He could feel the soft cotton between her thighs, warm and thin. Her core grinded down on the hard length of his erection. Her hands found his face, and she made him look at her. She clouded his vision—pretty brown eyes and pouty pink lips. And then in a blink, those lips of hers were on his, moving and melding, parting just enough to let his tongue snake in to find that taste and heat that he’d wondered about earlier.

It was as good as he expected, if not better.

Karen’s thighs tightened just a bit to Dino’s waist, and her fingernails dragged over the scruff on his jaw when she tilted her head back, giving him access to the delicate column of her throat. It was the slight bite of pain from her touch, followed by the happiest, quiet sigh she released, that did it for him.

The small amount of anxiety he’d been feeling drifted away.