Page 180 of The Best Shot

“You worried?”

“Making sure you remember the rules.”

“I remember.”

I crossed the floor slowly, his attention following every shift of the boards beneath my feet. When I reached the couch, I ran one finger along the leather behind his neck without touching him. His shoulders tightened anyway, as if I had.

I moved away.

His fingers sank deeper into the couch.

I kissed the corner of his jaw, then disappeared. His head followed me a fraction too late.

I smiled. Maybe I did know what to do with him.

The blindfold changed things.

Without his eyes on me, without that steady look that always made me feel as if he knew what I wanted before I did, I could study him without being studied back.

The hard line of his jaw.

The pulse moving in his throat.

The controlled rise and fall of his chest.

The way his stomach drew in when I dragged one fingernail down the center of it.

I stopped above the waistline of his jeans. He waited. I lifted my hand away, and he let out a slow breath through his nose.

I rested my palm flat over his stomach, and he jumped beneath my hand. I left it there, feeling the heat of him, the effort in every measured breath as he forced himself not to lean into the touch.

Then I took it away.

His grip tightened until the leather complained. That was better than any sound he made with his mouth.

“Mean,” he said.

“You volunteered.”

“Not complaining.”

I climbed onto his lap, and the muscles in his thighs went rigid beneath me. His hands stayed spread along the back of the couch, but his head came up immediately, face turning toward mine like the blindfold was only a technicality.

“Enjoying yourself?” he murmured.

“Very much,” I whispered, then kissed him.

He let me. Let me set the pressure, the angle, the pace. Let me feel the restraint in him like heat under skin.

He kissed me back the way he did everything, thoroughly and with no evidence of hurry. There was not a single crack in that control.

So I made one.

I pulled away.

He followed without thinking, caught himself halfway, and stopped.

His breath broke.