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Right now, however, that enigma didn’t feel as untouchable or as off limits as he always had. In fact, there was something about the tension in the silence between us that told me he’d very much like to be touched.

Or, again, maybe that’s just me projecting.

Because after that kiss? Holy hell, I wanted to be touched. By him, of course. I’d managed to keep my body from going up in flames back at the carnival because I’d had to. We’d been with his family. Children had been present, for heaven’s sake. It wasn’t like I could climb him like he was my very own personal playground while his siblings and their families ate their funnel cakes and simply shielded the kids’ eyes.

But now, it was only the two of us, and when my lips parted in disappointment as his hand twitched toward his door, it was like the tight restraint in his shoulders just… broke.

Without a word of warning, Holden took a sudden, lightning-fast step forward, erasing the space between us with just one stride of his long legs. Before I could even begin to comprehend what was about to happen, his large hands came up. One wrapped firmly around the curve of my waist and pulled me flush against the hard planes of his chest while his other slid up the side of my neck.

As he buried his fingers in the loose strands of my hair, he brought his lips down on mine without hesitation, kissing me as deeply and as hard as he had back at the Slaughterhouse. Only this time, there was no actor watching us and no chainsaws roaring in the background. So, it was slightly more romantic.

This kiss wasn’t for show or because someone had told him to do it. It was just for me—for us—and my world tilted on its axis as I leaned into him. Holden’s mouth devoured my own with an urgent kind of hunger I didn’t think I’d ever felt before, and a soft whimper caught at the back of my throat in response.

Men of the world, take note. This is how a girl wants to be kissed.

My knees were already turning to jelly and he’d barely even gotten started. My hands flew up to his chest, my fingers curling into his sweater, and I tilted my head back to give him better access.

He tasted faintly of the sweet, dark cider we’d had at the festival, but underneath that, there was only the pure, all-consuming heat of Holden Thayer. His thumb traced the line of my jaw, and his grip on my waist tightened until I was so close to him that I could feel the vibration of the ragged groan he let out in his chest.

A shiver raced down my spine at the desperation in the sound and my knees finally buckled. But his arm was banded so tight around my waist that I didn’t fall. He must’ve felt me sag against him though, because he moved us back until I was caged between him and the wall, penned in like he could do whatever he wanted to me.

The thought brought a giddy, mindless smile to my lips and Holden paused, breaking the kiss to look down into my eyes. His blue eyes were an almost transparent silver in the moonlight. Tension was etched in his handsome features, but a slight smirk curved his lips.

“Something funny?”

I shook my head, but I couldn’t wipe away the smile just yet. “I’ve never been pressed up against a wall before, is all. I’ve never been pressed up against anything, actually, but I’ve always wanted to be. It’s just, uh, it always looks so hot, you know? In the movies?”

His eyebrows swept up a fraction of an inch as he stared back at me, blinking a few times until the slight smirk became a full-blown, completely too confident grin. “Oh, it looks hot, does it? Let’s see what we can do to make the fantasy come true for you, then.”

Without another word, his lips crashed back into mine, but this time, the full weight of him followed. He pressed his body flush against mine until I could feel the solid, hard heat of him everywhere. Dwarfing me with his tall frame, it felt like he was completely consuming me now, like the entire world had been reduced to nothing but Holden, his body enveloping mine, the taste of him in my mouth, and the sounds of his deep moans in my ears.

Meanwhile, his mouth moved against mine in a practiced, devastating rhythm that made my head spin. It suddenly felt like he was trying to strip away all the noise surrounding our arrangement and all the defenses we’d built around ourselves to leave us as nothing but two people and the raw desire we felt for each other.

When he slid one big thigh between my own, tingles of pleasure shot through me. My entire body turned to liquid heat. It spread from the very core of my being to the tips of my fingers and toes, leaving my nerve endings buzzing with need.

I felt him against me, the hard bulge behind the fly of his jeans pressed up against my lower belly, and I moaned wantonly. Suddenly feeling so bold that it was like he’d stripped away my inhibitions too, I ground against his thigh to relieve the ache building between my legs, but he broke the kiss again, his sharp intake of breath loud in the quiet hallway.

His chest was heaving, his lips parted and shiny in the moonlight. “We shouldn’t let this go any further tonight, Alicia.”

“Why?” I whispered, not even trying to find my voice as I panted in the aftermath of what had been the most spectacular kiss of my entire life. “We’re married, Holden.”

“Yeah, but if we keep going, I’m going to lose control,” he murmured. His eyes slid shut as he dragged in a deep breath and eased his weight off me, but he still didn’t take a step back or put any real space between us. “Right now, you might be tempted to say it doesn’t matter or that it’s okay if that happens, but it’s like you said, we are married. We have time. I don’t want to fuck it up by falling into bed together.”

I stared up at him, beyond surprised that he cared about the possibility of fucking things up and even more surprised that he’d told me so point blank, but he wasn’t wrong. Things were complicated enough right now. We probably didn’t need to add intimacy to the mix when we were only just managing to get through civil conversations with one another.

“Alright,” I murmured, sliding one of my hands up to his face and cupping his jaw gently in my palm. “As long as you tell me one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“Do you want to?”

His eyes widened. Then he scoffed and dropped a chaste kiss on my forehead before finally taking a big step back. “More than anything. That’s the problem.”

Without another word, he strode the short distance down the hall to Dad’s old office and disappeared inside, the door clicking shut behind him. My entire body was still trembling, but when I was sure my knees were going to hold me up, I finally pushed away from the wall and stumbled into my own bedroom.

My skin was still tingling with the memories of having him pressed against me, but I wasn’t sure if I wanted to laugh, cry, or bang my head against the wall for how stupid that had been. There was this fluttery sensation in my chest and I felt all warm when I thought about how earnest he’d sounded when he’d said he didn’t want to fuck things up.

Part of my brain was already building castles in the sky about the fairytale life we could have together if he felt the same way I did. The more logical part of me kept blaring warnings about the fact that this was, in a very real way, still a business arrangement. For a few long minutes, I just stood there, trying to catch my breath, but then I finally started moving through the motions of my nightly routine on autopilot, changing into a pair of flannel pajamas before drifting into my small adjoining bathroom.