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Fuck. I hadn’t been touched like this in a long time. Too long.
To an outside observer, it may seem like nothing. Just a small, barely there touch. But the feel of Merrick’s fingers brushing against my jaw was one of the most arousing things I’d ever experienced.
Vaguely, I remembered that he’d said my name, and it had sounded like he planned to follow it up with something. We’d both gotten distracted as soon as our bodies had come into contact.
Leaning into his touch a little, I licked my lips. “Yeah?”
The light in his eyes gleamed brighter, as if the flame was no longer being reflected from the outside, but was burning on the inside. As if he was burning for me.
“I had never met anyone like you,” he said softly, his hand sliding down to grip my chin gently. “I almost didn’t go to the fight that night. It didn’t seem like my kind of thing, and I was tempted to just blow it off and let my friends go without me. But I’m so glad I was there. As soon as I saw you, I knew.”
My heart seemed to beat slower and faster at the same time as I leaned closer to him.
“Knew what?”
“That you would change my life.”
The look in his eyes was so intense, the emotions radiating from him so raw and powerful, that a twinge of fear, of the old Aria, rose to the surface.
“Yeah, for the worse.” I huffed a soft laugh, wrenching my gaze away from his as I moved to pull away.
But this time, he didn’t let me. He moved with me, and before I could reassemble all my shields and walls, he leaned in and kissed me.
My body stiffened for a half-second, and then my lips pressed against his, my body responding to his kiss like it’d been waiting for this moment ever since the last time all those months ago.
Our mouths moved together, rediscovering each other, and Merrick didn’t even pull away to speak again, whispering his words against my lips instead.
“For the better, Ari. Always for the better.”
Godsdammit. How did he always know what to say?
I pressed my lips to his again, stopping him from saying any more words that would crack my heart open even as I poured everything I was feeling into our kiss.
It was both heated and tender at the same time, and it made me feel like I was spinning, whirling through space—or maybe it was the world that was spinning around us.
I had missed this man. I had missed allowing myself to care about him.
“Perimeter’s pretty secure. I only found one other entry point, along the far wall back th—”
Lachlan’s loud voice broke off suddenly. I heard a low noise from over where Trace had been resting, then a scuffling sound as he stood up.
“What the…?” His voice was rough with sleep, but the surprise in his tone was obvious.
Ah, fuck.
Busted.
Chapter Nineteen
Despite the interruption, Merrick didn’t seem all that inclined to stop kissing me. Hell, maybe he was worried that if he stopped now, he’d open his eyes just in time to see me running for the cave entrance, fire water be damned.
But a sudden embarrassment flooded me, and I pushed against his chest, breaking the contact between us and pulling back.
Heat burned in his honey-colored eyes, and he licked his lips as if he could still taste me on them.
I felt myself being drawn into his gaze, my body still trying to lean toward his, but I cleared my throat and shoved to my feet, glancing over at Lachlan.
The large Irishman was blinking slowly, his focus shifting from me to Merrick and back again. He looked surprised, disappointed… and almost hurt.
