Page 52 of Timid (Lark Cove 2)

“I know,” I whispered.

He opened his mouth to say something else, but I didn’t want to talk about it anymore. So I stood on my toes, hoping he’d get the gist and meet me halfway. I was too short to make it to his lips on my own.

Jackson didn’t disappoint. He dropped whatever he was going to say and grinned before giving me the kiss I’d been after.

I kept my hands wrapped around his narrow waist, exploring up and down from that position. I pressed my soft curves against his hard ridges and used my fingertips to study every contour of his muscled back. He was so . . . hard. Everywhere.

From beneath his jeans, there was a definite bulge digging into my hip. Knowing that I was the one turning him on—me—skyrocketed my desire. I clung to him, pulling him closer to let him plunder my mouth until he finally broke away, panting.

“We’d better slow down.”

I nodded, though it sounded like a bad idea. All these years, I’d been waiting for a kiss, his kiss. The time to wait was over.

“Want to come inside?” I asked.

He looked over my shoulder to the door, then down the stairs. “I shouldn’t, but yes.”

Yes. The butterflies in my stomach fluttered as I let him go to step inside. But the moment I crossed the threshold, I froze. The butterflies dropped dead.

My laundry was piled up on my couch. Clean panties were folded and stacked on the coffee table. There were five bras air-drying in the kitchen.

I spun back around and shoved my hands into his pecs, stopping him from coming in any farther. “Can I, um . . . can you cover your eyes for a sec?”

“Huh?”

“Can you just cover your eyes?” I took one of his meaty paws and lifted it toward his face. “Just for a second.”

He chuckled but kept his hand over his eyes.

“Don’t move.” I turned him away from my couch and kitchen, just in case he peeked. “And don’t look.”

“Are you hiding a dead body?”

“Of course not.” I ran over to the couch and swiped all of my laundry into a single pile. All of the shirts and pants and panties I’d folded earlier—that I’d refold tomorrow—got tossed into a basket. Then I hustled to the kitchen, triple-checking that the bras I’d hand-washed this morning were no longer hanging on cupboard doors.

With it all cleared away, I shoved the laundry basket behind the small bar in the kitchen. “Okay. You can take your hand away now.”

He did, turning around to face me. In my haste, I hadn’t even turned on a light. He reached for the switches by the door and flicked them on. Then he nodded to himself as he assessed the room. “Cool place.”

“Thanks.” I came out of the kitchen, toying with the hem of my tank top. It was nerve-racking to have him in my space. No one but my parents and some girlfriends had ever been in here.

Jackson walked right down the center of the room toward my now-clean couch. The slanted ceilings were too short for him at the edges, and as he got closer to the exterior walls, he began to crouch, bending lower and lower until he collapsed into the sofa.

“This probably feels like a dollhouse for you.”

He grinned and kept looking around. “Kind of. But I bet I’ll only whack my head on the ceiling a couple of times before I get used to it.”

A couple of times. I shouldn’t have liked the thought of him hitting his head, but I did. Because that meant he was coming back.

I walked over to the couch, maneuvering around the coffee table and feeling more self-conscious than I’d been on the stairs. It was easier to be adventurous and brave in the night. Now that we were inside, I was worried Jackson would pick up on all the little things I’d been able to hide in the dark.

Jackson was sitting in the middle of the couch, leaving me exactly half a cushion of free space between him and the plethora of throw pillows by the armrest. The moment my butt hit the cream upholstery, he tossed an arm across the back of the couch.

He sat there so comfortably, claiming my couch. It was almost as if he’d been the one to haul it up the stairs and squeeze it through the door.

“Did your parents build this for you?” he asked, inspecting my bed at the other end of the open room.

“No, they had it built a while back for my grandma. My dad’s mom. She lived here for a year but then started to show signs of Alzheimer’s. It broke my dad’s heart to move her into a home in Kalispell.”