AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She let him lead her to his truck, and he helped her in since it sat so high off the ground. Alana plopped down on the seat and nearly screamed when she glanced down at the front of her dress and saw that the rain had seemingly turned it transparent. Plenty transparent enough to reveal that she’d worn a cobalt blue bra and panties since all her other decent underwear was line-drying in her laundry room.
Good grief.
She might as well have had arrows pointing to the spots that she counted on clothing to hide. Specifically, her breasts and nipples. If Egan had wondered about the size of them, he now had firsthand visual knowledge.
“I didn’t look,” he assured her a split second before he shut the door. He’d probably noticed her looking down in horror at her body. “Well, I glanced,” he added after he was behind the wheel, “but when I realized what was going on, I kept my eyes on your face and feet.”
Then he was more of a gentleman than she had been a lady since she’d certainly given his chest a gawking when his shirt had been unbuttoned. Sometime, though, between when she’d run away from the barn and his arrival at the creek, he’d buttoned up.
He started the engine but didn’t drive off. “I’m going to say just one thing, and then I’ll hush. Jack was an idiot to cheat on you. Most cheaters are. And since we’re both the ones who’ve been cheated on, I believe their affairs didn’t have nearly as much to do about us as it did about some weakness in them.” He shrugged. “That’s how I’m choosing to see it, anyway.”
It was a good perspective, one that, surprisingly, took away some of that nagging guilt about not having been good enough and not having saved the world. It didn’t eliminate the “really deep pissed off” anger she might always feel for Jack, and herself, but it helped.
“Thanks,” she muttered.
“You’re welcome.” He still didn’t make a move to drive away, and after a few moments he turned to her. “Look, about what happened in the barn. Not overhearing the conversation but what happened before that...do we need to talk about it?”
He meant the near kiss and the sweltering heat that had gone along with it. He meant the unwanted attraction. The massive potential problems it could cause if they had gone through with what they’d both been thinking of doing.
“Uh, no, we probably shouldn’t talk about it,” she managed to say, knowing full well this was not going to be akin to something out of sight, out of mind. The heat was there and shouldn’t be acted on.
That’s why Alana stunned herself when she did.
Moving as fast as the next lightning bolt, she leaned across the seat and put her mouth on Egan’s. Her heart stumbled over a couple of beats. Butterflies scattered to flight in her stomach.
And the slow trickle of heat started to spread.
Egan seemed to freeze for just a split second, maybe waging a battle against common sense and this clawing need. The need won. Because a deep sound rumbled in his throat before he reached out, his hand sliding around the back of her neck, and he pulled her to him.
Their mouths met for real this time, not just the “testing the waters” peck she had started. This was the “full-on, lip-to-lip, hungry” deal that made her forget all about, well, everything but the kiss.
Egan clearly had some kissing experience, some mouth moves, and he put that expertise to good use by running his tongue along her lips and notching up the already hot and hungry need. He kissed. And took. Alana kissed him back and tried to give as good as she got while the urgency and lust gave her one slam after another.
Thank goodness they had to break to breathe or they might have just started tearing at each other’s clothes. Their gazes met and locked during that disconnection where they were both sucking in air. She saw the fire in his eyes. Felt it vibrating. Got another wave of lust.
And just a smidge of common sense.
It wasn’t much, but apparently Egan got enough of it, too, that she saw the quick epiphany he was getting. Yes, this was good. Very, very good. And yes, they wanted each other very, very much.
But acting on that want would have consequences. Huge ones. Ones that neither of them might be ready to handle.
Well, crud.
Because his epiphany was spot-on, and it gave Alana just enough time to try to listen to shouts of reason that her brain was trying to send.
Kissing probably wasn’t the best way to pull her out of that deep dark hole of grief and misery. But it had worked. For a few precious moments, the only thing she was feeling right now was a hard hungry need. For Egan. For him and more of those scorching kisses.
And she had no idea if that was the best thing that’d happened to her in a long, long time.
Or the worst.
Alana figured one way or another, she’d soon find out.
CHAPTER TWELVE
EGANHADNOidea what he was doing, but that didn’t stop him from parking his truck and walking up the stone path toward the cemetery.
He had brain fog, as if he hadn’t had nearly enough caffeine, but he’d already drank three cups of coffee and was working on his fourth. The odds were the coffee wasn’t going to cure the fog that had been there for four days now.
