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She felt softand supple in his arms and while they’d been dancing and J.T. Williams had been singing his sappy song of love about when he first met his wife. It was perfect for this evening. And for once Cal’s voice in his mind was quiet. The voice was sometimes cynical, sometimes angry. The quiet spells happened from time to time and Max just let himself enjoy the silence and the woman in his arms.
He could tell she was in the middle of some kind of crisis of faith. To him that made sense and a part of him—the noble bit that really didn’t come out to play often—knew he should leave her alone. But he wasn’t noble. Not really. He was a man who saw what he wanted and then took it.
This wasn’t news to him and Angelica was a very attractive woman. She’d drawn his eye in her winter-white suit but when she’d lost the jacket, his eyes had been drawn to her figure. She had full breasts and a nipped-in waist. The skirt was long, ending just at her knee and her now bare arms were long and slim with some obvious muscle definition. If she let her hair down, he knew he’d want to try to seduce her.
He wanted her.
It had been a while since he’d felt this kind of instantaneous reaction to a woman and he wasn’t going to ignore it. He was going to approve her proposal so he could see her again and when this feeling and the attraction waned, as it always did, he’d move on and feel better that he’d at least given her the second chance she wasn’t sure she deserved and hopefully helped out the citizens who lived in The Barrels.
He leaned down closer to her and she arched both her eyebrows at him and moistened her lips. He groaned.
“I’m going to kiss you.”
“Can I have anything to say about that?” she asked.
“Of course you can,” he said.
He maneuvered them off the dance floor and took her hand, leading her down the lighted garden path to a bench that was nestled in an arbor. If he’d read her wrong, he certainly wasn’t going to push himself on her.
She put one arm around her waist as she watched him. He had no idea what she was looking for. He’d never been any good at pretending to be anything other than himself. Perhaps that had been why he’d turned Cal away that last time he’d knocked on his door, looking for money and another fresh start.
She took a deep breath and then made a little sound but didn’t say anything. She dropped her arms to her sides and shook her head. “I do want to kiss you. I guess I just didn’t want to seem too eager.”
He shook his head. “You can’t be any more eager than I am. This has nothing to do with the Second Start project.”
“Yeah, I know. I mean you were hot for me the moment I walked in,” she said winking at him.
She was joking but he had been. The moment he’d heard her laughter everything in him had gone on point and he’d had to meet her. From then everything about her had simply intrigued him even more. He knew that perhaps that was a warning but he never heeded warnings.
She rubbed her hand on her arm and he reached out and pulled her close. Though it was the beginning of December, they were in the Texas Hill Country and the temperature tonight was mild. But they’d been dancing and moving and she was cooling down.
She put her hands on his shoulders and tipped her head back again. She looked up at him and as he looked down into her heart-shaped face, he saw her lips which were full and slightly parted, her lipstick worn off by the evening. He knew that there wasn’t anything in this world that would make him not kiss her.
She was something that he couldn’t define and that made him want her more than he should. He lowered his head and his mouth brushed over hers and she sighed, her lips parting under his. He felt her tongue tentatively brush over his and then tangled with it. He deepened the kiss, pulling her more fully against him.
Her hands pushed into the hair at the back of his head. He felt her breasts against his chest and the curve her hips against his. One of his hands moved down her back and cupped her butt, drawing her up and more fully into him. His erection stirred and he knew then that one kiss was never going to be enough.
He wanted more of this woman. More of her kisses, more of her body, more of her laughter. She had somehow managed to make him feel alive tonight and he wasn’t ready to go back to his cold gray world.
She might have said she didn’t believe in miracles, and he damned sure didn’t, but tonight he couldn’t help but think they were both what the other needed. That maybe they were meant to be kissing in his fragrant garden while the party raged on.
He lifted his head to see if she felt the same way. Her eyes were closed, her lips slightly swollen from his kiss and there was a flush on her cheeks. She opened her eyes and licked her lips and he groaned. He wanted more.
“That was nice.”
“Nice? I must be losing my touch,” he said.
“Did you want it to be bad?” she teased.
“I wanted you to be swept away and not using words like nice,” he admitted. “Guess we’ll have to try again.”
“By all means,” she said, going up on her tiptoes and kissing him this time. He held her closer to him and something in the back of his mind said this was a mistake, but he ignored it.
This time of year was for making big wishes and he wasn’t going to deny himself this evening with Angelica.
*
Kissing Max mightnot have been smart, but it suited her this evening when nothing had gone to plan. Cosima’s bold idea to crash this party had seemed like a mistake from the beginning to Angelica because frankly she wasn’t good at winging things, but she’d gone along with it because they were running out of options.
