couldn’t look at her face. ‘Decorate if you want, or don’t bother. I won’t tell Annie either way.’
With a shrug, he pulled open the door and turned to look at her one last time. Her expression of disappointment seared its way into his mind, imprinting itself like a brand.
Adam stepped out on the porch, closing the door behind him. He tried to wipe out the memory of her distress as he started to warm up his muscles. Jumping to the ground, not bothering to use the steps, he let the spikes in his shoes steady his gait. The run would do him good, make him forget about everything except the air in his lungs. He’d run faster, harder, further. Do whatever it took to erase her face from his memory.
To forget how she’d stared at him, her eyes wide, her pretty mouth open. The way her forehead creased as she still held tightly to the box was still so clear in his mind even when he’d crossed the wide-open space of the meadow and made it to the treeline.
He’d hurt her.
Without meaning to, without wanting to, he’d caused her pain anyway. And though he’d been trying to avoid doing exactly that, somehow he’d ended up acting like an asshole.
‘Shit.’ He slapped his palm against the rough bark of a pine tree. He’d stopped running, even though he hadn’t yet even broken a sweat. His mind was consumed with thoughts of her, and nothing else really seemed to matter. Not his memories of that damn documentary in Colombia, or his breakdown in LA, not even the conflict that raged within him, telling him to keep the hell away from her.
‘Damn it.’ His hands balled into fists, the way they always did when he sensed danger. Without really thinking about his next move, he turned around and started to run back to the cabin, his eyes trained on the wooden building. It took him less than a minute to get there, his breathlessness more a factor of the anticipation coursing through him than any exertion it might have caused. Still he ran up the steps and yanked the door open, surprised to find her still standing right in front of it, the box cradled in her arms.
‘You’re back?’ The creases in her forehead deepened. ‘What happened?’
Adam didn’t reply. Instead he took the box from her grasp, and dropped it to the floor. The dog trotted over and tried to sniff the decorations, and Adam had to swat him away. The look of surprise on Kitty’s face – so much more welcome than the sadness of only a few moments before – made him want to laugh out loud. It sent a sensation of lightness through his being, as if he were floating in the sky. He wasn’t sure of the last time he felt so good.
Her bottom lip dropped open, enough for him to see the tip of her tongue just inside, making the urge to kiss her come over him again. He wanted to taste her, to be tasted, to see exactly how she felt against him, but he didn’t have a clue how to make this happen.
‘I’m sorry.’ It was the only thing he could think of to say. He wanted to convey so much in those two words, yet they fell far short of his needs.
‘For what?’
He shook his head. ‘I’ve no idea. For shooting that deer? For making you cry? For screaming at you by the lake?’
Kitty laughed then. A warm throaty chuckle that seemed out of place coming from her lips. Yet it touched him deep inside, enough to make him reach out and cup the side of her face with his palm. With his other he took her hat off, brushing the hair from her brow.
‘You’re so damned pretty.’
‘I am?’ She frowned. It only increased his estimation of her, a beautiful girl who didn’t even know it, somebody who was lovely on the inside and out.
He nodded slowly. ‘You are. With your glowing skin and your shiny eyes and your plump, kissable mouth. You’re a sight for sore eyes.’
‘Kissable?’
His heart stuttered when she smiled.
Still cradling her face, he dragged his thumb down until he was running it along her bottom lip. She stared up at him, wide-eyed, the open, trusting expression sending a shot of pure pleasure to his veins.
‘Kissable,’ he agreed. Dropping his head down, he touched his brow to hers. They were so close he could feel her lashes fluttering against him as she blinked, and the warm rush of her breath against his skin. Still they stared at each other, both silent, yet wanting to say everything, their eyes sharing a conversation that couldn’t be had with words. Then Adam wrapped his hand around her neck, angling her face to his, before pressing his cool lips against her warm mouth.
It felt so good he almost lost his mind.
14
Then come kiss me, sweet and twenty
– Twelfth Night
Kitty had been kissed before. Her first was a stolen peck in the playground from Tom Jenkins, the seven-year-old Lothario who stole her tender heart in primary school. Since then she’d had chaste brushes and drunken snogs, duelled with tongues and sucked at necks. Oh yes, she’d been kissed…
But she’d never been kissed like this.
Adam held her close, one arm circling her waist, the other still cupping her neck. He kissed her as if he was a dying man seeking his final breath, stealing hers away as he plundered her mouth, taking and giving in equal measure. His lips were softer than she’d thought they would be, moving assuredly against hers, his tongue coaxing her open before he slid inside her sighing mouth. Her arms were snaked around his neck, clinging on as he dipped her backwards, still kissing her deeply as if he was fighting some kind of battle.
He smoothed the stray hair from her face, then curled his fist around the hair at the nape of her neck, pulling at it as if it were a rope. The motion moved her head back further. Dragging his lips to the corner of her mouth, he kissed a trail to her neck, nipping and caressing the sensitive skin just below her ear.