I kept staring, waiting for it to come. The perfect line that would get him away from me. That would snap this connection like brittle ice.
“People don’t say things like that in real life,” I informed him, giving up my search and just going for words and a cool tone that had saved me so often in the past.
His eyes glittered. “Well, Snow, I just said it,” he murmured. “What are you gonna do about it?”
I swallowed heavily. No words. How could I have no words? I could hold my own around bikers who spoke in innuendos, curse words and death threats, for Christ’s sake. Now was when I was rendered mute?
I didn’t even think he was carrying. I was stunned by a weaponless man. This did not bode well for me.
At all.
Keltan’s hand circled around mine for a second, sizzling the skin, then fastened around the coffee cup, lifting it from my grasp to place it on the roof of my car. The motion brought his bicep close to my face and imprinted his hard body onto mine, boxing me in.
“What are you doing with my sanity?” I snapped.
“You mean your coffee?” His breath was hot on my face and every inch of my skin sizzled with the fact that he was in my space.
I lost my grasp over why I shouldn’t sink into him, the presence that actually seemed tangible, a deliciously comfy man sweater to slip into.
To drown in.
“I know what I mean,” I said, my voice breathy.
His hand came to rest on my neck, his thumb rubbing where it met my chin. “Wearin’ a white tee, babe. Don’t want it getting stained with coffee when I kiss you,” he murmured.
I opened my mouth to say he most certainly would not be kissing me, but then I couldn’t speak because his mouth was on mine, and I lost all form of coherent thought.
It was like a drug. The way he tasted, the taste of coffee and cloves and man invading my senses. I molded myself against him, letting him leisurely own and plunder my mouth.
He pressed himself further into me, and I made a noise at the back of my throat, deepening the kiss.
Was it only the night before that I said I had learned how to swim?
Because now I was drowning and had no desire to surface.
But the surface came to meet me anyway with the empty air hitting my flaming lips as Keltan stepped back, rubbing his hand over his mouth, eyes wild.
He stared at me for the longest moment, the midmorning sun flickering behind his large form.
“Needed to stop,” he rasped finally. “Otherwise, I would have fucked you right there against your car.” His voice was little more than a growl.
My stomach did a somersault as I struggled to collect myself. My panties had been damp from his walk. After his kiss? They were history.
I reasoned my ovaries might explode or something from anything more than a kiss right now.
I’d been around the block—not like something crazy, but I’d kissed a lot of guys. Good, bad and everything in between. And then the really bad. But that didn’t exist except in the closet in the back of my mind that so wasn’t getting opened right now.
When I saw the crazy intense kisses on the movie screen—and I’d seen a lot, as I was a classic movie buff—I’d roll my eyes and curse Hollywood for perpetuating unrealistic stereotypes of what it should be like.
Because in real life, it wasn’t time-stopping magic with one kiss ruining or making your life while dramatic music played in the background.
At least that was what I’d thought.
I touched my lips with a single finger. They were swollen, hot, bruised with the tattoo of his own.
Keltan took a breath and stepped forward, so once more my nerve endings stood up. He reached his arm up, and I inhaled his scent, closing my eyes for a split second as his body pressed against mine once more.
Then he was gone and something warm was pressed against my hand.
I glanced down at my coffee cup, then back to him.
It was the only time in recorded existence that I was actually unhappy to have a cup of coffee in my hand.
“I can’t fuck you against your car,” he murmured. “No matter how much I want to. Because I’d most likely get us arrested, scar some children and make too many men fall in love with you,” he continued with a rough voice. “Plus, I want a chance. And if I let that kiss go further, then leave, I don’t get that chance. Because you’d think me an asshole, and I just couldn’t do that. I want a chance. When I get back from my last tour, I want to know that chance is waitin’ for me.”