Something more, too—this intangible thing between us, this connection I can’t ignore.
And it’s urging me to her.
I don’t even realize I’m getting up till I’m up. My body feels light, fluid, like she’s taken away every scar and every burden I ever had. She’s left me stronger.
Strong enough for her.
When I step into the kitchen, she’s washing her hands in the sink.
She glances up as I draw closer, turning to face me, wiping her hands off on a towel. “Blake?”
I can’t find the words.
No damn words ever made would matter right now. Words can’t express this yawning hunger.
It’s every kind of wrong and I know it.
She’s too young. Too sweet. Too temporary.
I’m too broken.
None of it means dick as her smoky eyes flick over me with lingering heat. That blush comes back, enticing, telling me I’m not the only one who feels this. Begging me to shut the hell up and do something about it.
So I do.
As her breaths catch.
As her lips part.
As the temperature flares to a hundred degrees.
And I can’t resist that strawberry redness of her lips any longer.
I lean down to claim her with a kiss that shatters both our worlds.
15
Crank Up the Bass (Peace)
You don’t know torture until you’re undressing the most gorgeous man alive and trying to ignore the thick ridge of his cock pressing up against his boxer-briefs.
I don’t know how I kept calm during that massage.
Not when every time I touched him, I was fascinated by the feeling of coarse skin under my palms.
The hard sculpture of his body.
The way his face relaxed in bliss and his muscles went loose until he looked like this portrait of lazy passion, from the liquid flow of corded muscle to the part of his lips.
Blake Silverton could mess me up for life without even putting that Silver Tongue to work at all.
Everything in me wanted him so freaking bad, it’s a miracle I didn’t straddle his lap and kiss and caress him everywhere, spreading that sweet-cinnamon oil all over his body until we slid together in a slick mess.
But I managed to control myself. Somehow.
Control myself, ease his pain, and walk away.
Only for him to follow me, stalk me like a panther, that tall, honed body hovering over me, still nothing but tawny bare skin and bristling hair and jagged scars and those barely there boxers.
Until now, I never believed a kiss could be indescribable.
But oh, baby, Blake is one hell of a teacher.
Ever since our first rough taste of each other, I’ve wondered what it’d feel like to kiss him without any distractions like work or Andrea in the house or some new crisis.
Nothing I’ve ever imagined matches up to the truth.
His searing heat, the masculine fullness of his lips, his mouth firm in its claiming, needy pressure and yet so soft in the way his lips mold against mine with a fury.
Oh.
My.
God.
As walled off as he’s been, as withdrawn, now, a beast is out.
There’s no hesitation in his kiss.
Only a dominant, utterly certain yearning, a compulsion, a demand.
It’s given to me in stroking lips, in taunting dives of tongue-tip to tongue-tip, in the slow curl of his hands against my waist. He strokes slowly down my hips, electrifying me with the texture of his palms, the strength in those fingers, the way he touches me like I’m his new addiction with every graze of skin to the fabric over my flesh.
That demand is undeniable.
You want me.
You really, truly want me, woman.
There’s only one answer.
Yes, yes, God, yes!
It’s been building between us forever, rising like a crescendo to the thrilling, shivering peak of a song’s climax, right before it crashes into a rousing chorus.
And every freaking part of me is singing right now.
I rise up on my toes, bury my fingers in his hair, and try like crazy to give it back.
Kissing Blake with everything in me, deep and desperate and hot, trying to show him with every bit of my soul how bad I want him, need him, crave him.
This could be my only chance.
He has to understand that whatever he thinks he’s hauling around that’s too much for me…
It’s not.
And nothing’s ever too much if we carry it together.
He makes a startled grunt as I nip at his upper lip, teasing it between my teeth.
I smile. He actually recoils for a second, before his hands clench deliciously hard on my hips and he answers with a sharp rake of his teeth against my lower lip. Enough to make my mouth burn with a perfect, searing friction.
Oh, yeah.
I gasp as the feeling rocks right through me, lights me up in little sparks that scorch right down between my thighs.
“You’re playing with fire, girl,” he growls, lashing his tongue against my lower lip.
I smile against his mouth, feathering my fingers down the back of his neck, tracing the strong muscles of his trapezius, his shoulders, his back.