Things We Never Said (Hart's Boardwalk 3)

I should send him away.

But this mindless haze of longing and need was tormenting me past the point of being able to cope. “I’ve always wanted you.”

A second later, he was on me, his lips crashing down on mine.

I gasped and lifted my hands to push him away but the taste and feel of him overwhelmed my senses, and I clung to him instead.

As our tongues touched, he groaned, the sound rumbling down my throat and straight between my legs. My fingers curled tight into his hair, pulling him closer, and his restraint fled. His hands were everywhere like he was frantic to touch every inch of me. When he cupped my breasts and kneaded them, I whimpered as pleasure swirled low in my belly. Michael ground his hips into mine. He was hard.

A moan of realization was lost in his throat as his kisses grew hungrier and wetter. My body shuddered with need as his hold on me became the only thing that mattered. My hands pulled at his shirt while his slid down my hips. It was the spine-tingling touch of his calloused fingertips on my inner thigh beneath my dress that jolted me. Enough to hear the voice in the back of my head screaming at me to stop him before it was too late. I wanted to push the voice back, desperate for the feel of him inside me but—

“Michael, stop,” I panted, pushing against his chest.

He tensed. “Dahlia?”

All my nerve endings screamed to let him keep going, to let him slide his hand between my legs. I needed that more than I’d ever needed anything.

However, my sister’s face kept flashing in my head and what I wanted had to supersede my need. It had to. And I wanted to be up-front and honest with my sister about Michael. If I had sex with him and she found out I’d done that before talking to her, I knew she wouldn’t forgive me.

This way, at least if I were honest and honorable as I could be, maybe she and I would be able to figure things out.

“Fuck, Dahlia, don’t tell me to stop,” he pleaded.

I stroked his hair in comfort, maybe more for me than him. Tears of sexual frustration burned in my eyes. I didn’t know until then the horrible sting of unfulfilled lust. If Michael felt half as bad as I did, I was sorry. “We have to.”

He braced his hands on the wall beside me, his face buried in my neck. Then he kissed me. A soft, sweet kiss to my throat. With a low grunt, he pushed off the wall and rolled away from me.

A shiver rippled through me as I turned to look at him. He was so handsome.

Feeling my regard, he looked toward me but without meeting my eyes. “I better go.”

Hearing the bitterness in his voice, I realized he didn’t know why I

’d stopped. He thought I was pushing him away.

I moved to him, pressing my body against his, and cupped his cheek in my hand. I loved the way he automatically wrapped his arm around me to pull me close.

“I’m not sending you away,” I explained. “I just … if I’m going to date my kid sister’s ex-boyfriend, I have to go about it the best way I can. That means not letting anything happen between us until I’ve had the chance to tell Dillon.”

Michael’s whole body relaxed. “You mean, you’re giving us a shot?”

I nodded.

He broke out into a wide grin that was so wholly infectious, I laughed.

“Fuck, I want to kiss you again but apparently kissing you gets out of control pretty quickly.”

Feeling cocky that a few kisses with me had turned him into a ravisher, I tilted my head and grinned. “You saying I’m the only woman who makes you lose your mind like that?”

He pressed his forehead to mine. “I nearly made love to you in public wearing my uniform. What do you think?”

Made love to me.

Gary always called it “screwing.”

Michael turned serious. “I want to be there to tell Dillon. It’s not fair to put it all on you.”

I liked that too but … “If we both do it, she’ll feel ambushed. Humiliated, even. I think it’s kinder if I do it.”