Southern Hotshot (North Carolina Highlands 2)

Keep going, I silently plead.

His thumb trails a ribbon of fire up my stomach and stops just beneath my breast.

“Where the fuck is your bra?” he rasps against my mouth.

I smirk. “Somewhere in your bathroom, I think.”

“Aw, baby, you’re killin’ me,” he murmurs, gliding his thumb up over the curve of my tit.

A shockwave of need rips through me when his thumb finds my nipple. The heat from the fire, the heat between my legs—it’s overwhelming.

I like it when he calls me baby.

I also like it when he circles his thumb over my nipple. Gentle and slow and soft. My kiss becomes eager, and Samuel gives me what I want, deepening the kiss without making it messy.

It’s sexy, and it’s romantic, and it’s exactly how I hoped kissing would feel when I was a confused fifteen-year-old making out with my pillow.

He doesn’t try to dominate. Doesn’t rush and doesn’t show off. He just kisses and touches me the way I want to be kissed and touched. He’s just a guy and I’m just a girl, and we’re trying on real together for the first time. No pretense. No lies.

Just breaths and heartbeats. And what’s truer than that?

My heart tells me I want more of his touch. So I moan and he says, “This has gotta come off,” and then I’m pulling back and holding up my arms as Samuel lifts the sweatshirt over my head.

The sudden rush of air makes my skin pebble. Samuel’s eyes rake hungrily over my bare torso, my lips and my clit throbbing. His gaze becomes hooded. It moves to meet mine, and he curls both hands around my torso, just underneath my armpits, and guides his thumbs over my nipples.

I see stars. Electricity zips from my nipples to my clit, and I roll my hips, breath coming in pants. He’s touching me well and carefully. Like he’s treasuring rather than taking me.

I don’t know if I’ve ever been touched that way before.

I shiver.

“Samuel,” I manage. I don’t recognize my own voice. It bares the need making me weak…everywhere. My knees. My resolve.

And you know what? I don’t hate it.

I especially don’t hate it when Samuel’s brow curves upward and he reaches behind his head to grab the neck of his sweatshirt. He tugs it off, and no joke, I think I black out for a heartbeat.

He is fit. In the American and the British sense of the word. He’s on the thick side of ripped with muscles everywhere. But it’s the tiny details of his physique that light me on fire. The sharp lines of his collarbones. The vein that runs vertically up his bicep. The whorls of hair covering his chest.

I shiver.

He frowns and pats his lap. “Come here.”

I push off my hand and lift my knee over his crossed legs. Straddling his hips, I hold myself up a little ways from his groin. He’s not pitching a tent—not yet—but if he’s as turned on as I am, he’s got something going on down there, and I don’t want to inadvertently hurt him.

Samuel, apparently, isn’t worried about that.

“Come here.” He puts his hands on my hips and guides them down until I’m settled snugly against him. My pussy comes alive at the slight pressure, making need coil tightly in my core.

My nipples brush against his chest. His skin is warm. Really warm.

My stomach aches at the way the muscles in his chest bunch against the skin as he wraps his arms around my waist and pulls me to him.

In an instant, I’m surrounded by his heat. With my face buried in the crook of his neck, he places his palm on my nape again, holding me there. My shoulders relax away from my ears, bit by bit until they’re languid and soft.

“Warmer?” he murmurs into my hair.

I turn my head to press a kiss to his neck. I feel his stomach tense. “You’re a human furnace.”

“I run hot.”

“I like hot.”

“Good thing you have me around then,” he says, and then he kisses my mouth.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Samuel

Emma wraps her arms around my neck and falls into the kiss.

I wait for warning bells to go off in my head. Danger. Stop. Don’t.

But my thoughts are strangely calm. And while I’m nervous about…well, fucking everything, my gut’s telling me I’ve gotta give Emma what she needs.

Luckily, her body is responsive to even the smallest touches, the tiniest changes in pace, so I take my time and learn her.

I learn she’s got a spine of steel but the softest skin.

I learn she likes to linger. Her kiss is deep and searching, and her body rises into my touch when I tease her a little, when I go slowly, intentionally.

I learn that turning me on turns her on. She kisses my neck, and I growl, and she does it again, nicking me with her teeth as her fingertips glide into the hair at the nape of my neck. I tighten my arms around her—I want her close, I’ve gotta keep her warm—and she starts playing with my hair, moving up and down ever so slightly, just enough that her nipples rub against my chest.