I wait.
I wait some more.
I stand on my tiptoes to make sure Kayden is still breathing.
His eyes remain close, and they don’t even remotely flutter. Damn, he really is good at this. There is absolutely no way I’m falling for it. The old trick where I get close, all concerned, and freak out about him passing out from the heat and maybe dying, and I touch his face with my soothing fingers to bring him back around, all those tingles flying up my arms as I remember with a jolt just why we were so good together in the first place. Or rather, my nipples and hoo-ha remember.
Ha. That’s not going to happen. I’m so done with this.
“I’m not playing your stupid games, Kayden,” I warn him. I turn around and march back to the deck, but I can’t help it. I have to spin around and look at him.
Motherclucker, he’s still lying there. Maybe something is seriously wrong.
I know we might have some history, and it might not be good. But whatever’s happening right now, it’s not about that. This is just about me making sure Kayden isn’t heat stroked and on the verge of death.
I rush across the yard and stick my big toe under Kayden’s ribs. He fell straight down and ended up on his back with one arm flung up by his face while his long legs, which were clad in some seriously nice looking jeans, curled at funny angles.
“Kayden?” I nudged him with my toe again.
Gosh dang it anyway, something close to fire rips through my foot, shoots up my leg, and lands straight in my groin area. I let out a huff. I thought that would only happen if I used my fingers—the crazy zappy sensations.
I realize it isn’t safe to touch Kayden, even through clothing, with any part of my body, so I grab the shovel, stick it in the ground near Kayden, and use it to try and prod him a little. But he’s a big guy, and I can barely lift him an inch.
“Kayden!”
Still nothing.
I think he might actually be in some serious medical trouble here, and it hits me with all the intensity of a near panic attack. I drop to my knees, set my hands on Kayden’s shoulders, and shake him hard. His wet, sticky warmth burns right through my palms, and my nipples try to tear through my shirt as if they’ve just been paddled to give me a lifesaving jolt. Well, minus the lifesaving because touching Kayden is more like life-un-saving.
I don’t know whose head is more fucked right now. Mine or his.
“Kayden! Come on. Wake up!” I bend over him and place my hands on his cheeks. His skin is blazing and also sticky and sweaty. It should be pretty gross, touching a sweaty man, but nothing about Kayden getting sweaty was ever a turn off for me. Unfortunately, it’s still not, even under dire circumstances. But whatever. So my hormones are a little bit wild and unnatural. Bite me.
“Kayden!” I peel back one eye. Absolutely nothing at all. Just whites. I move his head back and forth sharply and even smack his cheek a few times. “Kayden! Come on! This seriously isn’t funny! Kayden! Kayyyyyyyydennnnnnn!”
Kayden’s eyes suddenly open with a pop and a flutter of disgustingly and wondrously long male lashes. He blinks at me. I’m dangerously close to him. My hands are already cupping his cheeks, and I’m bending over him, looking for signs of life. I realize my error.
“You mothercl—”
His big, sweaty, hot, slightly dirty, earthy-smelling, magical man hands come up to cup my face. Then, he grins up at me for just a second before he drags me down the few inches that remain between us and claims my mouth in a straight-up—I can’t believe you actually fell for it—sucker punch red hot kiss.
CHAPTER 8
Kayden
The kiss rattles through me, shaking my bones and vibrating straight to the center of me. I don’t necessarily mean my dick, but that reacts too, leaping wildly with a silent penile shout of phallic joy at the press of my lips to Rea’s. It’s not a dirty, scathing kiss that involves our tongues. It’s just my lips on hers while hers refuses—slowly, softening, melting, and moving.
“Ach!” She tears away and flings herself back so hard that she lands straight on her butt on the ground next to me. “You dirty…devil…you…motherclucking, faking, heart-attack-inducing, tree-planting son of a biscuit!’
I sit upright and stare Rea down. She’s absolutely fuming, but there’s a glisten in her eyes that tells me she was scared something bad had happened to me, and it floors me because honestly, even with all the conjecture and bravado, I wasn’t actually sure.
“You…you’re lucky I don’t nut punch you,” she hisses. She jumps to her feet and glares down at me, and damn if it isn’t hotter than anything so far. “But I won’t. Because that would be assault, and it would imply I care when I definitely don’t. I don’t know what game you’re playing or what your angle is, but if it’s me getting arrested, then I’m not going to oblige. You also won’t get a rise out of me because I don’t. I seriously don’t. Care that is. I couldn’t care less. Definitely not. As in never and a whole lot of nope. Also, as in, you can take your shovel and shove it up your…” When she realized she was losing her composure and getting angry, she spun and stomped back across her yard, her bare feet making soft whmpfs in the grass.