Southern Heartbreaker (Charleston Heat 4)

Grinning, I wave him away. “Go relieve your sitter. I’ll see you around.”

“Good night, Eva.”

“Night, Ford.”

He turns toward the car, and I turn toward home. I’m buzzing. With light and energy, the kind you feel after you know you really hit it off with someone.

Also with disappointment. It won’t go away. So much happened between the moment Ford backed into me at the bar at Henley’s and right now. The conversation, the confessions. The grinding.

I’d be a masochist to want more. And yet I do. The night feels incomplete somehow. Which is both ridiculously romantic and enormously frustrating, all at once.

“Wait—wait, Eva—”

My stomach dips at the sound of Ford’s voice. Fingers, strong but gentle, wrap around my elbow, and then he’s giving my arm a gentle tug. I spin around to face him, my arms going halfway up in surprise. Pulse skittering inside my skin.

“Wait.” His eyes meet mine. My stomach dips again at the question I see in his.

My lips part.

I really shouldn’t. But I’m lonely. Turned on.

Curious.

I roll up onto my toes, giving him my answer. My forearms fall onto his shoulders.

He wastes no time. He glides a hand onto my face and tilts his head, bending his neck as he leans in.

My eyes flutter shut at the same moment he presses his lips to mine. They’re soft and warm. So freaking soft.

The smell of his skin fills my head. Aftershave, cut with a hint of what almost smells like juniper. Woodsy. Musky.

Immediately the kiss is good. Something about the slant of his mouth, the feel of his fingertips gliding into my hair, the citrus-y taste of his lips—right off the bat, he knows what he’s doing.

There was so much to adore about Ford. But one of the things I loved best was the way the man kissed. I could kiss him for days—and I did, in the way only teenagers can—and still not get my fill.

He’s only gotten better with age. He moves his lips gently but insistently over mine. Just a hint of heat. The seam of his mouth finding mine, opening me, encouraging me to rise up to meet his caress. Scruff catching on my chin.

He holds my head in his hand all the while, as if to say, I’ve got you, I’m here, I’m feeling this too.

I lick my tongue into his mouth, using the tip to caress the inside of his lower lip. He groans, a low, quiet thing that makes my nipples pebble, and returns the favor. He laps at me slowly. Sipping me like we’ve got all the time in the world, even though he’s got approximately seven seconds until he’s late relieving his sitter.

Ford rolls his body into mine, trapping my bent arms between us. I feel surrounded by him. The two of us the center of the whole universe, the world spinning faster and faster around this fixed point. The one where our mouths meet.

I feel lifted up by him. By this kiss that deepens by dizzying degrees, until we’re full-on swallowing each other whole. Heads turning, breaths coming in pants.

Heat coils between my legs, heavy and thick, and for a second I wish more than anything that I could go home with this man. I don’t know what it is, exactly, that I’m desperate for. But whatever it is, he’s giving it to me. In spades.

His hand caresses one side of my neck while he ducks down and nips at the other side with his teeth. I draw a sharp breath, sensation spiking through my liquefying center.

My God, the way this guy touches me. The knowing energy in his fingertips, the flashes of fiery want in his insistence.

Oh, I shouldn’t. I can’t. I can’t do this again.

By sheer force of will, I pull away, breaking the kiss. My lips are burning.

Everything is burning, and I need to go home before—

Before what?

Ford arcs his thumb over my cheek as he meets my eyes. My heart turns over at the look in his. That bewildered, bare, hungry look I dreamed about for years after we broke up.

I’m suddenly filled with that ache. The one I felt at the shower. This delicious, sweet, fraught feeling that I haven’t experienced since the last time I was in Ford’s arms.

Jesus, I’m an idiot. I know better. I just—

I can’t pull away.

For several beats we just look at each other. I have no clue what to say after a kiss like that. Judging by his silence, neither does he.

Feeling swims between us. I’m drowning in it—my lungs are burning, I need to come up for air—but I can’t pull away.

“Answer when I call you,” he says at last. His voice sounds like sandpaper.

He leans in, surrounding me in that woodsy smell again, and covers my mouth with his. Pulling at me. Quick and hot.

One of my knees buckles.