Southern Seducer (North Carolina Highlands 1)

Skin.

Heat.

A solid wall of muscle that tenses beneath my touch.

I’ve wanted to touch him like this forever.

He groans into my mouth, drawing my bottom lip between his teeth. My clit pulses.

“Wow,” is all I can say.

He groans again when my thumb swipes the top band of his underwear peeking out over the waist of his jeans. I feel something inside him snap. His kiss becomes almost bruising in its intensity. He’s swallowing me whole.

His hands find my waist, and he grabs me roughly, lifting me off the ground. Heat blares inside my skin, making me ache for more contact and more friction. I wrap my legs around his waist, and he takes several steps forward, holding me as though I hardly weigh more than Maisie. My breath catches when he presses me against the side of the dock house and wastes no time, immediately grinding his erection into the cradle of my pelvis. His movements are a little lewd in their urgency and slight roughness.

He literally growls, dropping his head into the crook of my shoulder as he rolls his body into mine, simulating one long, hard, rhythmic thrust.

I see stars.

I grind against him in reply, seeking…I don’t know what.

Freedom.

Salvation.

Escape.

His mouth moves to my jaw, then my neck. I feel each flick of his tongue and each scrape of his beard and teeth in my clit. I roll my hips more urgently. Wild. Untethered. Just feeling and fingers, his kneading my ass, mine digging into the muscles of his back.

Yes.

Oh, yes.

It’s the weirdest, best sensation to be touched sexually again.

To be touched by your best friend, the guy you’ve fantasized about for-freaking-ever.

He slips a big hand inside the back of my jeans and gives my ass a firm squeeze.

I don’t want to be self-conscious about my body. I’ve been there, I’ve done that, and I want to have outgrown that kind of painful awareness and shame. But I’m just getting to know my new body myself. I don’t know how it will react to Beau, or how he’ll react to it.

I’m thirty-five, and this is all brand new. Immediately, I want to hate it. Another part of me, though, wants to explore it. Because for the first time in ages, I’m not just surviving. I’m enjoying. The crushing exhaustion of earlier feels like a distant memory.

This could ruin everything. I could lose someone I really need right now.

But my God, is this man’s kiss hot. Friend or not, Beau is a man, and his male appetite for me—not the mother, not the martyr, me—turns me on to no end.

He’s been turning me on for years.

I surrender, all thoughts and warnings and shoulds muffled by the thunder of freedom.

I want more, more freedom and skin and heat, so I take it. My hands work their way to his waist. I linger for a heartbeat, then another, at the delicious slices of muscle at his hips. He may have retired from pro football years ago, but he’s still got the build of an athlete. He’s always been a little nuts about his fitness routine.

Another growl from him when I unbutton his jeans as he’s working his hand inside my sweater.

I’m starving for him. How many years of pent-up longing let loose, a slingshot finally released after being stretched taut, and tauter still, over the course of a decade and a half.

The momentum of this kiss is intoxicating.

I suck on his neck—it’ll leave a hickey, but I’m beyond caring, tomorrow doesn’t exist—and he returns the favor, trailing his lips over the sensitive place on my throat just beneath my ear. He nicks at it with his teeth. A wave of goose bumps courses over my skin, starting at my scalp and rippling through my arms, torso, and legs.

I work my hand inside his fly and cup his erection through the silky fabric of his boxer briefs. He’s huge and hard, and the sharpness of my desire for him cuts me open.

I want all of him. I want to fuck him. I want to give him as much of me as he’s willing to take.

Tightening my grip, I give him a firm, slow tug, feeling the skin beneath his briefs slide up and down.

He bares his teeth against my throat, sucking in a breath.

“See?” he groans, kissing my mouth.

“See what?” I open my eyes.

He’s looking at me. “I wasn’t being cocky about that. The smoke you said they were blowing up my ass…”

Can’t help it. I laugh against his kiss, even as I give his shoulder a not-so-gentle shove. “You really gotta work on your puns. Cocky? Really?”

“I love making you laugh.”

I steal his words with my lips and swallow them. I want to keep them inside me forever.

He kisses me back, harder than before, and my eyes flutter shut. He’s pouring himself into me. He’s got me pinned to the wall with the enormous bulk of his body, and he’s got his hands and mouth all over me.