With her eyes still locked onto his, physical need consumed Reese. He leaned in closer, never taking his focus from her. Little by little, he closed the distance until his lips were a whisper from hers.
“Wh-what are you doing?”
Barely hanging on by a thread.
“Practicing,” he murmured. “We need to be believable in public.”
She licked her lips, but since he’d leaned within a breath of her, her tongue brushed across his bottom lip and Reese knew she certainly hadn’t meant to.
But whether she’d meant to or not didn’t matter. Just that briefest touch of her tongue snapped something in him.
Reese covered her mouth, gently to give her an opportunity to back up and stop if this was something she didn’t want. If she stopped, he would have to respect her decision, but now that he’d touched her in such an intimate, non-friend way, he wanted more.
So. Much. More.
Careful not to touch her anywhere else, Reese clenched his fists at his sides. The desire to reach for her, pull her even closer to get the full experience, consumed him, but he couldn’t pressure her. As much as he wanted to keep kissing her, to touch her, his first priority was to make her feel secure.
He had to be patient or he’d risk everything they had.
When her lips opened beneath his, Reese took that as the proverbial green light and deepened the kiss. Delicate fingers feathered up his arm and sent shivers racing through him.
When had he last shivered during a kiss?
Never. He didn’t get all giddy and shaken just from a kiss. He wasn’t some hormonal teenager.
The woman was potent, more so than he ever could have imagined. When Josie let out a little sigh, Reese reluctantly pulled back.
Clenching his jaw, along with his fists, he closed his eyes and thought of anything other than how much he wanted to take her into his room and finish this.
A kiss so powerful without truly touching was only a stepping-stone to something else...and it was that something else he wanted to experience with her.
“What was that?” she murmured, her hands falling away.
Trying to lighten the intense mood, Reese smiled. “A hell of a practice kiss.”
He didn’t want to expose his true feelings, didn’t want her to feel awkward, either. She’d just gotten here and he didn’t want to send her running.
Josie took a step back and nodded. “Right. Well, you’re a hell of a kisser.”
Now how could his ego stay low with that type of a compliment? And how could he not want even more? Just that simple taste had his imagination running even more rampant with endless possibilities.
“Back at ya,” he stated with a grin. “I’ll get your stuff into a guest room and then we can watch that movie. Which room do you want?”
“Anything with an ocean view,” she told him.
Reese nodded and grabbed her suitcase, needing to get a minute to himself to get his head back on straight. As he took the luggage onto the elevator, Reese wondered how the hell he could focus on anything other than that kiss and how soon they would do it again.
Because now that he’d had one taste, he wanted another, and his drive to share more intimacies with her was stronger than ever. Judging from Josie’s surprise reaction and then her response, maybe she had similar needs as well.
Focusing on all of this pent-up desire when he had so much else going on should be silly, foolish even, but all he could think about was how powerful it was and how soon he could kiss her again.
* * *
An Affair to Remember was not holding her attention and the lack of interest had nothing to do with the fact that she knew each scene word for word. No, her focus was on her still-tingling lips and the man sitting right next to her on the plush sectional sofa. There were plenty of other seats, but here he sat, right by her side.
What the hell had he been thinking, kissing her like that? Touching her with only his lips, yet her entire body had felt that touch. That little niggle of desire he’d launched earlier by claiming her as his fiancée had become something more. She ached with a need she didn’t recognize. Never before had a kiss, so simple and sweet, left her wanting to rip someone’s clothes off.
But Reese had pulled back and she’d been left with confusion and need.