All Fired Up (Hometown Heat 1)

It’s crazy. A brief moment of enlightenment that already has me off balance.

And then the fireworks start exploding behind my eyes and prickling every inch of my skin and I’m lost.

I wrap my arms around Mick’s shoulders with a moan and kiss him back with everything in me—my tongue sparring with his as his arms pull me close and his heat warms me from head to toe.

Pretty soon it feels like the entire world is sparkling.

Sparkling. Like too much champagne, like a hundred cameras flashing at once. Mick’s kiss is that dizzying, that blinding.

None of the perfectly acceptable kisses I’ve had in the past can compare to this, to feeling like a door has been wrenched open in some secret, guarded part of me and Mick is walking inside. I feel exposed, but helpless to close the door because closing it would involve pulling away from Mick, and that is…unthinkable.

I don’t ever want this moment to end.

I want to stay right here, marooned on an island of kiss-generated warmth while the rest of the cold world spins on without me.

For the first time in my life, I know what people mean when they said they were swept off their feet. I am soooo swept, so completely swept that by the time Mick finally pulls away my head is spinning and my body’s floating with all ten toes still on the ground.

“He’s gone,” Mick whispers, his breath coming faster and his arms still tight around me, holding me so close I can feel just how powerful he is beneath his clothes.

Wow. He’s strong and…hard in all the right places.

“Faith?” he says, making me think I’ve missed something.

“What?” I blink once, twice, hoping it might help banish the fizzy haze clouding my thoughts.

“Neil’s gone,” he says, but it takes a beat to remember who Neil is and why I should care.

When I do, I stammer, “Oh, r-right. Well…good.”

“Great.” He squeezes the curve of my hip with one hand, the touch so intimate and possessive that it helps bring me back to my senses.

I step back, untangling myself from Mick’s arms, welcoming the sharp gust of cold, thought-clearing air that rushes between us.

This is crazy.

I hardly know Mick Whitehouse. He hardly knows me—certainly not well enough to take a mistletoe kiss that far.

I should be mortified. Or irritated that I let him slip past my defenses without putting up a fight.

Instead, I’m just…tingling.

All over.

I’m achy and needy and dying to be back in his arms. I want to fist my hands in his shirt, drag him against me, and demand he kiss me again. I want him to put his hands wherever he wants—do whatever he wants to do to me—as long as he keeps making me feel this way. So alive and awake. So beautiful and wanted and…effervescent.

I’m not scared of much—not burning buildings, or mean dogs, or meaner people, even those twice my size—but this…

I’m suddenly scared of this.

This must be how Mom felt when I was growing up, all those times she was so gone on a guy she let being there for me take a backseat to attending to her man of the moment. This…craving was why she fed me at four o’clock and banished me to my room by five-thirty so I wouldn’t be underfoot when Hank or Ron or Pete got home.

This was why it took six months and catching Hank in the act for Mom to believe that he hurt me when she wasn’t around. That he pushed me and pinched my arms and told me he wished I would get lost and stay lost, because my mama would be so much better off without a burden like me around her neck.

My word wasn’t enough.

I was never enough, not even close.

“Faith? Are you okay?” Mick puts a gentle hand on my shoulder, but I flinch and shrug it off.

“Sorry. Here,” I say, my voice tight as I strip off his jacket.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, I just have to go.” I hold the jacket out between us.

“Listen, if this is about the kiss, then I’m sorry,” Mick says, ignoring the coat, “I just wanted Neil to get the message to back off and I wanted you to know that…I like you.”

A frown claws at my forehead. “You don’t even know me.”

“Sure, I do.” He grins.

Damn, he looks even sexier with his lips puffy and his dark curls mussed from where I drove my fingers through them while we were kissing, I think, and am immediately disgusted with myself for noticing.

“I know you’re funny and interesting and…unique,” he continues. “And one of the strongest people I’ve ever met.”

Strong.

I’m not strong. I’m weak, just like my mother, and I can’t stand here another second with the man who made me realize it.

“Sorry, but I don’t think this is a good idea.” I push his jacket into his arms and dart out from beneath the arbor, moving so fast I’m halfway down the path when he calls out, “Why not? Can I at least call you? We could go for coffee or something and talk.”