“You have three kids,” she agreed, angling her head back slightly and closing her eyes. He cupped the back of her neck in his palm, and she felt his lips brush lightly, like the wings of a butterfly, against her neck. “You live a life I can barely imagine. I couldn’t invent someone who would be less compatible with me.”
The touch was too sweet, too familiar. Her nipples hardened in an instant. How was it possible to want someone so much, so quickly?
“Damn it, Kelsey,” he continued, breathing against her skin as he kissed her again, this time just below her ear. “Why do you do this to me? Why can’t I walk away from you?”
Her hands found his waist and then slid up his back until they rested on top of his shoulders, where his muscles tensed and flexed under her fingers like the wings of a great bird. Her breath was swallowed in a gasp as he nipped the end of her earlobe.
This is crazy…
He’s going to break your heart…
The words flashed and shouted in her brain, but her body ignored them all. She turned toward him, their lips met, and she lost her language, her reason, her logic. They were kissing as though the world had stopped, leaving nothing but lips and tongue, wet invitation and heated, aching promise. He licked and then sucked on her bottom lip before diving deeper, the hand on the back of her neck tangling in her hair and holding her captive to him. She dug her nails into his skin and held on tight, feeling that at any moment she might dissolve into him. The memory of their night together and the pleasure he could bring overwhelmed her. The scent of his skin, the perfect fit of their bodies…it was all too familiar.
Too good.
He found her waist, slipped below her shirt, and then with a bare hand touched the flesh of her back. “You’re warm,” he observed.
“Your fault,” she responded.
“I’m sorry.” He trailed a line of kisses down her neck as his hands slid along her spine. With a single, deft gesture, he released the clasp of her bra and then slid his hands around to cup her breasts.
“Ohh.” She released a long, trailing breath.
Could a person die of pleasure? Might she explode, right then and there, from the touch of those fingers? From the trail of his rough calluses against her hard, pebbled skin?
She slipped her hands under his shirt, finding bare flesh and hard, male muscles to trace. His body was fuller, broader, and more solid than other men she’d known. He was raw male, with the promise of power and strength in the hard flex and movement of his rocklike biceps and the thick plane of muscle that was his back. She leaned against him, her hips beginning to move. He slid his hands lower, cupping her buttocks. Then he paused, tracing the outline of the bandage she’d applied that morning.
“What’s this?”
She flushed. “I fell while I was running a few days ago.”
“Hasn’t anyone ever told you running is supposed to be a safe sport?”
The memory struck her of the injury she’d had on her arm the night they met, and how she’d lain in his hotel bed and shown him the scars from her various accidents. Did he remember everything that had happened between them? Everything she’d told him?
“It’s just a little scrape. Nothing serious.”
He gazed at her steadily, the deep blue of his eyes seeming to grow darker and more intense. “That’s a big bandage.”
“I slid on my backside down a steep part of the trail,” she said, waving off his concern. “The bandage is much more impressive than the injury.”
He appeared unconvinced. “Right.”
She grabbed the front of his shirt, pulled him close, and administered a long, hot kiss. With a slow circle of her fingers, she teased the hair at the base of his neck. “The kids won’t be occupied forever,” she breathed. “How about you stop talking and get back to kissing?”
“That’s not fair, you’re trying to distract me.” He eased up her shirt and applied his mouth to the skin he’d already left throbbing and needy.
Giving in to the pleasure, she threw back her head and arched toward him. Silently, she offered him everything he would take.
“From what?” she gasped.
He circled. Licked. Sucked. Waited until she gave a soft moan, and then did it all over again. “From the evidence. That you’re dangerous.”
Frustration surged inside her, the fun of the crazy, mixed-up moment slipping away. She pushed him back and straightened, glaring into his eyes. “Damn it, stop making me into something I’m not. You keep thinking you understand me, but you don’t have a clue. I spend half my life planning and training, imagining worst-case scenarios and finding ways to address them.”