“I love that story.” He was calmness, he was patience, he was the person holding your hand while cutting you out of a car toppled over on the side of the road. “It’s like you were graced with the natural instinct to save.”
Something dark passed over his eyes, and he clenched his fists as he looked away. “Don’t say that,” he muttered. “Don’t say stuff like that.”
“Why?” she asked softly.
He shook his head and didn’t answer her. Just scrubbed a hand across his stubbled jaw and exhaled hard.
“Hey,” she said, softly placing a hand on his shoulder. He tensed but didn’t flinch. “You okay?”
He nodded.
She wanted to ask why he’d moved to Hidden Oaks, what he’d left behind in Chicago. She wanted to tell him she was amazed at how he’d rescued those kids a few weeks ago. Yet she knew none of those things were what he needed to hear right now. That now wasn’t the time for praise or for inquisition.
“Where’s your brother now? Is he still in Chicago?”
He shook his head. “Nope. He’s in L.A. Where you used to be.”
She raised her eyebrows in curiosity. “Is he an actor? Screenwriter? Director? Model?” she asked, rattling off the most common professions.
He laughed. “He’s an animator at a visual effects house. He does some amazing design work, and he emails a lot of it to me in advance, so I’m pretty lucky getting to see his work before anyone else. He’s the sensitive, artistic one,” he added playfully.
“Don’t kid yourself. You’re sensitive, too.”
He pretended to cringe.
“You are,” she said insistently. “And I like it. Anyway, so you’re a fireman and he’s an animator,” she said, stretching her arms out wide to show the distance between the two jobs.
“Don’t forget bar owner,” he added. “Though I believe I could say the same for you. Your brother’s a fireman and you’re a photographer who loves to draw, and would rather be inking designs on people’s skin.”
A smile bloomed on her face. He understood her so well already. “Yes, that’s me. And that’s so cool that your brother’s an artist too. I’d love to see some of the movies he’s worked on.”
“You’d like his stuff. He worked on an animated flick most recently, and was responsible for making sure the feathers on a talking bird looked realistic.”
“Speaking of animals, the talking and non-talking variety, I’m working on your raccoon,” she offered in a light voice as she stood. He rose with her. She watched his profile, and the corner of his lips quirked up.
“Are you now?”
She nodded. “Yep. Someday you’re going to have a raccoon tattoo. I just know it.”
“From your mouth to…” he trailed off as he turned to look at her, his eyes hooked on her mouth as he said those words. He reached toward her, running a finger across her lips. “Your beautiful, gorgeous mouth.”
Time stopped for a moment as she took in his words, his gesture, and the thoroughly tender and completely seductive way he talked to her. The seconds started again when he leaned forward, lightly dusting her lips with his. Then he broke the kiss and rested his forehead against hers. “Megan,” he said, his voice rough and full of need. “You make it so hard to resist you. I’m trying, I swear I’m trying. But I don’t know how to right now.”
She ached all over for him, a sweet and agonizing ache, and all she wanted was to soothe it. “I don’t know how to, either.”
Like falling snow that melts when it hits the ground, her reasons turned into nothing. Because this—the connection between them—this was something.
She also didn’t want to resist him. So she kissed him back. She didn’t take her time. She didn’t move in slowly. Instead, she gripped his hair in her fingers and kissed him deep and hard.
…
He wouldn’t be getting any awards for self-control. He wouldn’t be receiving a plaque for honoring a buddy’s wish.
At the moment, he didn’t have it in him to care.
When her lips fused with his as if nothing else mattered in the world, he lost all sense of why he wasn’t supposed to touch her. He forgot Travis’s warning in the press of her body, in the taste of her breath, in the sweet smell of her hair.
She was leading the kiss; her lips were crushing his, and she’d gone from curious and inquisitive to fevered and bursting with need. He liked both parts of her, maybe more than he should. He liked that she was open and caring, that she was fiery in the bedroom, and he liked the free spirit he saw in her. Right now though, what he liked most of all was how her touch made his body buzz, like his bones were humming. His mind went hazy, his dark thoughts slunk away, and all he was left with was the pure rush of the physical—the bolt of heat that tore through him, her sexy whimpers as they devoured each other in a frenzy of teeth and lips and tongue, her fingers speared through his hair, holding on for dear life, it seemed.