Million Dollar Cowboy (Cupid, Texas #5)(33)

He lowered his head, but never took his gaze from hers and his mouth softened and widened and he moistened his lips and she thought, God, he's gonna do it, he's gonna kiss me.

Her heart was slamming madly against her ribs, knock, knock, knocking. She could have run. She could have ducked. She could have hollered "Stop!"

But Kaia did none of those things.

Instead, she went up on her tiptoes, leaned in and moistened her lips too. Her entire body throbbed like an exposed nerve, burning, tingling, achy, and sore with need. She needed him. Desperately.

"Ridge," she whispered his name again. "Ridge."

He dipped his head lower still, and panic flooded her bloodstream. He was going to do it. He was going to kiss her. Yes he was. A kiss she'd been dreaming of for more than a dozen years.

He sank his big hands on her shoulders. They were heavy, strong, anchoring her to the earth.

Her legs were rubber bands. She had no idea how they were even holding her up. And the rest of her? She was swimming in heat. Red zone. She knew that. Temperatures rising. Trouble, trouble, trouble. The dam was going to break. Danger!

Impossible to explain how scared she was, and still, she did not run.

He wrapped an arm around her waist.

She sucked in an audible breath, debated her sanity.

His Adam's apple bobbed, and for the first time, he looked affected by what was going on between them. Their gazes were chained together and if a bomb were to detonate right beside them, Kaia doubted they would even notice.

A cloud slid across the sky, drawing a curtain over the slender moon, splashing everything in blackness.

"Kaia." He groaned.

"Yes?"

"Shh."

His mouth found hers easily in the dark, and he let out a low laugh as if completely delighted by what he found.

Her breath grew short as sizzling hot tingles swept from his lips to hers. It was an immediate and insistent chemical reaction. Urgent signals of yearning shot up and down her nerve endings. Vibrating sensation blasted over her cheeks and nose, a face mask of lightning. Brilliant pulses of indigo light throbbed before her eyes, multiplying rapidly until her entire body was engulfed with the hard, insistent thunder of sexual energy.

Her ears buzzed, rang, sang-a clear, high-pitched, joyous sound, heavenly and honeyed. The sound of the universe whirling through space.

She could not believe what was happening. Tingles. Swirls. Hums. So much humming! Like a million bees swarming her brain, nourishing her with a steadfast drone.

Him, they buzzed. Him. Him. Him.

The electricity blazing through her was wild and raw. An urgent primal yearning that both consumed and disoriented her. She wanted to pull back and at the same time rush headlong into the feeling. 

He deepened the kiss and in that deepening, the humming grew louder and louder and louder still.

Kaia was knocked agog.

Amazed.

Terrified.

Confused.

All these years, through all the times she'd been kissed, Kaia had not ever experienced anything like this. It left her with a million questions, primary among them:

What was happening to her?

His tongue skimmed along hers and it was the single most shocking, unsettling, fascinating, elating, and incredible kiss she'd ever received.

It occurred to her that she might actually be losing her mind.

And then she remembered.

The stories Granny Blue had told her. Stories she'd thought were nothing more than Granny's fanciful, Native American fairy tales. No different than tales from the Brothers Grimm or Disney princesses.

Legend. Lore. Myth.

Based on the fable that when your one true love, your lifelong soul mate kisses you for the first time, you will hear a sweet, ethereal, incomparable song in your head; a sound as solid and sure and unmistakable as any musical note.

She heard it now with such substance and clarity, she was ready to declare with MythBusters glee: Myth Confirm! There was such a thing as the Song of the Soul Mate. It did exist.

At least right now. Here. In her head.

How could this be? What odd quirk of science or fate had turned her into a human receiver, picking up airwaves thick with this love song?

Him. Him. Him.

Every cell in her body vibrated to the humming energy.

Did Ridge hear it too? She closed her eyes, tried to remember the specific details of Granny Blue's tale, but Ridge's mouth was too warm, the urges pushing through her too insistent for her to concentrate on anything but the man claiming her as his own.

"Do you hear that?" she whispered.

"Hear what?" he murmured, his eyes heavily lidded, his tone sultry. He dragged his mouth over her jawline, nibbling as he went.

"Never mind," she said, and melted against his hard, masculine chest. The hay-sweet air teasing her nostrils, and another scent . . . the smell of bay rum, male skin, and some exotic, sun-warmed spice like cardamom.