His fingers continued to explore her jaw, her cheek, the thinner skin over her temple, the slope of her nose in spite of the lust baying in his head like howling dogs. He followed the graceful arches of her eyebrows before traveling back down to trace the upper curve of her mouth, linger in the shallow dip in the middle. Then, he moved to that plumper bottom lip, savoring the soft give of it under his fingertips. He didn’t offer just his thumb the treat of it. All his fingertips got in on the pleasure of the caress.
Her breath hitched, and again he fought back a moan at the gentle gust of air against his suddenly overly sensitive skin. Words crowded at the back of his throat.
Tell me I can have this temptation of a mouth that has woken me up, hard and hurting, for days now.
Will you let me fuck this mouth, Sophie? Will you let me defile it so you can taste the dirtiness of my kiss for days? Weeks?
But he didn’t utter them. Instinct warned him that breaking this lust-drenched and pulsing silence with any sound would rip this opportunity away from him. Shatter the cords that held them here in this moment—cords that shimmered with heat but were as fragile as glass.
He’d hungered for this chance for too long. Battled himself over it too hard to abdicate it.
So, instead, he planted his thumb in the middle of the bottom curve, pressed until the tip of his finger grazed the edges of her teeth. When she didn’t draw away from him but tilted her head forward to lean into the pressure, he shuddered.
And when she parted those beautiful lips and flicked her tongue over his flesh, he had his answer.
Not bothering to trap his groan in this time, he dipped his head and took her. Releasing the greedy sound into her mouth, replacing his thumb with the slick glide of his tongue.
God, the taste of her.
Sweet like the butter-pecan ice cream she’d been eating. Sultry like air thick and perfumed after a spring rain. Heady like a shot of whiskey. Deliciously wicked. Like sex.
With hands going rough with greed, he burrowed one into her hair, fisting the strands and tugging. Tugging until her mouth was right where he wanted it...needed it. Her swallowed her small whimper, giving her a growl in return as she opened wider for him. Granting him entrance to her. To heaven.
He thrust between those beautiful lips, tangling his tongue with hers, dancing, dueling. Because Sophie wasn’t a passive participant. Just as she challenged him in his office, in a newspaper conference room or a gym, she gave as good as she got here, as well. She sucked and licked, stroking into his mouth to demand and take.
His grip on her hair and hip tightened, dragging her closer, impossibly closer. His hips punched forward, grounding his erection against the softness of her belly. Fire ripped a scorching path up his spine, then back down to his dick. Jesus, she was about to set him off like a teenager copping his first feel behind the gym bleachers. Cocking his head, he delved deeper, a desperate hunger for more digging into him. One nip of her lips, one sample of her taste, and he was hooked, ravenous for more.
“Josh,” she breathed against his damp lips. Hearing the abbreviated version of his name had his flesh hardening further, had him aching. And he couldn’t not reward her—hell, thank her—with another drugging kiss and roll of his hips.
The ring of a phone shattered the thick haze of lust that enclosed them.
He lifted his head, the air in his lungs ragged and harsh. She stared up at him, those storm-gray eyes clouded with the same desire coursing through him like electrified currents. Her swollen mouth, wet from his tongue, glistened, and he’d lowered his head, submitting to the sensual beckoning of them when the peal of the phone jangled again.
Dammit.
Disentangling his hands from her hair and releasing the sweet curve of her hip, he stepped back, reaching in his pocket for his silent cell phone. At the same time, Sophie retrieved hers from the front pocket of her bag. Tapping the screen, she held the cell to her ear.
“Hi, Althea,” she said, her gaze meeting his for a second before she turned away. Althea Granger, the editor in chief of the Falling Brook Chronicle. Her boss. “Yes, that’s not a problem. Has anyone else picked up the story yet?”
A frigid deluge of water crashed over him in a wave.
For moments, he’d felt young again. Free again. He’d allowed himself to forget who Sophie was. Who he was. But reality had a way of slapping the hell out of a person and reminding him that life wasn’t hand-holding and ice-cream cones or kissing a beautiful woman. It was hard, sometimes grueling work, disappointment and constantly brushing off scraped knees and bruised hands to get up and face it again.
He could still taste the unique and addictive flavor of her on his lips, his tongue. But he couldn’t let Sophie
