Which just made him laugh harder, and when he pulled her in for a hug, it felt so natural to go into his arms, the way she had so many times before.
However, this wasn’t old times, and in the new reality she was living, Kiah Langdon wasn’t just her friend, but had also been her lover. The man who’d shown her more pleasure than she’d ever dreamed possible.
So being hugged didn’t feel safe, or comfy-cozy the way it used to. Instead, her body reacted, heating and softening, her heart rate kicking into high gear, her nipples tightening until they ached.
She wanted him, so very badly, but couldn’t have him, and she searched for something to say to distract her from the need weakening her resolve.
“Do you remember the night by the lake, up at my parents’ cottage?”
There had been several, but he hummed assent, the sound rumbling into her cheek, as though the shared memory had drifted from her brain into his. “Just before we went off to residency. How could I forget? You asked me to run away with you.”
“Yes. I was terrified I wouldn’t be able to hack the program. That they’d figure out I was a fraud and kick me out.”
“Plus, your mom had that breast cancer scare, and your grandfather had just been diagnosed with Parkinson’s. It was a bad time for you.”
“But you talked me down off the ledge. Plus turning me down for the freedom flight.”
“I didn’t know it was a flight to freedom,” he said with a soft chuckle. “All I could picture was your dad and Warren hunting me down like a dog, thinking I’d kidnapped you.”
She snorted. “I doubt either of them would have minded much.”
He was quiet for a while, and that was when she realized his heart was pounding, too. He shifted his body slightly away from her and, guided by an impulse she couldn’t control, she shifted, too, bringing his erection flush against her stomach.
Kiah inhaled, his chest expanding, muscles rippling, and Mina caught back a moan of desire.
How could she want him so much, even knowing it would never lead anywhere? Where was her pride? Her sense of self-preservation?
“Why do I want you the way I do, Mina?” Kiah’s voice was quiet, almost contemplative, but rough. “When I close my eyes at night, all I can see is you. When I hear your voice, I remember you crying out my name. It’s like you’ve gotten into my blood, and now I can’t get you out.”
She was trembling, but made one last-ditch effort to lighten the mood, to break the spell of moonlight and lust that had settled over them.
“Are you calling me a virus?”
“If you are, I’m afraid it’s incurable.” Now his voice was anguished, the pain unmistakable to her Kiah-sensitive ears.
It made her realize how much he didn’t want to feel that way, how much the change in their relationship hurt him, although she didn’t know why. And knowing he was hurting made her hurt, too.
She took a step back, easing out of his arms so as to look up into his beautiful, moonlit and shadowed face, wishing she could see whatever it was in his eyes.
“We don’t have to go on with this, Kiah. We can just be friends, no matter how hard that might be. We’ve come too far to lose what we do have, and we can move forward from this.”
When he pulled her back in against his chest and buried his face in the space between her neck and shoulder she thought he was going to acquiesce.
But instead, he murmured, “One more night, Mina. Please. Give me one more night with you.”
And it didn’t even cross her mind to refuse.
Kissing on the beach, in the moonlight, was enough to drive him to lunacy with the sheer, urgent intimacy of his mouth on hers, the interplay of their tongues.
He knew it wasn’t right, that he was flirting with destruction, but Kiah couldn’t resist Mina’s lure, the need that drove through him each time she spoke, or laughed, or simply breathed.
His hands roamed her body, slipping beneath her shirt to slide across the skin of her back, and he felt the goose bumps rising in their wake when he reversed course. And he shivered at the sensation of her hand on his nape, pulling him closer, and her soft breasts against his chest.
Wanting was like fire in his veins, or lava, making him hard, reducing him to a column of desire, ready and willing to be incinerated by the woman in his arms.
Something about Mina spoke to his soul, called to him, so he raced to her like a sailor to a siren.
She’d joked about being a virus, but at times it felt exactly like that. A virus without treatment or cure, that never left the system but flared up at will.
This, he promised himself, would be the last time he made love with her. If this madness wasn’t corralled, contained, it would devour him whole, leaving nothing behind.
“Let’s go home,” he said, coming up for air. “Before I try to make love to you here.”
“We can’t, not yet.” Her voice was raw, as desire-rough as his own. “Miss Pearl will still be up.”
He cursed, dropping his chin down to his chest, her giggles lightening his heart, although they did nothing to tamp down his libido. It was on the tip of his tongue to say he didn’t care, but that wasn’t strictly true. Granny not only had very traditional views on how men and women should behave, but she also harbored hope he and Mina would get together as a couple.
She hadn’t been reticent about saying so to him either, over the years, although surprisingly she hadn’t mentioned it recently.
There was no way he was giving her any false hope by letting it be known he and Mina had slept together.
Resting his forehead against Mina’s, he said, “The joys of being a thirty-five-year-old man who lives with his grandmother.
