“Ouch,” she said. “That’s going to hurt.” Meaning his head in the morning.
“It won’t be the worst hurt I’ve had.”
“Why are you here?” she asked again.
He dragged a hand to her waist, rubbing a thumb over the strip of naked skin above the waistband of her shorts. “Why are you?”
The calloused pad tightened her skin. A thrill ran up her spine.
His gaze sharpened. Awareness darkened his eyes. Like that day in the woods, he saw her. He saw right through her to the secrets she carried in her heart.
The bottle fell on the ground with a thump, the liquor making a sloshing sound. He fastened both hands around her waist and lifted her to straddle him. Her pulse spiked. He seemed to take in every blink of her eyelashes and every whisper of air she dragged through her lips, reading her like a book. When he smoothed his palms over her sides under her T-shirt, he carefully turned a page, and found another shiver written on it.
Satisfaction heated his gaze. For a man who was drunk, he watched her with cunning attention.
He was drunk.
“I should go,” she whispered.
He tightened his hold. “Not yet.”
Almost innocently, he flicked a thumb over her nipple. The touch was light, but it sent a jolt through her body. The tip hardened under the cotton of her bra. Heat bloomed under her skin.
“You’re jumpy,” he said in a raspy voice. “Are you frightened or excited?”
Both, but she wasn’t going to admit that. Pushing on his shoulders, she fought to get up. “I really should go.”
With one arm wrapped around her waist, he held her in place while he covered her breast with his palm. The broadness of his hand swallowed her curve. Her breath caught. Heat spread through her belly to her core. She opened her mouth on a protest, but thoughts and words vanished when he flipped up the cup of her bra, exposing her breast under the T-shirt. She could help the moan that fell from her lips as little as the perverse expectation that built in the pit of her stomach, silently begging to feel the calloused pads of his fingers on her naked skin. Just a little, then she’d pull away.
“Still want to run away?” he asked in a seductive tone.
She barely summoned the willpower to give the right answer. “Yes.”
“That’s not what your body is saying,” he said, finally giving her what she wanted by squeezing her nipple between a forefinger and thumb. “Not if this is anything to go by.”
An echoing ache throbbed between her thighs. If he still had any doubts about how aroused she was, the sharp intake of her breath when he rubbed his thigh against the seam of her shorts gave him the answer.
At the sound, his nostrils flared. He kept her grounded with his unwavering attention, holding her gaze as he stroked a palm up her thigh under the hem of her shorts. She gasped when he brushed a finger over her groin, tracing the elastic of her panties.
“I think we’re going—” She was going to say too fast, but he’d pushed away the elastic. “What are you—”
Another gasp, louder this time, strangled her words when he ran a pad over her slit. Her skin contracted under his touch, her inner muscles clenching around emptiness. Her folds turned slick.
When he discovered her deepest secret, he uttered a sound close to a growl. “You’re wet for me.”
His voice was raw and primal, another cue for her to run, but she was a rabbit and he the headlights.
Gripping her hair in a ponytail, he pulled back her head and, before she could find her bearings, pressed their mouths together. His lips were warm and soft. They tasted like caramelized brandy apples, the bitter of burned sugar mixed with the sweet. The kiss was so gentle she didn’t put up her defenses, and when his tongue stole inside her mouth it was too late. She was lost.
After years of hiding and watching, imagining what it would feel like, she finally knew. The visuals from her memories made the experience double as powerful. She knew his cheeks hollowed when he sucked her tongue into his mouth. She knew his left cheek dimpled when he tasted the outline of her lips with unconcealed hunger. She knew the square line of his jaw hardened when he nipped her bottom lip before dragging it out.
Oh, God, this was hot. Threading her fingers through his hair, she held him close. The strands were surprisingly soft. The moment she touched him, he deepened the kiss, infusing it with an urgency that had alarm bells go off in her mind, but his gentle hands on her hips gave her unspoken assurance.
She returned the kiss with matching wildness. It was like falling from heaven into the lap of a dark angel. The searing heat melted her reason. It was only when he popped the button of her shorts with effortless precision that she came to her senses.
Panting, she pulled away.
He folded a hand around her nape and dragged her back. “Shh. Let me touch you. I only want to make you come.”
Flames leapt in her stomach. He was her first love, her first kiss—Iwig excluded, but that didn’t count—and it only seemed right that he’d be her first orgasm.
“Joss.” She rubbed against him.
“Fuck, yeah. Say it just like that, sweet girl.”
Claiming her mouth again, he slipped a hand inside her shorts, under the elastic of her underwear. Lightly, like a reverent touch, he traced the seam of her folds. When he reached her clit, she jerked.
“You’re sensitive,” he said, making it sound like the sweetest praise.
Gathering her wetness, he rubbed a circle around the bundle of nerves. The pleasure that shot through her body arched her hips. She’d never touched herself like this, couldn’t make herself do it, not even in the darkness of her room alone in her bed, not when she’d be forced to come out of hiding and face herself. Hiding was safer,
