Ashley shut both eyes, ashamed at how seriously out of control this day had gotten. She focused on breathing slow and thinking smart. Tried to remember why she’d even started running. What scared her? Shadows? Figments of her imagination? The wind in the trees? The rain? Or had someone really been out there? Man, it was hard to know for sure. Harder to relax. Two panic attacks in one day took a lot out of her.
“Was that you behind me on the stairs?” She had to know.
His voice rumbled deep and low under her ear. “Didn’t know you were ahead of me, but yeah. Elevator’s broke. I was in a hurry, so I hit the stairs.”
Wow. Tripp could be quiet. And she was a fool.
“I think I s-s-scared myself,” she admitted breathlessly, her nervous head bumping against the underside of his hard chin.
“Who’s the guy who said the only thing we have to fear is fear itself?”
Her cheeks puffed with a heartfelt gust of relief. “I have no idea. Roosevelt? Churchill?” Who cares?
Tripp was doing it again. Understanding. Somehow absorbing the sharpest edge of her panic. Sharing the terror she’d kept hidden for too long. Ashley squeezed her eyes tight, relieved but feeling stupid. “I think I could write the book on fear, title it ‘How to Scare Yourself for Dummies.’ My head always hurts after these attacks.”
“I’ll bet. You’re not going to pass out on me, are you?”
Lifting her chin, she looked up at him. Couldn’t miss the sincere glint in his emerald gaze. The way his eyes tracked her lips. The way her body arched into him. “I don’t think so, but I did think you were someone else when I couldn’t get my door to close.”
“I’m just me,” he murmured, his voice a velvet purr. “Who’d you think I was?”
“Never mind. It’s just me. I get nervous and—”
His head tilted a scant millimeter to his right. Instinctively, hers canted as well. They were breathing the same air.
“Tripp?” she asked, wondering how that bottom lip of his would taste.
“Ashley. Please,” he growled softly, the tip of his tongue sliding back and forth over that lip. Making it shine. “It’s been one helluva day. May I kiss you?”
She’d never been asked before. “W-would you?”
Tripp closed the distance between their breaths and mouths. Softly. Carefully. His lips brushed over hers, filling her with the tenderness of a worthy male.
Ashley lifted her free hand and cupped the hard angle of his jaw. Then brushed the pad of her thumb over the bristly whiskers shadowing it, matching the strokes of his tongue on her lips with the strokes of her thumb on his jaw. Then his cheek.
He asked without asking, the tip of his tongue softly licking the crease of her sealed lips, lighting an invisible fuse between her mouth and her core.
Breathing hard, Ashley granted him a way forward. Just a tiny step into an uncharted ocean. Just a kiss. Just the wildest risk she’d taken in a long time.
Tipping her back into the muscular crook of his arm, Tripp cradled her while their tongues began a slow exploration.
She licked at the slightly sweet taste of coffee on his mouth, but along with it, her nose inhaled the faint sting of antiseptic and the mellow, dark spice of his skin. The scents of musk and male crowded out the last of her fright.
She was a woman. He was all man. Hungrily, she breathed him into the empty cavern of her lonely heart. Ashley had kept herself separate and in hiding for so long. She wanted the sunshine that glowed in this man’s gorgeous eyes. She wanted to be free again. To live!
Tripp knew what he was doing. Manfully, he lifted a hand from her arm to her neck and threaded his fingers into her hair. A husky growl moaned out of him as he took over and deepened the kiss.
Ashley canted her head to reach more of him. So he could have more of her. There was no way she could ever have all of him. This was her breaking point, the line in the sand her attacker had drawn years ago. The barrier between her living free and hiding scared. As badly as she wanted her life back, she knew the second Tripp touched her breasts or asked for more than she could handle, she’d freak. This foolish daydream had to stop. She eased back, broke the kiss, and ended the fairytale before it broke her heart.
He took the separation well, moved his mouth to her forehead and pressed a breathy, fervent kiss there. Which put her nose in his chin. Breathing in all those salty, sexy, masculine pheromones helped her whisper, “I’ve never been with a man before.”
He didn’t laugh, didn’t even smile. Just eased far enough back from her face to let those sexy greens melt deep into her soul. “And I’ve never been with someone like you, Ashley. You’re so beautiful, so damned good.”
Ashley took his head between her trembling fingers, needing him to know he was wrong. Licking her lips, she took a deep breath and closed her eyes. Honesty was going to hurt.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Tripp watched Ashley suffer through whatever was troubling her. He’d seen plenty of frightened people before. She was that pretty fox in a trap, with no way out but to chew its foot off. So, he gave her a way forward. “I’m not pushing. Whenever you’re ready.”
Besides, he already knew what she’d gone through. A woman didn’t survive an assault like she had Friday night without a few night terrors.
When her head came up, two bright, shining orbs of teary self-recrimination stabbed his heart. But he also read guilt in those pretty eyes. Which pissed him off. She wasn’t guilty for what happened Friday night, damn it. It was bad enough that society blamed females for the heinous crimes committed against them, and the automatic guilt
