Startled, she looked up at me, the rabbit in her hand. I took her by the arms. It happened so fast, I wasn’t sure if I leaned down or if she rose on her tiptoes. Like a thunderclap, my mouth was on hers, hot and insistent. Her arms went around my neck and I pulled her closer. She parted her lips between mine, and I swept my tongue in her mouth, a hot, deep stroke as I explored the curves of her sweet body with my hands. She started to tremble in my arms, and my heart hammered in my ears. I could feel her breath, her tongue stroking mine. She met me stroke for stroke, making me wild for her. I knew I needed to back away, break the kiss, but I’d waited so long, wanted her for so long. All the tension and heat between us had ignited. I gathered her close to my chest and slanted my mouth to get better access, plundering her lips, leaving her clinging to me and gasping. My knee was between her legs before I knew it, and I felt the heat between her thighs through the fabric of her shorts. If she rubbed against my thigh, if I pressed a hand into the small of her back to arch her against me, it was over in a moment’s time. We broke apart.
“Sadie’s in the car,” I muttered, half-blind with arousal.
I got one glimpse of her passion-drugged eyes, her parted lips swollen from my kiss, and I was out the door. I snuggled the bunny into Sadie’s booster where she dozed and then drove off for home, for the safety of my secluded cabin where there was no temptation, no curvy, pie baking babysitter who filled out a pair of shorts like a wet dream.
I hadn’t been this wound up since I was a teenager. I’d never tipped over into obsession, not even in my earliest liaisons. There was something special, something dangerous about Rachel. Because this temptation was so powerful, the risk was so great. She was close to Sadie. She was insidiously easy to fit into our lives. She felt good there, felt right. I had started to want her, not just her body—all of her. I didn’t want to admit that, even to myself, but it was such a raw, wild want that I had no place to hide from it. I was in the grip of this attraction, this—infatuation. It made me feel like a fool. I should’ve seen this coming, should have hired someone else instead. But I knew I couldn’t have avoided it. I was willing to believe it was inevitable that I developed feelings for Rachel. She was warm and down to earth, funny and sexy and brave. Of course, I wanted to be with her. I just didn’t live that kind of life. So I was destined to be disappointed, to move on with a sense of regret and let it go.
I made Sadie brush her teeth and change to pajamas before bed, and she was asleep before I even read a story. She was so wiped out from the park that I let her skip a bath till in the morning. I went and took a shower, electrified and angry with myself.
13
Rachel
I stood there, completely locked up like I’d been hypnotized to remain in place. Probably, I could’ve moved if there’d been a fire or an emergency happening right in front of my face, but I wasn’t a hundred percent sure. It was the opposite of Sleeping Beauty. Instead of waking me up, his kiss put me in a trance. Leave it to me to get a fairytale backwards.
That kiss. Damn. I had no words for it. Unless we count ZING as a word, because there was a lot of zing-went-the-strings-of-my-heart going on show tune style in my bloodstream and my pulse was just tap dancing along with it. A wild electricity crackled through me. I had the unusual urge to just squeal right out loud. Because that was one hell of an incredible kiss.
You’d think after weeks of yearning and dreaming about it, that a kiss from Max would be a letdown. No real live, flesh and blood man could live up to that kind of expectation. Except he did. He blew the fantasy right out of the water. I’d had a theory that he was possibly a lazy kisser. That he didn’t make much effort. It was a lie I told myself to make me feel better. It was juvenile and silly, but I had told myself that men who look that amazing just don’t bother to learn to be good kissers. They think their overall attractiveness will make up for a lack of skill or finesse. Nope. Not that guy. That guy knew exactly what he was doing. And what he was doing was making my toes curl. If there was a kissing Olympics, not only would I volunteer to practice with him for the time trials or whatever, but he would win all the gold medals and other men would drop out of the competition with their egos destroyed.
I watched him shut the door behind him after he left hastily. Which was a nice way of saying he fled like I’d released a swarm
