Heat rolled through me, slow and deep. The world shrank to the warm circle of his arms and the solid line of his body and the faint taste of coffee still lingering on his lips.
He kissed me like he had time. Like he wasn’t in any rush to get anywhere except right here.
Something uncurled in my chest—a knot I hadn’t even known I was carrying. For ten years, I’d told myself a storywhere this man was the villain. Now he was kissing me like I was something precious, and I had no idea what to do with that.
The kiss deepened almost without my consent—his tongue brushing mine, his thumb sweeping small, slow circles against my hip through my sweater. My free hand slid up his chest, over the warm, firm plane of it, to the back of his neck. His skin was hot under my fingertips. He made a low sound in his throat that sent a shiver straight down my spine.
He backed me gently to the counter, careful to protect my head as he boosted me up onto it. The stainless steel surface was cool through my jeans, a sharp contrast to the heat pooling everywhere else. He stepped between my thighs, lining us up center to center, and my brain officially shorted out, despite the layers of clothes between us. I stopped thinking and let myself ride on sensation.
For the first time in a long time, that didn’t seem like a mistake.
His lips traced the corner of my mouth, the line of my jaw. “Tell me if you want me to stop.”
“I’ll kick you,” I managed, hooking my feet around his incredible ass.
He huffed a laugh. “Fair enough.”
He kissed me again, and I opened for him without hesitation. My hands slid under the neckline of his T-shirt, fingers splaying over warm, hard muscle. He shuddered, and the tiny, helpless noise that spilled out of him made something hot and hungry coil low in my belly.
I wanted him.
Not in some vague, abstract way.
Right now. Here. This man who’d pulled me out of a burning truck and helped rebuild my life from the inside out. This man who’d carried regret for a decade over words I’d misheard, andwho had apologized for them like it still mattered to him that he’d hurt me—even by accident.
The realization was terrifying and right and too much all at once.
Which was exactly when Esmerelda brayed loud enough to rattle the bolts.
The sound was so sudden and so close, I yelped against his mouth and jerked back. Powell’s hand tightened on my waist on instinct, steadying me as a furry gray head wedged itself between us.
Esmerelda stared up at us with wide, judgmental donkey eyes and brayed again, like she was lodging a formal complaint.
“You have got to be kidding me,” I gasped, half breathless, half hysterical.
Powell dropped his forehead to my shoulder and groaned. “I swear she has a sixth sense for bad timing.”
Esmerelda shoved her nose harder against Powell’s hip, and I tried not to think about how many health code violations were happening just by having her in the truck. Her whiskers tickled my leg through my jeans. I couldn’t stop the laugh that bubbled out of me, wild and giddy.
“Okay, okay.” I pushed gently at her big dumb head so I could slide down from the counter. “I get it. Boundaries. Or hay. One of those.”
Powell lifted his head, eyes still dark and blown but now threaded with helpless amusement. “She’s very protective.”
“Of whom?” I demanded. “Me or you?”
“Yes.”
I snorted as the absurdity of it all hit me in a wave. “We are not getting anything else done here.”
His gaze flicked down to my mouth and back up. Slowly. “Work-wise or…?”
“Any-wise,” I said. “I can’t concentrate with you five inches away and your emotional support donkey trying to referee.”
“She’s an unpaid consultant.”
“Give her a raise,” I said. “And then get me out of here.”
He stilled, that easy humor sharpening into something more focused. “Out of here how?”
