My mouth crashes into hers, swallowing whatever argument she was about to lob at me. Years of want, rage, grief—every feeling I’ve tried to bury in work and distance andbad decisions—roar to the surface all at once.
Her lips part on a shocked sound and I take advantage, deepening the kiss, backing her into the corner until there’s nowhere for her to go but into me.
My fingers fist in her hair, tilting her head, angling her mouth so I can devour her properly. I’ve kept this part of me on a leash for nine goddamn years. One taste and the leash snaps.
The rational part of my brain—the one that spent almost a decade pretending he didn't need this—has a lot to say about how catastrophically stupid this is.
Don’t fall for it, man. You know what she’ll do. She’ll hollow you out.
Inner me needs to shut his fucking mouth because this… Jesus Christ, this is what I’ve been searching for in every woman I’ve been with since her.
This is what I’ve never come close to finding since.
She tastes the same. Warm and sweet and a little like the cider she was nursing earlier. Familiar in a way that digs in, right in the center of my chest, and claws down.
Her hands curl in the front of my shirt.
She could push me away.
She doesn’t.
She pulls me closer.
When she gasps into my mouth, I swallow the sound, desperate for every piece of her I can claim.
“Tell me you don’t feel it,” I growl against her lips, dragging my mouth down to her throat, finding the spot that always made her shiver. I scrape my teethalong that sensitive patch of skin and she arches into me.
That’s more like it.
“Tell me again how easy it is to forget.”
My greedy hands slide under her sweater, mapping long-lost familiar territory.
The soft curve of her waist.
The delicate ridges of her ribs.
The heat of her skin burns into my palms as my hands remember paths my brain pretends it erased.
“I hate you,” she whispers, even as her fingers dig into my shoulders.
A dark laugh rumbles out of me against her skin. “No, you don’t.” I nip her jaw, catch her soft intake of breath. “That’s the problem, isn’t it? You never did.”
My thigh wedges between hers, and I can't stop the groan that escapes when she rocks against me.
All the careful distance I’ve built between us evaporates. There’s just her and me and this fucking window seat and every bad decision I’m one second away from making again.
She looks up at me, eyes bright with unshed tears. “Your grandmother’s the only one who saw us.” The words slip out, barely above a whisper. “Saw everything. The only one who understood sometimes love isn’t enough.”
“Bullshit.” I kiss her again, harder this time. Like I can punish her with it for the way she broke my heart. “Love is always enough. You were just too scared to believe it.”
“Your friendship with my brothers?—”
“Was never worth losing you.” My hands slip higher, thumbs grazing the undersides of her breasts. The touch a warning—a promise for where they’ll go next.
She shudders, her breath stuttering from between kiss-swollen lips.
When her nipples pebble against my palms, something hot and vicious punches through my chest.
