He laughed, and I felt the rumble of it in my arm, which was still pressed against his chest. “Just kidding. It’s a splinter.”
“That was so not funny,” I grumbled.
“Sorry,” he whispered, not sounding at all contrite. He spoke the word so close to my ear that his breath tickled my skin in a way that sent a shiver through my body, one he couldn’t have failed to notice.
I heard him inhale deeply, like he was breathing in my scent. Then his warm fingers touched the skin on my back, lighting a fire along my spine.
“I think I can…” He paused, and I felt the tiniest sting by my shoulder blade. “Yep. Got it.” He ran his thumb over the spot, and the heat simmering in my back shot through my bloodstream, invading every part of me. “No blood,” he declared. “It just pierced a layer or two of skin.”
“Thank you,” I whispered. I hadn’t meant to speak so quietly, but his touch had snatched my breath away.
He shut off the flashlight app, but his phone still gave off a bluish light.
I let my hair fall down my back as he shifted the sleeve of my sweater up my arm, his knuckles grazing my skin. He caught alock of my hair as it swung into place and let it slide slowly through his fingers. I looked up at him, my chest rising and falling faster than normal. He met my gaze and his night-sky eyes seemed to glow with blue fire in the light from his phone.
All the nerve endings near the surface of my skin buzzed like they were overloading.
I could have sworn electricity crackled in the air around us. I half expected to see sparks as Wyatt’s phone went to sleep, plunging us into darkness.
“Emersyn.” His voice was jagged with desire.
The sound of it untethered me from my misgivings and hesitancy.
I slid a hand up around his neck and pulled him down toward me. Except I didn’t need to pull him, because as soon as my fingers made contact with his skin, his lips were there to meet mine, at first with gentle brushes and nudges, then with heat and hunger that stoked the flames burning inside me.
Something hit the floor with a thud, but neither of us paid any attention. I tangled my fingers in the hair at the nape of his neck.
Wyatt’s hands slid down my sweater as he changed the angle of the kiss, sending me right to the edge of a chasm that was nothing but him. Nothing but us. I silently cursed the knitted strands of yarn between us, but then my sweater rode up and his fingers grazed my lower back, skin against skin. I gasped against his mouth, my eyes fluttering open. Our gazes locked in the darkness, fire on fire, then our lips found each other again. Wyatt deepened the kiss and tipped me over the edge of that chasm.
Light flared around us.
For the briefest of seconds, I thought we’d exploded like a supernova.
Then Wyatt let me slide slowly out of his grasp, and I landed with a jarring thud back in reality.
Theo sat outside the now-open door, grinning like a Cheshire cat. “Found you!”
Chapter
Twenty-Seven
Flustered, I raked my fingers through my hair and adjusted my sweater. “We were just…”
My gaze bounced to Wyatt and away again. I couldn’t look him in the eye without remembering the feel of his hands on me, without reliving the mind-blowing kiss that had left my lips tingling and my brain scattered. I could still feel trails of fire on my lower back where his fingers had run over my skin.
Theo smirked at us. “Debriefing?” she finished for me.
I stepped out of the cubbyhole. “Um…yes.” I scowled when Theo’s smirk didn’t disappear. “Took you long enough to find us.”
She spun her wheelchair around. “I knew where you were ages ago, but I thought you might want a little more time fordebriefing.”
Wyatt retrieved his phone from the floor—the cause of the earlier thud, I presumed—and closed the door to the dumbwaiter shaft as he joined me out in the hall. His arm brushed against mine, sending sparks through my bloodstream that nearly overloaded my brain.
I scurried after Theo, who was rolling swiftly toward the lobby.
“Have you found Livy yet?” I asked.
Wyatt followed us with his long, easy strides, but—for the sake of my still-fuzzy brain—I refused to look his way.
