I wish I could cry about this. I wish I could scream into the desert, frighten away the hapless bunnies, send the pack rats scurrying to their middens. I'd choose crying over the reaction that comes naturally: mean.
I lift my chin. "Why do you think I said nothing more than modest kisses? It's because I find you repulsive. I'd rather lick the bottom of the shoes I wore when I married you than have your tongue in my mouth."
A muscle in his jaw twitches. His voice, deep and gravelly and curling low beneath my belly, warns, "Careful, Menace. I like it when you're mean." He takes another step into me, and now I'm bad-tempered enough to move back.
The boulder is closer than I realized, and my back presses against it. My water bottle drops and my breath hitches, a touch below ragged, my pulse thrumming as electricity zips through my veins. "I bet you only like girls with daddy issues."
He takes another step, dropping his lips to my ear, caging me in with his hands on either side of my head. He smells of salty sweat, cedar and orange. "Watch what you say about my wife. She has daddy issues."
His audacity draws a gasp from me. The words are on-target, as accurate as any arrow hurtling toward a bullseye. I don't like them, but they're not wrong.
The front of my thin tank top grazes his chest when I drag a much needed deep breath into my lungs. "You seem protective of your wife," I sass, but the effect is lackluster. Thanks, hormones.
Dom runs the tip of his nose over the shell of my ear. Chill bumps break out over my forearms, even as the sunshine streams over us.
"I'll protect her from villains of all forms. I'll even defend her against herself."
I whimper. I don't mean to, and I hate the sound. His words have pierced my chest, landed in the center of my heart.
Dom pulls back, but only a few inches so he can look at me. "I couldn't stand the thought of the first time I really experiencekissing you to be in front of your family, or for show. It's personal, and private, and I demand it be genuine."
I want to give in. I want to wrap my arms around his neck and lose myself to his mouth. Closing my eyes, I tip my head back until it meets the hard surface. "We have to stop at kissing," I tell him, even as my lady part is nearly pulsating at the top of my thighs.
"Of course," he agrees. "You deserve a lot more than a dusty, sweaty fuck in the desert."
It's startling, hearing it come from his mouth, but in the best way. A way that makes me squirm, sending heat up my thighs. Projecting images into my brain of precisely what it is he says I deserve more than.
Dom's hand works its way behind my head, cupping me. His other hand slips over the small of my back. "What I want from you right now is the kind of kiss that would make your family blush."
My eyes open, and I take him in. His angular jaw, the plains of his face, his denim eyes and the way the sun lightens them. "Yes, please."
I meet him halfway, because I am as ready as he is.
Dom is not gentle, or rough, but lands at the sweet spot between. Hot and light against my mouth, and then deeper, fuller. Desire races through me, pinpricks along my skin as if I've tangled with a cactus. I reach for his shirt, fisting the fabric, drawing him closer to me. His hand leaves my back, gliding up my rib cage. At my neck, he swipes his thumb over my jaw.
He leans into me until I'm against the boulder once more, the hard cold of the rock cutting through my shirt, the knotted fabric at the bottom pressing into my lower back. I sigh into his mouth. Perhaps it's a groan. His kisses turn deeper, rougher, less contained. My hands run over his shoulders, his back, his waist, pulling him closer to me.
I don't know when the last time was that I felt this way. Maybe never. This need, this want, this urge to lose myself entirely to this man.
His touch drifts lower, feathering over the top of my chest, left bare by the cut of my shirt. My hands rake through his hair, and I arch into his touch. He cups my chest with one hand, his other hand still protecting the back of my head from the unforgiving boulder we're leaning against. I groan into his mouth when his thumb brushes over my shirt, pressing myself into him, willing our clothes to melt away.
He breaks the connection of our mouths, spinning me until my hands are braced on the rock. His lips skim my upper back, his teeth combing over my skin, and a hungry groan lifts in his throat. He flattens against me, his hand snaking around my midsection, dipping under my shirt. My backside presses into him, his hardness. Heat floods the tops of my thighs.
We haven't spoken, we are simply a hurricane of craving and yearning, ache and thirst. How can one kiss be enough? Kisses this hot can never satisfy. For the rest of my life, all kisses will be compared to this.
His hand finds my bra, slips into it. My flesh fills his palm, his thumb stroking my nipple. "Cecily," he says my name roughly into my hair. "This is?—"
He cuts off. What was he going to say? This is bad? Good? Wrong? Stupid?
"I know," I say, hoarse. This kiss is a combination of many things, and I don't think I want to hear him name them.
I'm so delirious, so crazed for this man, that I'm considering suggesting we go back to our room. Will it really make it that much harder to get an annulment if we give in, just this once? Can we lie? I'd known I was attracted to Dom, but this physical response to his hands, his mouth, is beyond what I knew to be possible for me. I want him, plain and simple.
"Dom—"
A loud yell sounds from the distance. We freeze, dragging in heavy breaths. I look down at my breast that has popped out from my shirt, held in Dom's strong hand. "What was that?" he asks, lips at my ear. His thumbnail scuffs my nipple, back and forth, making my legs a little less sturdy.
"I don't know," I whisper, and the sound comes again. It resembles a greeting, aheyorhello.
