There is zero good that can come of being this close to Tavi Lightly when she’s staring at me like I’m the one thing that can make or break her entire world, her eyes getting shiny, her breath coming quicker, her pulse fluttering at the base of her neck.
“You shouldn’t be so nice to me,” she whispers.
“Has anyone ever been nice to you?”
She blinks quickly. “Of course. People are nice to me all the time.”
It’s a lie.
I know it as surely as the sun rises every morning, as surely as Willie Wayne and Deer Drop Floyd will argue over who caught the biggest fish at the lake, and as surely as I know that I should not kiss Tavi Lightly right now.
Shouldn’tandwon’taren’t getting along in my brain, though.
She might feel fake, but I don’t know a single person in town who can say she’s said a bad thing to them, except maybe her family.
And I’m pretty sure her family’s earned it.
She deserves nice things too.
I lightly rub my thumb over her chin. “You have chocolate all over your face.”
“Thank you for helping get it off.”
Her voice is a breathy whisper, and all that progress I was making on taming my cock flies out the window. “My pleasure. Anytime. Ah, look. It’s even here.”
Here.
On her lips.
Which I’m touching with my own, becausesomeoneneeds to kiss this woman and show her she’s worthy.
Kissing her sends a new sensation flowing through my entire body. Her lips are unfamiliar, but they’re soft and warm and taste like chocolate. She’s the first new woman I’ve kissed in almost six years, the first woman I’ve kissed at all in two years.
It’s foreign.
Butgood.
And wrong—I should not be kissing Tavi Lightly—butfuck.
She parts her lips and deepens the kiss, and I am here for this ride.
Her body presses against mine. One arm tightens around my waist, and she slides the other hand up my chest, higher, over my shoulder, and leaves a trail of fire across my skin as she rakes her fingernails up my neck and into my hair, expertly avoiding my wound.
I should stop.
But I don’t want to stop.
Jesus, I miss kissing. Kissing and touching and stroking and sex.
I miss sex.
I miss—
A dog growls and barks at my feet, and I leap back, dazed and startled, and fall back on the kitchen table, smearing chocolate all over my hands.
Tavi blinks at me.
Pebbles growls.
