Chapter One
Kit
For some reason, we’re outside, and it’s unseasonably warm. I’m talking mid-summer warmth. The kind where the leaves rustle with a gentle breeze and the sun hits your shoulders with a slow golden weight that reminds you to breathe.
We’re not supposed to be out here together. Heck, we’re not supposed to be anywhere together, but the tiny glacial lake with hike-only access is our safe spot. No one we know comes out this far, and if they did, there’s so much space, we’d be able to keep our distance from them. Right now, we’re alone. Well, except for the cicadas humming in the distance, though I doubt they’d tell our secrets to anyone.
The aqua blue lake is still broken only by the occasional fish that rises and ripples through the surface. Even if I weren’t secretly meeting up with my dad’s best friend, I’d spend time out here, though I doubt it’d be quite this fun.
“Does this place belong to us now?” Duke leans into my neck with heat as he talks, sending a shot of something warm and tingling through my thighs and into my clit.
My gaze climbs, catching on the dark ink that streaks up his arms, on the wide expanse of his chest, on the lines of his jaw beneath the scruff of his beard. He’s massive. There’s no doubt about that, but it’s more than that. There’s a quiet authority about him. A weight that matches the sun on my skin.
It’s addicting. He’s addicting.
His deep voice, his big rough hands, the way he looks at me like I matter. Even the shadows bend around him as though the forest sees what I’m seeing too.
“What does it mean if this place is ours?” I say, my voice barely above a whisper.
He brushes his wide palm over the side of my face, his dark eyes locked on mine. “It means no one can stop us.”
I swallow hard, and though I mean to keep breathing, I’m pretty sure I stop. How can I breathe when the man I’ve been fantasizing about for years is leaning in to kiss me?
My chest tightens as his massive frame presses against mine. The ridge of his hardening cock is apparent the closer we get.
What the hell is happening?
In the moment, I try to convince myself that this feeling isn’t real, that it’s a manufactured emotion based on the thrill of being wanted and the fear of being discovered.
Basically, it’s hormones.
It’s just hormones.
Rationally, I know this, but the more I tell myself this truth,the less my body wants to listen, and before I realize what I’ve done, I’m wrapped around his waist with my back against a pine tree, the smokey spice of whatever cologne he’s wearing melding with the forest as his lips brush mine.
His breath is hot and his beard is rough, as a low, wanting growl rumbles in his throat.
This is happening. This is really happening!
He grips me tighter, and another one of those buzzing waves ripples through my body.
God, I want him. I want every part of him right now.
The brim of his trucker cap bumps my forehead as the kiss deepens, and I reach up and twist it back, somehow locking our bodies closer together.
His tongue twists against mine, and he growls again and again, trailing wet heat up onto the lobe of my ear, down the side of my neck, and onto my shoulder.
“I need you,” I moan, legs wrapped around his waist. “I need you right now.” The words have barely left my lips when a heavy banging sound sucks me from the fantasy and lands me flat on the couch in front of the fireplace.
No! No! No!
I close my eyes and try to return to dreamland for five more minutes. Five minutes. That’s all I need. That’s long enough to know what it’s like to be with him. To feel his calloused hands all over my body, to feel the weight of his frame on top of me.
“You okay?”
I jump back at the voice, then glance up to see my best friend Charlotte in the kitchen as she pours a cup of coffee.
What? It takes a second to register what’s happening before I remember she was going to stop over on her way home from the craft store tonight.
