“Oh, um—”
“I don’t mean you. It’s…this. Like, last night I’d never heard of you. And now, I’m…”
What? She was what? I watched her mouth, waiting for the next word like the dogs were waiting for their dinner. When nothing came, I turned fully toward her, bent my head, and kissed her.
Hell. I was like a teenage version of myself, all nerves and excitement, moving so quickly that I smashed my mouth to hers, instead of touching it that first time. I almost pulled away before I realized she was into it. We’d pried our hands apart and hers—both of them—were on me, holding herself steady with my shoulder, but definitely pulling me closer with the one clamped around my neck.
Her little mouth made me hungry—all soft, curved lips and hot breath. I wanted to pull her onto my lap and eat her, but I calmed that beast right the hell down, or shoved it back. Temporarily.
Man, what was it about the taste, the smell, the feel of a woman? It’d been so long, it was like learning all over again, but I knew how to do this. Like riding a bike or climbing a tree, it was that initial hesitation I had to get over. I grabbed her face with my hands—not too tight, though I couldn’t help steadying her, holding her still for my mouth—and I tasted her with my tongue. She let out these gasps; hot, shuddering breaths against me.
“Goddamn.” What a sweet talker. “You taste so good.”
She’d stop this now, surely. I’d somehow tricked her into thinking I was something I wasn’t. It was the savior thing. Being yanked, last minute, from a falling car would do that to a person. Make them want you, or at least feel like they owed you something.
But she didn’t stop and I sure as hell wasn’t going to make her. Instead, she did what I’d pictured: climbed up and onto her knees, scooted forward, and got on my lap, wrapping her arms around my neck. For a few hot seconds, she leaned back enough to give me a look that I had no idea how to read, her shadowed eyes moving from the top of my head, down, side to side, from one eye to another, then back to my mouth. I let her look, my hands resting lightly on her hips, just waiting.
Wanting.
17
Christa
Good Lord, this man was hot. Not just hot, but sort of…fantasy-worthy. Hard and eager, with hands that demanded, without forcing. The way he watched me watch him right now, like an animal waiting for a sign before going in for the kill.
Going in for the kill?How was I even thinking this crap?
But even when I tried to scoff it away, that feeling remained, of being watched through the glittering eyes of a wary beast. There were layers in the look he gave me—instincts or something—that I could’ve sworn were predatory, despite the fact that he didn’t budge, didn’t hold me down. Didn’t attack, teeth first.
Whoa.My breath got all crazy just imagining that scenario.
Because, man, the guy could do whatever he wanted. I’d never met anyone stronger, never had my hands on muscles like these—not bulging like those Instagram assholes who spent every waking hour at the gym or snapping pics of themselves, but thick, supple—real. The man who saved my ass. Literally. And who kissed me like he wanted to eat me.
His hands went to my hips and pressed down, grinding me against him.
Following my own unexpected desires, I leaned in, not to turn over and show him my belly like some kind of prey, but to run my cheek over that beard and the skin above it, to smell his insanely attractive man-smell, to meet him on equal footing, to offer myself up, like the female of his species. Like this was right.
Or something.
Geez, what was with me? I let out a half giggle.
“What?” When he started to turn toward me, I kissed his ear to stop him, nipped it, and ran my lips along the scalding skin below.
“I can’t stop thinking of you like a…” I bit his neck and he grunted, the sound a fist reaching inside me to twist up my insides, to set them on fire and push the truth from my mouth. “An animal, or something.” I huffed out a nervous laugh, because my words sounded wrong once they were out. Insulting. “Not… Crap.” I swayed back to find him watching me, mouth flat, eyes narrowed and wary. I’d said exactly the wrong thing. “I didn’t mean—”
“I know what you meant.” He smiled. The expression turned the savage beast thing up about a hundred watts, but shoved a sharp wedge between us.
I considered shifting toward him again. He made that impossible by pushing me off him—albeit gently—and rising.
“Let’s have dinner.” Gone was the wild man I’d wanted to dig into seconds ago. This guy was remote. Had I hurt him? Or just come off like a creep?
“Right.” I blinked past a jolt of embarrassment and regret and something like shame, and followed him. Things had been going so well and I’d had to go and ruin it all with my big mouth.
He handed me plates and silverware and I set the table by the side window, then turned and watched him carve the chickens. His hands were deft and capable and now that I’d touched one, I knew for a fact that they had rough, sharp calluses. I unconsciously rubbed my fingers to my own soft palm, wondering again how I could fix the weirdness between us.
“I wasn’t fetishizing you.” Except maybe I was? Was that what I was doing? Turning him into some bestial fantasy, when he was just an introvert, living on his own? “That wasn’t what I meant.” Nor did I mean to open my mouth and say that just now. But I could never let things lie.
He stopped cutting and met my eye. “Fetishizing me?”
