Without stopping to consider what a terribly bad idea it was, I threaded my fingers through his long hair and tugged his mouth down over mine.
The moment our lips touched, it was like striking a match in a room full of gasoline. Two years of distance, of careful boundaries and polite silence, incinerated in the space between one heartbeat and the next.
Teddy’s hand abandoned the towel to bury itself in my wet hair, angling my head to deepen the kiss while his other arm banded around my waist, lifting me clean off the floor.
My legs wrapped around his hips on instinct, and the towel gave up its fight with gravity, pooling to the floor between us. I should have cared. Should have felt exposed, vulnerable, all the things a reasonable person would feel when suddenly naked in their ex-husband’s hallway.
Instead, I felt alive. Electric. Like I’d been asleep for years and had finally, blessedly, woken up.
His tongue swept into my mouth—the taste of him something I’d tried to forget, one that had haunted me through six hundred andeighty-two nights of sleeping alone. My body immediately softened, every cell recognizing its other half and sighing in relief.
“Mine,” I gasped between kisses, not sure if I was answering his earlier question about the lingerie or staking my own claim. My nails scraped against his scalp, drawing a growl from deep in his chest that vibrated through me.
His beard scraped against my sensitive skin, leaving a trail of delicious friction from my jaw to my collarbone. I’d have beard burn tomorrow, visible evidence of this moment of insanity, and I wanted it. Wanted to wear his marks like a badge of ownership.
“Kels,” he breathed against my throat, and I felt the vibration of my name all the way to my toes. “Baby, I need?—”
“Yes,” I said before he could finish, because whatever he needed, the answer was yes. Had always been yes, even when we were destroying each other. “Please, Teddy, please?—”
Time collapsed. We could have been in our mid-twenties, sneaking quickies during Addie’s naptime. Or thirty-five, reconnecting after a long stretch of long club runs. Or eighteen, fooling around behind one of the storage buildings at the clubhouse, convinced we’d invented this feeling.
His thumb brushed over my nipple, and I made a sound that would have embarrassed me if I’d had any functioning brain cells left. My body was already tightening, ridiculously close to coming from the slightest touch. I fumbled blindly for his zipper, breathless and half-crazy with need.
And then—because the universe had a warped sense of humor—the oven timer went off.
The shrill beeping cut through the haze of lust like a bucket of ice water. We froze, chests heaving and eyes wide with shock.
“Fuck,” he muttered, his forehead dropping to my shoulder.
“The casserole,” I said stupidly, as if he couldn’t hear the timer screaming from the kitchen.
For a moment, neither of us moved. His body still pinned mine to the wall, my legs still wrapped around his waist, both of us caught between what we wanted and what we definitely shouldn’t be doing.
Teddy recovered first, gently lowering me back to the groundbefore bending to retrieve my towel from the floor. I snatched it from his hand, and he turned away, giving me privacy—like he hadn’t seen every inch of me a million times before.
I opened my mouth to say as much when I caught the subtle shift of his shoulders, the unmistakable hitch in his stance, and realized he was adjusting. Trying to get himself under control enough to drag his zipper back up.
When he turned back to face me, his expression was strained, the muscle in his jaw ticking.
I tugged the towel tighter around my body, shaking with the clarity of what we’d almost done and how badly I still wanted it to happen. A few seconds more, and we would have complicated everything exponentially. We would have kept going, up against the wall in his hallway, and I would have let him. I would have soaked up every ounce of pleasure and aftercare he could offer, and then what? Crawled away, pretending it was just one more mistake in a lifetime of spectacular mistakes?
For two years, I’d told myself I didn’t want him. Couldn’t want him. That Teddy Riggs was my past… that I deserved a future unshackled from all the damage and drama and heartbreak. But one kiss—one second of his mouth on mine—had my entire nervous system revolting.
The digital timer trilled again, more insistent this time, and Teddy raked a hand over his face, deliberately avoiding meeting my eyes. “Kels?—”
“Don’t.” I held up a hand. “Just… don’t. Not yet.”
Because if he told me it was a mistake, I’d break. If he told me it wasn’t, I’d climb him like a Christmas tree and burn through what little goodwill we had left. Neither outcome would improve our situation.
We’d never been able to keep our hands off each other, even when we absolutely should have. Even when we knew it would only end in disaster. Maybe that was our problem all along, why it had all blown up in our faces—he was gasoline, and I was always the dumbass who dropped the lit match. The timer had saved us from making a mistake. Or stopped us from fixing one. I honestly couldn’t tell which anymore.
He nodded stiffly before turning and stalking into the kitchen, leaving me half naked in the hallway on trembling legs, still tasting him on my lips.
For one reckless heartbeat, I wanted to believe he couldn’t look at me because he was fighting the same battle in his chest. But the grim set of his jaw suggested otherwise. Maybe he was already regretting everything, wishing I’d never set foot in Colorado at all.
9
kelsey
