The bar was small, so it didn’t take her long to cross the distance to his stool. He could see the questions and anger in her eyes.
She opened her mouth.
God only knew what kind of insults and accusations she was about to hurl at him, but he couldn’t let anyone hear them. He had to shut her up before she blew his cover.
He did the only thing he could think of to do. Leaning forward, he caught her around the waist and pulled her in tight against him. He was mostly leaning on the stool, and she slid right between his legs.
“What are you—” was as far as she got before his mouth closed over hers. He kissed her hard. He knew how good she was at talking—and giving him hell—andhe wasn’t going to give any of those words a chance to escape.
He filled her mouth with his tongue just to make sure.
Oh, shit.Not good.Toogood. He remembered this. He remembered the flood of heat. The tight feeling that came over his entire body. The drowning buzz in his ears that made everything else around him disappear. The way she tasted. Warm and sweet with the faint tinge of the butterscotch Life Savers that he used to tease her about chewing. They were supposed to be sucked.
Damn it, not a great word to think about right now. It made him think of sucking her tongue deeper into his mouth and swirling it around slowly with his own. Tasting every corner and every sweet crevice. God, he really loved butterscotch.
It made him think of another kind of sucking, too.
Really wrong.But too right to stop.
He groaned as his hand slid through her hair to cup the back of her head. It was clipped up in some kind of knot, but enough strands had slipped out to tell him that it was every bit as silky as he remembered. He’d thought he’d been exaggerating it in his mind, but no—he groaned again as he dug a little deeper to pull her head in closer—it was feathery soft and flowed between his fingers like a satin waterfall.
She’d frozen in shock initially, but it didn’t take long for that first crack in the ice to appear. Her response was tentative at first. A tiny moan. The softening of her mouth and opening of her lips a little wider. The melting of her body into his as the stiffness left her shoulders, spine, and limbs. The slight movement of her tongue against his.
Oh fuck, yes!You’d think she’d jumped on top of him with the roar of satisfaction that surged through him. He’d never been so happy to have a woman kiss him back. Which maybe wasn’t that surprising, since this wasthe first time he could remember that it had even been a question.
The crack in the ice turned into a chasm as her response grew bolder and more passionate. She was full-on kissing him back now, circling her tongue against his with every bit of the frenzy and hunger that he was experiencing.
It was a heady combination. One that was quickly making him lose all sense of reality. Just like last time. He hadn’t wanted to stop then either. All he could think about was sinking in deeper, tasting her deeper, making every second last.
She’d wrapped her hands around his neck, and her soft breasts were pressing into his chest. He slid a hand down to her waist, needing to feel her against him. He was hard and throbbing, and the subtle friction wasn’t enough.
He wanted to pull her onto his lap, wrap her legs around his waist, and sink in deep, right here in the middle of the...
Bar.
Fuck. When he pulled back suddenly—maybe a little harshly—he wasn’t the only one reeling.
She blinked up at him with a hazy look in her eyes that sent the surge of need racing harder through his body. He had to grit his teeth against the urge to pull her back into his arms and keep that haze in her eyes.
The glance that passed between them was of shared shock. A consensus ofWhat the hell just happened?
It wasn’t a question he wanted to answer. Not here. Not now. Not ever.
Before she could say anything, he stood, threw a few bills down on the bar, told the bartender to call them a ride, grabbed her by the hand, and led her out of there. He could feel the stares of his friends and housemates, but he would answer the questions later.
They stood outside in silence, not even looking at each other as they waited for the cab. It didn’t take long, but it was long enough for the shock to wear off and be replaced by something easier to think about: anger.
By the time he was opening the door to his house, John was furious. What was she doing here? How had she found him? And what part of “danger” hadn’t been clear?
It took a lot to rile him up, but she’d done it without a fucking word.
•••
He’d been trying to shut her up. That was why John had kissed her. For a moment she’d thought...
Idiot.
Brittany didn’t trust herself to look at him, fearing that he might catch a glimpse of her stupidity. That he might somehow read her mind and guess exactly what she’d thought. That for one deluded moment, when he’d pulled her into his arms and kissed her, she’d thought she’d walked into her own Hallmark movie. The kind where everything is a misunderstanding and at the very end they realize they were made for each other. The kind where for five years he’d been thinking about her and regretted pushing her away, and now that she’d found him again, they were going to live happily ever after.Thatkind of movie.
