Maybe I was in a state of shock. Maybe I was doing the thing he asked me not to do—
Thinking.
Whatever it was, he stopped kissing me and pulled back. Just a little. Centimeters. Our noses grazed. Breath intermingled. His fingers were in my hair, and it was hard to tell because of all the adrenaline racing through me, but I was almost positive his hands were shaking a little.
Shaking for me.
Unable to stop myself, I lifted my head and kissed his mouth. Once. Then again. I felt all the rigidity in his hands soften, and we met in the middle.
Soft lips opened to mine, and a thousand warm tingles rushed over my arms. For a moment, we were out of sync, testing each other. Then the kiss deepened, open-mouthed and hungry, and his hands slid down my back, pulling me closer. But it wasn’t enough. I wrapped my arms around him like I had a hundred times, but now my breasts were pressed against his chest, and I could feel all of him pressing back against me.
All the boundaries we’d maintained over the years crumbled at once.
His tongue stroked inside my mouth, rolling with mine, and his hands were everywhere, running up my back, caressing my hips, leaving a trail of fire. Warmth flooded the center of me as a joyous vertigo spread. And before I realized what was happening, my knees buckled and bent like they were wet noodles.
For one dizzy moment, I felt like I was slipping off the side of the building again.
This... was a real thing? The kiss so good that it buckles your knees?
This was actually happening to me?
My God.
“Whoa,” Seb murmured as I broke the kiss with my wobbling. He tightened an arm around my back and held me up.
“S-shit,” I slurred, sounding like an old-timey TV drunkard. “My ankle?”
It wasnotmy bad ankle. It was all my hormones conspiring against me to get me horizonal so that Seb could have his way with me. Or maybe so that I could have my way with him. Either way, my body wanted Seb’s.
Quite a bit, actually.
But Seb clearly knew this, indicated by the low chuckle that reverberated through his chest into mine. That chuckle sounded like power—like he knewevery last thingmy body wanted, even if I didn’t. Like he’d won some kind of victory.
Stupid, stupid body.
His shorts buzzed, and we both took a rapid step back, putting distance between us. Seb finally let me go when he fished out his phone, cussing the flashlight function, which was still on. When he managed to shut it off, I saw the text that had come through, from Benny:
Get outside now bad news
“Bad news,” I said, still extremely turned on and not precisely stable on my feet. I didn’t want to deal with any news, good or bad. I’d just had one of the best kisses in my life with someone I probably shouldn’t be kissing but was not sorry about it whatsoever.
I mean, come on, universe. Could I not relish one single moment of euphoria?
But the moment Seb clicked off his phone, we both heard it.
A shouting match, outside the brewery. Seb hesitantly leaned over the wall where I’d nearly slipped earlier, and whatever he spotted on the sidewalk below, it wasn’t good.
“Son of a bitch,” he whispered. “He came after Jaz again? I’ll fucking kill him.”
That sobered me up pretty fast. “What?”
“Come on!”
I wiped the wet kiss off my lips as we struggled to clear the hurdle of the machinery, as if we both had concussions and forgot how to move right. Seb repeated “Jesus fucking Christ” over and over. But we finally managed it and raced toward the roof hatch.
“What’s going on down there?” I asked.
“That’s a porch-swing conversation. No time to explain, just hurry.”
