He leaned over, brushing his lips against my temple, his voice rough. “Kitten, you should know by now that there’s nothing casual about my feelings for you.”
Heat shot straight through me, pooling low in my belly. My thighs pressed together under the hem of his shirt, which suddenly felt dangerously short.
Brooks noticed.
His hands slid up from my feet to my calves, slow and teasing, his gaze fixed on mine. “You’re thinking about it now, aren’t you?”
I swallowed hard. “About what?”
“That shirt. Coming off. My fingers touching you, fucking you. How long it’s been since I had you under me.” His voice dropped, gravel and sin. “Too damn long.”
My pulse spiked, traitorous and eager. “You’re awfully confident for a man who just spent the day losing a cupcake war.”
His grin turned wolfish as his hands pushed higher, skimming bare skin. “Sweetheart, I always win where it counts.”
My breath hitched, every nerve lighting up. Take me now. I wanted to drag him down over me, fist his shirt in my hands,and erase the weeks we’d spent holding back like fucking idiots thanks to me and my stupid mouth. I was already arching into him, needy and reckless.
“Brooks . . . ,” I pleaded.
His mouth brushed mine, featherlight, enough to spark but not satisfy. The heat coiled low in my belly, fierce and demanding.
I wasn’t above begging. Not when his hands were sliding higher, his voice turned to smoke and gravel in the dark, and every inch of me ached for him to finally, finally stop holding back.
The thing was, I wasn’t a woman who begged. Not for favors, not for attention, not for anyone. I’d learned long ago what it cost to need someone more than they needed me. Begging was a weakness. Surrender.
But with Brooks?
It was trust. It was laying myself bare and saying take me apart and put me back together. I would let him do both, so long as I got to do the same, too. Turnabout was fair play.
But before I had a chance to literally get down on my knees and beg him the way we both wanted, he pulled back.
I blinked, stunned, chasing his mouth without meaning to.
“Please don’t look at me like that.” His thumb traced the line of my jaw, tender in a way that gutted me. “You’ve been on your feet all day, and I’m not about to push you when you’re this tired.”
“But I want—”
“Oh, I know what you want,” he murmured, pressing a kiss to my forehead that was somehow both infuriating and unbearably sweet. “And believe me, I want it too. But when I finally get inside you again, kitten, I’m not stopping.”
His certainty and restraint were somehow even sexier than if he’d just rolled me under him and given us the ride we were bothcraving. My chest ached with equal parts adoration and sexual frustration.
Mostly sexual frustration.
Brooks smirked at the look on my face, thumb still stroking along my jaw. “Don’t forget, I was in the trenches today, too. Cupcake wars, six-year-olds hopped up on sugar? I’m not twenty-two anymore. That shit nearly killed me.”
A laugh burst out of me, sharp and helpless, even as heat still pulsed low in my belly. “What happened to all that stamina I’ve been hearing about?”
“I left it under the tent, buried under six feet of fondant,” he said, grin flashing.
“You’re impossible.”
“And you love it,” he murmured into my hair, smug and tender all at once.
Unfortunately for me, he was right.
Brooks
Roasters 42–27
