Her gaze locked onto mine, pupils blown wide, the gray blue of her irises eaten up by black. Every version ofWhat the hell are you doing, man?screamed in my head at once.
Hayes’s face. Clara’s ring. Our deal. Every line I wasn’t supposed to cross.
“Fuck it.” I tightened my grip and drew her down the rest of the way, closing that last impossible distance.
Our mouths met like they’d been headed there from the first second she walked into my house. The first brush of her lips against mine was soft, almost questioning. Then she made a sound—a tiny, helpless whimper right into my mouth—and whatever restraint I thought I had went up in flames.
I kissed her like a starving man.
My other hand found her hip and hauled her the last few inches onto me, dragging her fully into my body. Her chest pressed against my chest, thighs slotting over mine, the weight of her settling exactly where my body wanted her. Her mouth parted under mine, giving, opening, inviting.
I took the invitation.
My tongue slid against hers, slow at first, relearning the shape of a kiss after too damn long without one. She tasted like cold air and cinnamon sugar, sweet and sharp. Her fingers curled into my coat, clenching in the fabric over my shoulders like she needed something to hold on to while I devoured her.
Heat roared through me, hot enough to make the winter air feel irrelevant.
She shifted to get closer, and her hip rolled right over my cock, hard and pressing against the fly of my jeans. The drag of her body over mine sent a white-hot bolt straight through my spine. A groan tore out of my chest before I could swallow it.
Her answering whimper shot straight to my dick.
Clara leaned into me instead of away, kissing me back with a kind of hungry relief that had my head spinning. She met everystroke of my tongue with her own, matched every angle, like we’d been doing this for years instead of dancing around it for days.
Snow crunched under us as we moved, coats rasping, sleds shifting. My hand at her hip tightened, dragging her even closer, anchoring her there so she could feel exactly what she was doing to me. My thumb slipped under the edge of her jacket, found the warm curve of her waist through her sweater, the heat of her bleeding into my palm.
She shivered like I’d touched bare skin.
“Wes,” she breathed against my mouth, my name breaking on the syllable, half moan, half laugh, the sound tipping something over inside me.
I angled my head and deepened the kiss, taking more, giving more, letting myself want without throttling it for the first time in months. She met me there, mouth fierce and greedy, like she’d been holding back, too, and had finally decided she was done.
Everything narrowed to her.
Not the sled. Not the snow. Not the leg, or the hill, or the thousand ways this could go wrong.
Just Clara’s mouth under mine.
Clara’s body pressing me into the snow like she was staking a claim.
Clara’s breath mixing with mine, her hands sliding up to bracket my jaw through my hood, holding my face like she was just as terrified to let go.
A rush of emotion punched through the heat—sharp and terrifying in its own right.
Relief, bone deep and staggering, that I could still do this. That my body was good for more than pain and maintenance and getting from point A to point B without falling.
Gratitude, ugly and bright, that she’d pushed me, that she’d dragged me out here and told me my fear was small-dick behavior and meant it in the exact way I needed to hear.
Hope, the most dangerous of all, curling low and stubborn in my chest at the feel of her kissing me like she’d wanted this just as badly.
For the first time since the accident, I didn’t feel like a man managing symptoms or surviving another day.
Kissing Clara Darling in the snow, with her body pressed tight to mine and her mouth wrecking me in the best possible way, I felt alive.
