His breath changes.
"Hope." His voice is stripped down to gravel now, bare and uncivilized.
“All done,” I whisper.
And then we crash together. I whimper into his mouth and his hands tighten on my thighs, pushing them apart. Curving his touch up to my waist as hepulls us together. He tilts his head at the same time, deepening the angle of his kiss in a way I feel all the way to my toes.
I answer by sliding my palms flat against his bare skin. His heart is hammering under my fingers, and the contrast between his outward calm and his racing heart makes me fierce.
I push my tongue over his, needier now.
He groans. Low, involuntary, buried against my mouth. The vibration of it rolls through me.
And then he picks me up, his hands cradling my bum as my legs wind around his waist.
He carries me into his bedroom, the door pushing shut quietly behind him. He lays me down in the dim moonlight, sets the baby monitor on his bedside table, and then drops his forehead to mine.
We breathe the same air for a few uneven seconds, our lips still close enough to brush with every exhale.
"That," he murmurs, "was worth shaving for."
I can't speak.
“Can I take my jeans off?” he asks.
I manage to nod, and then add a single, hungry syllable. “Please.”
He strips down to his underwear, then climbs onto the bed again, taking me in his arms. We kiss again, and our limbs find a way together, different now that we’re stretched out on his bed and have more room than we did on the couch or in the kitchen.
Or the tack room.
I remember how he wedged his thigh between my legs yesterday, and I want to take the initiative to grind against him now, but I don’t. I’m thinking about it, and maybe I’m thinking too loud, because after a few kisses, he tucks me into the side of hisbody, brings my hand to his bare chest, and says, “Do you want to talk?”
No!
I want to climb him like a tree and lick him like a popsicle.
But my pulse is also racing a million miles a minute, which I know he can feel as he rubs the inside of my wrist.
And maybe I’m a little lightheaded, too.
I drag in a breath.
Let it out.
Breathe again.
“We have all the time in the world,” he promises.
I’m not sure we do.
But I can only move as fast as my fear lets me, so… “Can I ask you about something Ridge said this morning?”
“Sure.”
“I asked him if I should go to the police, now that Derek is maybe coming after me or whatever.”
“Is that something you want to do?”
