“Don’t worry, love,” he said as he closed in on her. “I’ll make it worth the fall.”
It started out slow, this kiss she had secretly been wanting since the last time he’d kissed her. But his pace quickened with lightning speed. Just as it had the night she’d driven him home after he drank too much at Harlon’s, the night he’d stripped her clothes from her body right in the middle of his parents’ living room. The night she’d gripped his naked hips in her hands, dropped to her knees, and taken his sinfully hard flesh into her mouth.
Now it was his tongue invading her mouth, pushing past the seam of her lips and thrusting inside. As his tongue explored, his hands slipped onto her hips and then to her sides and finally up her back. He pressed his fingertips into the small of her back before inching lower, grasping her butt. He tugged her closer to him, hardening against her stomach.
Paxton moaned.
God, she’d wanted this. Had craved it. How foolish she’d been to try to find it with other men. No one could hold a candle to the way Sawyer commanded her body.
Her nipples grew tight and achy, the sheer and lace of her bra abrading the quickly hardening buds. She rested her arms on his broad shoulders and ran her palms along the back of his head, pulling him closer.
Emotions she had been too afraid to feel flowed through her as he moved his lips from her mouth to trail them down her jaw and along her neck. His touch was loving, almost worshipful. It made her pulse with pleasure with every single caress. His featherlight kisses triggered goosebumps. They elevated along her skin, popping up wherever he touched.
He nudged his nose behind her ear and whispered, “It’s a risk to go any further in a public park, but I’m willing to go all the way if you are.”
Even as his words caused a shudder to run through her, they jerked Paxton out of her sensual daze. She couldn’t get lost in his kiss again. She wouldn’t. She still shouldered so much guilt from the last time they did this. She couldn’t take on any more.
“I can’t,” she said, pulling slightly away. She gave him a gentle push when what she really wanted to do was pull him closer.
Dammit.Shesodidn’t want to stop.
But she knew she should. After the way she’d preyed on his vulnerabilities the last time, using him for her own pleasure yet again would just complicate things. They still had to work together; she could not afford complications.
He swooped in for another kiss, but she held him back. “Stop,” she said.
Paxton could feel the reluctance in the way his shoulders dropped, but he backed away.
When he looked at her, his expression was a mixture of annoyance and lingering desire.
“Why do you keep doing that?” he asked. “For someone who’s so damn smart, you keep making this same stupid move. We can be good together, Pax. Can’t you see that?”
“No,” she said, straightening her blouse, which had been skewed during their unbelievably heated kiss.
“Why not? Why is that so hard for you to accept?”
“You want to know why?” she asked, finding her footing again. “Because this isn’t a fairytale. This is the real world. And in the real world, Paxton Jones from the wrong side of Landreaux Creek is not the kind of girl people expect to see on Sawyer Robertson’s arm. It just doesn’t happen.”
“Who cares what people expect? And in whose world are you talking about? Because inmyreal world, we’re damn near perfect for each other. We fit. Accept that.”
“We do not,” she argued, then gestured to him. “Look at you. You’re Sawyer Robertson. Prom king. Captain of the football team. It was like the damn sea parted every time you walked down the hallway.”
“That was twenty years ago.Get over it.”
She jumped back at his tone.
“And if you hadn’t been so hell-bent on making me into whatever untouchable, unattainable thing you created in your head, you could have been walking down that hallway with me, right by my side.”
Even as he said the words, Paxton still couldn’t bring herself to believe them. They were in direct opposition to everything she’d thought for too many years for her to just accept them as truth.
“If anyone is to blame for us not being together in the real world, it’s you,” he said. “You’re the one who closed yourself off. You never even gave me a chance.”
She stared at him for several heartbeats, her blood moving so swiftly through her veins that she could actually hear it.
“Like you said, that was twenty years ago. The distant past. It makes no sense to talk about it now, right?”
“Right,” he said. “Forget high school. I want to talk about the here and now.”
“Okay,” she said. “Let’s say we do it. Say we sleep together. Not once, not twice, but for the next few weeks. Me and you, every single night.”
