"I'm going to kiss you," I say. "And I need you to know it's not the cover. It's not the proximity. It's not because you're here and I'm scared."
His eyes hold mine. Gray and steady. "Okay."
"It's because you burned chicken and fought the smoke detector. Because you told me about your mother's gas station magnets. Because you let me see you read that book on the porch and you didn't move away." My voice drops. "Because when I said 'my boyfriend' at Nina's, some part of me meant it. Even then."
His hand comes up. Cups the side of my face with a gentleness that's almost unbearable from a man who sweeps rooms for threats. His thumb traces my cheekbone.
"Kari," he says again, but it sounds different this time. Like my name is the only honest thing left.
"That's still my name."
He kisses me.
Not a movie kiss. His mouth finds mine a little off-center. My hand lands on his chest, over his heartbeat, which is faster than his voice let on. His fingers slide into my hair, tilting my head, adjusting, and then the angle is right.
Oh.
He kisses like he does everything else — deliberate, thorough, unhurried. No performance. Just his mouth on mine with an attention that makes my skin feel like it's running a low-grade fever. His other hand pulls me closer, and I go. My fingers curl into the front of his henley because I need to hold onto something.
When we break apart, his forehead rests against mine. Both of us breathing harder than the moment should warrant.
"That wasn't professional," I whisper.
"No." His voice is wrecked. "It wasn't."
"Good."
My hand is still on his chest. His heart hammers under my palm. Liam Cade — gray-eyed, jaw-ticking, perimeter-checking Liam Cade — is trembling. Just barely. Just enough that I can feel it where our bodies press together.
Something older than wanting stirs. The locked door I built after the last man who left — the one I constructed out of I'm fine alone and I don't need this and the next person who touches me will have to earn it — opens.
I open it. Deliberately. With my eyes open.
"Come here," I say, pulling him down to me, and this kiss is different. Deeper. My teeth catch his bottom lip. His breath hitches — an actual, audible hitch from the man who controls everything — and his hand slides under the hem of my shirt to find skin.
Warm palm on my bare waist. His fingers spread wide. I arch into it because my body has apparently given up pretending.
"Tell me to stop," he says against my mouth. "If you want me to stop."
"I really don't want you to stop." My hips press up against his before my brain approves the motion. His cock pushes against my thigh through his jeans, hard, obvious, and the sound that comes out of me is embarrassing. Needy. Real.
Clothes come off in stages. My shirt first — he lifts it over my head, tosses it somewhere behind him. I pull his henley off because fair is fair. His chest is warm, solid, scarred in places beyond the forearm — a history written on skin that I don't ask about yet.
My hand traces the scar from his wrist up past his elbow. He goes very still.
"Still not asking," I say.
His exhale is shaky. "I know."
Then his mouth is on my collarbone, my throat, the spot below my ear that makes me forget I was ever afraid of this. His teeth graze my neck — not hard, just enough to send a bolt of heat straight down my spine. My bra goes next. His hands, those steady hands that check locks and clear rooms, cup my breasts like he's memorizing the weight of them. His thumb drags across one nipple. Slow. Watching my face while he does it.
"You can stop surveilling me," I murmur. "I'm not a perimeter."
"Force of habit." But his eyes are dark. Darker than I've seen them. His mouth replaces his thumb, and the wet heat of his tongue on my nipple pulls a sound from me that I would categorize as undignified. His other hand palms my breast, squeezing, rolling the nipple between his fingers until my back arches off the bed.
My hands learn the geography of his shoulders, his ribs, the muscles along his spine that tighten when I drag my nails across them. I reach between us. Pop the button on his jeans. When my hand wraps around his cock through the fabric, his whole body goes rigid.
"Kari." My name through clenched teeth.
