“In my surprise, I failed to give your situation due consideration. Which is not an excuse, I know. I reasoned that if you’d had a good explanation for your dismissal, you’d have shared it. Or you’d get a position elsewhere. That it didn’t matter if I personally did not help you.
“And then, when I saw Will Stone’s abstract, I suspected my lack of actionhadmattered. Had mattered quite a bit, actually. I believed the wrong story, and you paid the price. I told myself that if I helped you now, the thing that happened to me then—the very unscientific thing that made my heart beat right out of my bloody chest—wouldn’t happen again.
“But it has, Ripley. Everything I’ve learned about you, every moment I’ve spent with you has only made it worse. And life feels so bloody short right now. This chance may never come again for you and me. So if you feel it too—if you feel evenhalfof what you make me feel…”
He steps closer, takes her face in his hands, lowers his mouth until it’s a breath from hers.
“Tell me to stop, Ripley. Tell me you want me to stop, and I will.”
She knows she should, but with his hand sliding down between her shoulder blades, she can’t quite remember why. She registers the raindrops falling from his jaw to her neck, the gold-flecked darkness of his eyes, her breath sliding past her open lips. A thousand rare events swing into alignment, one after the other, to make a moment that’s been waiting years for her to find it.Years,in this short life.
She should tell him to stop. But they’re alone, and his hands are all over her body, and he’s looking at her like he’s ravenous for joy. Starving for touch. And what if she let him take a bite?
“Don’t…don’t do something you’ll regret later. You’re notyourself right now, James,” she croaks, grasping for a strand of reality.
“You have it backwards, darling,” he says, and the endearment sounds every bit as velvet-gloved as she imagined it would. “At the moment, unfortunately, I’m incapable of being anyonebutmyself. And I very much enjoy it when you call me James.”
His lips crash into hers.
19
This.
Thiscan’t be Smithson.
Smithson is polite and proper, his brain constantly whirring. But this man is all body, spinning Ripley to put her back against a broad, smooth fence pole. Smithson is a distant, untouchable Superman; this is a piercingly mortal Clark Kent, his forehead curl drowned in the rain, his eyes closed tight with painful pleasure a superhero’s body would never feel.
James. This is James,Ripley thinks dimly as he licks into her mouth like he’ll die if he doesn’t. It feels so insanely good that she does it right back just to hear him make that ragged, uncontrolled sound in the back of his throat.
He’s smashingly irresistible without his veneer of perfect control. Like a bone with a scar in it, he’s a thousand times more interesting when he’s not perfect.
And he fucking takes her apart.
No part of his kiss is tentative or questioning. It’s a hard, sure press of his mouth, a whispering brush of his thumb at her throat, an impatient jerk that brings her hips up to his. His hands catch her and hold her like he wants all of her right now, and tomorrow, and forever.
Time is a gift, and James Smithson is showing her how to unwrap it.
She winds her arms around his neck and pulls until only her toes touch the earth. His thigh slides helplessly home between her legs. He makes a low, quick, desperate sound like she’s hurting him and soothing him at the same time.
“Good God, Ripley.” He tips up her chin so he can suck water from her neck. The way he says her name is hypnotic, like there’s a raindrop between the syllables. It washes away her surface defenses, exposing the secrets underneath. Everything about him is muscle and heart, unyielding strength and reckless need. Her thoughts are fuzzy; her skin is sparking where his mouth is fastened. She can feel him hardening against her stomach.
Something opens in her chest when his eyes meet hers. It’s physical almost, like a rock cracking under her hammer to reveal the beauty of the bone beneath. It feels like she’s been looking for this—forhim—for such a long time.
“I found you,” she says, and it doesn’t make sense, but it does. She’s not sure whose mouth finds whose, but either way, she’s not on the side of the interstate anymore. She’s in his arms and on his thigh and against his mouth.
James. James. James.
“Ma’am? Excuse me, ma’am. Sir. Friendly reminder that this is a public highway,” says an infinitely weary voice from another world.
With agonizing slowness, James pulls back. High color has seeped into his cheeks. His heavy eyelids and wide pupils make him look slightly stoned. Based on how sluggishly her mental faculties are coming back online, she’s pretty sure she looks equally destroyed.
Icy rain trickles down the back of her neck. One boot is filledto the top with watery mud. On the other side of the fence, her baseball hat is on the ground, filling with rain.
From across the guardrail, a state trooper gives them a stony look. “Thank you,” she says, packing the words with a thousand eye rolls. “Are either of you the driver of a yellow Dodge Charger, license plate D-I-N-O”—her eyebrows arch up over her mirrored sunglasses—“G-R-L?”
It sounded way less childish when Ripley picked it out. “Yeah, that’s me.”
Deciding the hat isn’t worth climbing over a fence and trespassing on private property in full view of a law enforcement officer, Ripley settles for shoving her wet hair out of her face and attempting a smile.
