Page 13 of Protected By Razor

I look at him.

He’s already crossing the room.

Three steps. That’s all it takes. Three steps and he’s in front of me, and his hands come up and he takes my face between them, and his palms are warm and rough and so careful I almost break apart right there.

“You’re okay,” he says. “You’re okay.”

His thumbs move along my cheekbones. Once, twice. Like he’s wiping away a tear that hasn’t fallen yet.

And then he’s looking at my mouth.

I see him see it. I’ve spent a decade watching for this and I know his face better than I should, and the thing that flickers across it now is the thing that was there when I was sixteen.

He kisses me.

It’s not gentle. It’s ten years of a man clamping down on something that was never going to stay clamped, and when he lets go, he lets go all the way — his mouth opens mine, his tongue strokes in against mine, one of his hands slides into my hairand tilts my head exactly where he wants it, and I make a sound against his mouth that I have literally never made in my life.

I grab the front of his shirt. Two fistfuls. I haul him closer.

He makes a low sound in his throat — something torn out of him that I don’t think he meant to make — and his other hand comes down to the small of my back and splays there, and he pulls me against him like he’s been dying to and the whole long hot length of him is pressed against me and I can feel how much he wants this.

My body goes boneless. He holds me up.

He kisses me like a man who’s been starving. He kisses me like the ten years were a mistake. His teeth catch my bottom lip and drag and I gasp and he swallows the gasp like it belongs to him now. His hand in my hair tightens. The fingers at my back press into me through my jumper,

He walks me backward into the wall.

My back hits the plasterboard, and he’s right there with me, caging me, one forearm braced next to my head and the other hand still at the small of my back, and his thigh slides between mine because there’s nowhere else for it to go, and I feel him there, hard against my hip, and I make another one of those sounds I didn’t know I could make.

He groans. Quiet. Right against my mouth.

“Darcie.”

My name, in his voice, said like that. I don’t think I’ll ever recover.

He kisses me again. Deeper. Slower now, like he’s decided something, and he’s taking his time about it. His thumb strokes along my jaw. My fingers are still knotted in the front of his shirt, and I don’t think I could let go if you paid me.

And then he stops.

His hands drop. He steps back.

He’s breathing hard. I’ve never seen his chest move like that. Once. Twice. Three times, his shoulders rising.

His eyes are black.

“That can’t happen again,” he says.

My lips are tingling. My legs are shaking. His taste is still in my mouth.

“What?” I whisper.

“I shouldn’t have done that.”

“Razor?—”

“I mean it. It can’t happen again. I’m sorry.”

He turns away. He walks to the couch. He sits down and puts his elbows on his knees, and drops his head into his hands.