Page 58 of Reckless

I close the last inch between us slowly, giving her every opportunity to change her mind.

She never takes it.

The second her lips meet mine, everything inside me shifts. It isn’t gentle, and it isn’t gradual. It feels as though something has been stretched impossibly tight for months, finally gives way, snapping with enough force to scatter every coherent thought I had. Heat surges through my body so suddenly it steals the air from my lungs, and every wall I have spent years building, every careful calculation, every reason I’ve ever had for keeping people at a distance disappears beneath the overwhelming reality of Sage.

She’s all I can feel.

The warmth of her beneath my hand.

The softness of her mouth.

The quiet breath she lets out against my lips that settles somewhere deep in my chest like it’s always belonged there.

Christ.

My tongue collides with hers as I lean into her a little more forcefully, deepening the kiss. I’ve imagined kissing this woman more times than I’ll ever admit to another living soul. It’s usually late at night when sleep refused to come, when the clubhouse was quiet, and my brain wouldn’t stop replaying every smile, argument, and lingering glance I’d convinced myself meant nothing.

None of those imagined versions came close.

They couldn’t.

Nothing could have prepared me for the way she fits against me like she’s always belonged here, or how effortlessly the rest of the world falls away the second our mouths meet.

Somewhere in the back of my head, the part of me that’s usually ten steps ahead is trying to tell me something.

I don’t hear a damn word of it.

Her fingers curl into the front of my shirt, gathering the fabric in her fists as she pulls me closer instead of letting me go. It’s the smallest movement, barely enough for anyone else to notice, but it tears through the last thread of restraint I’ve been clinging to because she’s choosing this just as much as I am.

“Ghost…” My name falls apart on her lips as if she’s forgotten every other word she knows.

“Yeah,” I murmur, though it comes out rougher than I intended.

She doesn’t give me the chance to say anything else when her mouth finds mine again, and this time there’s nothing tentative about it. We’re all tongues and teeth, as I lean her back against the sofa, my body towering over hers, my cock straining against my jeans like a restless animal.

Months of restraint unravel in a heartbeat. Every conversation that lingered longer than it needed to. Every excuse either of us ever found to stay in the same room. Every look that lasted just a little too long before one of us remembered ourselves. Every time I watched her walk away because it was the smart thing to do.

It all crashes into us at once.

She kisses me as though she’s done pretending she doesn’t want this, and somewhere in the middle of it I feel her smile against my mouth. It’s fleeting, almost shy, but it lands harder than the kiss itself because it tells me everything she hasn’t been saying.

I’m not the only one who’s been fighting this.

My hand slides to her waist, drawing her closer until there isn’t a fraction of space left between us. She melts into me so naturally it feels less like discovering something new and more like finding something that should have happened a long time ago.

Her hands travel up my chest until her fingers hook beneath my cut’s leather. She gives it an impatient tug that almost makes me laugh, and I break the kiss long enough to help her, shrugging the leather from my shoulders before it lands forgotten beside us on the sofa.

The second it’s gone, she’s kissing me again.

Like neither of us is willing to waste another heartbeat.

Eventually she pulls back just enough to breathe. Our foreheads rest together, our breaths tangled, neither of us moving because neither of us seems capable of it.

She smiles, almost disbelieving. “I was starting to think you were never going to kiss me.”

A laugh escapes me before I can stop it. “I was trying really hard not to.”

Her eyes search mine for a heartbeat before she smiles again, softer this time. “So was I.”