Page 27 of Her Mountain Man Protector

"Who says I'm enjoying it?"

I tip my head enough to catch his eyes. They're dark and wrecked and doing a terrible job of lying. "Your hands. They're not in a hurry to let go."

He doesn't let go. His thumbs move once against the insides of my wrists, a small traitorous stroke, and heat floods my face so fast I feel it in my teeth. The shirt has slipped. His gaze drops to that bare slope and stays there a beat too long.

"Oakley."

"If the next word is a decree I'm going to stamp your foot for real."

He makes a sound I have no decent name for. Then he turns me to face him, slow enough that I could stop it, but I don't. My palms land on his flannel. His hands find my waist.

"This is a bad idea," he says.

"You've had worse. You packed muffins for a manhunt."

"That was tactics."

"This is tactics. I'm standing here. You're standing here. Somebody should do something useful with the distance."

His forehead drops to mine. The contact is almost nothing and it rearranges everything. I can feel him deciding. I can feel the exact second the decision fails.

He kisses me.

It isn't careful. It starts careful, a test against my mouth, and then I make a noise I didn't approve and his hand slides up my back into my hair and careful is gone. He tastes of coffee. I rise onto my toes because he's too tall and because I want closer, and he answers by backing me one step until my hips meet the edge of the table. Foil crinkles. I laugh into his mouth. He swallows the laugh and kisses me deeper, angling my head with that same precise attention he used on my wrist, and my fingers curl in his shirt hard enough to hurt my own knuckles.

When we break it's only far enough to breathe. His mouth is still close. My pulse hammers in my throat. The Equinox shirt has given up on my shoulder entirely. Afternoon light from the narrow window lays a pale stripe across his flannel and my hands, and I keep them there because moving them would mean admitting the lesson is over, and I'm not finished being taught.

"Tell me to stop," he says.

"I'd be lying."

"Then tell me this stays in this room until the mountain is done trying to kill us."

"I'm a terrible liar, remember? I talk when I'm scared. I bake when I'm stuck. I kiss mountain men who issue decrees against table edges."

His laugh is short and soft. He kisses me again, slower, and this one has room in it. Room for my hands at his jaw. Room for his thumb tracing the corner of my mouth, checking the heat he put there. Room for the terrifying, luminous fact that I don't want to put the distance back.

A burner buzzes on the counter.

He doesn't move at first. I feel the fight in his arms. Then he closes his eyes, presses one more kiss to the place where my pulse jumps, and reaches without looking.

Alden. I hear the cadence even before Colt says his name.

"We're in," Colt says. His voice has gravel in it. "Receipt from the lower pool. Northline. Last week. Dark SUV in the overlook lot when we left. Didn't follow that I could see." A pause. He looks at me while he listens, eyes still blown, mouth still mine. "Copy. We'll come to the mill after dark. I'm not moving her in daylight twice."

He hangs up.

"Mill tonight," I say.

"Mill tonight. Alden wants the paper in his hand. Marin wants the SUV plates Sin's already chasing." His hand is still at my waist. He seems to notice it the same moment I do, and he doesn't take it away. "You still want the rest of the lesson?"

"I want the rest of the lesson when your phone is in a drawer."

"Fair."

I stay in the circle of him a second longer, forehead against his collarbone, listening to that huge stubborn heart try to find a normal rhythm. Then I step back because if I don't I'll climb him and the receipt will end up on the floor, and we actually need the receipt.

He watches me pick up the foil and set it in the sink. The muffins are wrecked. I don't care.