Page 9 of My Redneck Baby Daddy

I looked at him then, because there was something soft under the way he said it, like he had watched Hamilton be loved for six years and had opinions about it he did not intend to share.

Then Bobby Jo caught me looking.

"You've been staring at my mouth for about five minutes."

Heat rushed into my face. "I have not."

"English teachers allowed to lie?"

"We're allowed to use creative interpretation."

He grinned, slow and unhurried, and he did not move. He just sat there on the picnic table with his forearms on his knees, waiting, and I understood that he was going to wait all night if that was what it took.

"You're not going to do it," I said.

"Nope."

"Because you want me to ask."

"Because you asked me once when you couldn't walk straight, and I ain't taking anything you didn't give me sober."

My heart was pulsing so hard I could feel it in my ears.

Oh my God, oh my God, my mind was dancing a mile a minute.

I pushed my glasses up my nose, and his mouth twitched, and I hated him a little for noticing.

"I'm sober," I said.

"I noticed."

"And I'm asking."

He stood, and I had to tip my head all the way back, and then his hand came up and his fingers slid under my jaw and tipped my chin higher. His thumb rested just below my bottom lip. Up close his eyes were greener than they had any right to be.

"Tell me to stop whenever, Teach" he murmured softlly.

Then he kissed me.

It was soft, barely anything. His mouth pressed against mine and he held it there. I didn’t know what to do with my hands or my face, so I held my breath.

Oh Lord, I thought feeling faint.

Holding my breath turned out to be the wrong choice, because when he pulled back an inch I made a sound somewhere between a gasp and a complaint.

He came back. Slower this time, and he moved his mouth against mine until something in me stopped calculating and just followed him. My hand found the front of his shirt. His thumb moved along my jaw.

When he finally pulled away, I stood there blinking up at him.

"That's it?"

His eyebrows rose.

I had said that out loud.

So he kissed me again. This one though, he wasn’t soft about it this time. His hand slid into the back of my hair, and he tilted my head. Andy by God, I felt it everywhere, down through my stomach and lower, in places I had been managing successfully for thirty-two years.

When he stopped, I was holding onto his shirt with both fists.