Page 31

“You’re standing two feet away from me. Where else should I look?”

Her hands were on his chest. She’d put them there to push him, and they were still there, flattened over his heartbeat, which was faster than his voice suggested. He was warm through the cotton. She could feel the muscle beneath, the steady rise of his breathing.

She kissed him.

She didn’t actively decide to. Her body closed the distance before her brain caught up, her hands fisting in his shirt, pulling him down. The kiss was hard, graceless, and it tasted of salt and the copper of a split she’d opened on her lip. He made a sound against her teeth, low, surprised, and his hands came up to her waist.

He kissed her back. His fingers pressed into the curve above her hips, gripping, and the pressure sent a jolt through her belly that emptied her head of every thought she’d been carrying since she could remember. She pulled him closer. He let her. His mouth opened against hers, and the kiss deepened, his tongue sliding against hers, and the sound she made was one she didn’t recognize. Hungry. Raw. Pulled from a place she kept sealed.

He broke away, breathing hard. His forehead rested against hers. “Sloane.”

“Shut up. Don’t talk. Not right now.”

“We should…”

“Don’t.” She pulled his mouth back to hers.

He lifted her. His hands slid under her thighs and he picked her up, and she wrapped her legs around his waist and the friction of their bodies pressed together drew a groan out of him that she felt against her throat. He carried her all the way to the equipment shed, not hesitating even a bit. Her back hit the wall and his hips pinned her there, and she could feel him hard against her, and the wanting was so acute it burned.

She pulled his shirt up, and it slid over his head easily. Her mind blurred as she ran her hands over his shoulders, his chest, the scar along his ribs that he’d earned during the Marcus fight. His skin was hot under her palms. He kissed her neck, her collarbone, his mouth open against her skin, his breath ragged.

His hand found the hem of her tank top. He pulled back slightly to look at her face.

“You need to say it. You need to tell me yes.”

She looked back at him, breathless. “Yes.”

He peeled the tank top over her head. His eyes moved over her, the sports bra, the sweat-damp skin, her stomach, her hips, and for a lurching second, she waited for the assessment, the moment his gaze would turn clinical. It didn’t. He looked at her the way he’d looked at her stance. With focus. As though every part of what he saw mattered.

His mouth found her breast through the fabric, and her spine curved off the wall. She gripped the back of his skull and held him there, her fingers digging into the smooth skin of his shaved head. He bit down, gently, and her hips ground against him involuntarily.

“Off,” she breathed, impatient to feel his lips on her bare skin. He unhooked the clasp. She helped him pull it away, and the cool morning air hit her bare skin and then his mouth replaced it, warm, his tongue circling, and her head fell back against the shed wall with a thud she didn’t feel.

She reached between them. Found his waistband. Got her hand inside, wrapped around him, and the sound he made was guttural, broken against her breast. His hips thrust into her grip and his teeth grazed her nipple and the feedback loop of it, his response feeding her arousal, feeding his, spiraled through the bond until she couldn’t tell where hers ended.

“Now,” she said. A command from a woman who had learned that if she didn’t take what she wanted, it would be taken from her.

He pulled her shorts down. She kicked them off one leg, kept the other wrapped around him. He freed himself, gripped her thigh, and pushed into her.

Her breath left her chest in a rush. He filled her, thick, deep, and the stretch of it drew a sound from her throat that would have embarrassed her if she’d been capable of embarrassment. His forehead dropped to her shoulder. His breathing was shot, ragged exhales against her collarbone.

He moved. She braced her shoulders against the wall and met him, her hips rolling to match his rhythm, and the friction was devastating, precise, the angle hitting a place inside her that made her vision narrow. His hand gripped her thigh hard enough to bruise. She wanted the bruise. She wanted proof that this had happened, that she’d chosen it, that he was inside her because she had pulled him there.

“Harder,” she begged, and he gave it to her. His hips snapped forward and she cried out, her nails raking down his back, scoring lines in his skin. He swore against her throat. Drove deeper. She clenched around him and he groaned, and the sound of it, wrecked, honest, vibrating against her pulse, pushed her toward the edge.

She came hard and fast, the orgasm slamming through her without warning. Her body locked, her thighs clamping around his waist, a sound tearing from her chest that she couldn’t have stopped. He followed seconds later, his rhythm breaking, his hips stuttering against hers, his hand fisting in her hair as he buried himself deep and shuddered.

The yard was quiet.

Birds. The creak of the heavy bag’s chain, still swaying. Their breathing, tangled, slowing.

He was still inside her. His face was pressed against her neck. She could feel his heartbeat through the skin of his chest, fast, gradually steadying. The bond between them blazed, wide open, carrying everything she’d been holding back into the space between them, and she could feel his response, the shock, the heat, the aching tenderness she had absolutely not asked for.

She put her hands on his shoulders. Pushed.

He pulled back. Looked at her. His eyes were dark, his mouth swollen, his expression open in a way that terrified her more than Garrett ever had.

“Don’t,” she said. Third time. The word was all-purpose. Don’t talk about it. Don’t make it mean anything. Don’t look at me like you see me.