Page 17

He crosses the space in one step and slides a hand into my hair, cradling the back of my head, and his mouth comes down on mine hard. I open for him because I’ve spent two days listing every reason not to, and none of them stops me. He tastes like coffee. He kisses like a man who has been holding a door shut with his whole body and just let it go.

I fist his shirt and pull him closer. The sound he makes is low and rough, stripped of all the careful authority he uses everywhere else. His other hand locks at my waist and hauls me against him, and the hard length of him through his jeans tells me the truth his face has been hiding since the pens.

He lifts me onto the counter. The agreement slides under my elbow and I shove it away before the paper can become part of this. I hook a boot behind his thigh and drag him in.

His mouth moves down my neck. When his hand starts toward my throat, I catch his wrist.

“No. Not there.”

He moves it to my jaw without a flicker of argument and kisses me again. No offense. No bargaining. He takes the boundary like it’s a gift, and that, more than anything, makes me want him closer.

I open the first buttons of his shirt and put my mouth to the warm skin below his collarbone. He grips the counter on either side of me instead of using that strength to pin me in place.

“You’re very disciplined,” I murmur against him.

“You sound disappointed.”

“I’m finding out where it ends.”

“Then find out.”

His hand slides under my blouse and closes over my breast through my bra. His thumb drags across my nipple, slow and deliberate, and a sharp sound escapes me that I would deny under oath. He opens the front clasp and pushes the lace aside and just looks, and there’s nothing vague in it. He wants me. He’s also still watching what I do.

I take his hand and guide it lower.

He opens my jeans and slides his fingers under my underwear. He touches me slowly at first, learning, until my hips move, and then he does exactly that again with a precision that makes my eyes close.

“Faster,” I tell him.

He gives me faster. His mouth closes on my breast, his fingers work me, his body is solid heat between my knees, and I come apart with my forehead pressed to his shoulder and my thighs locked around him. He holds me through it, one hand still at my jaw where I put it, his mouth against my temple, murmuring something too low to catch.

When I can think again, his breathing isn’t even anymore. I reach for his belt.

His hand covers mine. Not stopping me. Just resting there. “You don’t owe me anything.”

“I know.” I pull down his zipper. “That isn’t why.”

I wrap my hand around his cock. His eyes close, once, and the sight undoes me more than seeing him naked would have. This man runs gates, men, and a ranch big enough to have its own weather. Under my hand, he has to take what I give him.

I set the pace. He braces one hand beside my hip and keeps the other at my waist, never once directing me. When he comes, he buries his face in my neck and says my name like it’s the one thing in his life he can’t put in order.

For a while, neither of us speaks.

Then I reach for the box of tissues beside the coffee maker, because desire doesn’t suspend practical reality.

He laughs once, quietly, into my hair. “Of course you have tissues within reach.”

“I have evidence bags too. Don’t make me choose badly.”

We put ourselves back together. I check both phones. My keys are on the table, my case is sealed, and the dead bolt is still mine to open. None of that is why I’m smiling, and he sees it, and something unguarded crosses his face that I’ll think about later more than I want to.

“The photographer comes at noon,” he says.

“South porch. The angle catches the ring and keeps your entrance out of the frame.”

“You’ve considered this.”

“I proposed it.”