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I dragged my mouth down to hers, crashing against her lips with all the sharp, jagged panic of the last few minutes. I backed her up until her shoulders hit the wooden siding of the cottage, trapping her between the wall and my chest. She made a soft sound in the back of her throat and threw her arms around my neck, her fingers gripping short hair at my nape.

I groaned, and the sound vibrated in my chest. I wanted to consume her and wrap myself around her so completely that the rest of the world ceased to exist. I wanted to claim her, to make sure that no matter where she went or who came looking for her, she would know she belonged to me.

Her mouth opened under mine, inviting me in. My tongue swept against hers, tasting mint and coffee and something sweeter that was just her. My hands slid from her face to her waist, gripping her hips, my thumbs pressing into the soft flesh through the thin cotton of her shirt. She was so small in my arms, so fragile and yet so fierce. Kissing me back with a hunger that matched my own, her body arched into mine, seeking the friction, seeking the heat.

For a moment, there was no truck, no tourists, no Nash, no fame. There was just the taste of her mouth, the pounding of our hearts, and the overwhelming realization that I wanted her with everything in me.

Then, she made another sound of desire, a soft whisper of air against my lips.

That sound was like a bucket of ice water. It cut through my haze of lust and adrenaline, dragging me back to reality with jarring violence. I froze. My hands were covered in filth as I pressed her against a wall, taking what I wanted like a starving animal.

I tore my mouth away from hers, gasping for air, my chest heaving.

Sutton’s eyes fluttered open. Her lips were swollen and red, slick. Her pupils were blown wide, black holes swallowing the blue. A smudge of black grease marred her cheek where I had touched her, a dark stain on her perfect skin. I stared at that mark. It looked like a bruise. It looked like damage.

Hot shame crashed over me.

I had sworn to protect her, to be the safe place, and instead, I had lost control. I had let the emotion of the confrontation bleed into the way I touched her. I was no better than the people she was running from—just another man taking what he wanted because he was strong enough to do it.

I put three feet of air between us. My hands fell to my sides, curling into fists to stop them from reaching for her again.

"Ben?" She reached out a hand toward me.

"Don’t," I said in a strangled voice as I backed away. "Don’t touch me."

She flinched, her hand dropping. "What? Why?"

"That was a mistake." My voice sounded foreign to my own ears—cold, hard, a stone wall slamming into place. "That shouldn’t have happened."

"It didn’t feel like a mistake." Her voice wavered and she swallowed hard. "Ben, please."

"Look at you." I gestured vaguely at her face, at the grease on her cheek, at the shirt I had ruined. "I’m covered in grease. I’m... I was almost ready to swing at a seventy-year-old man, and then I came back here and mauled you."

"You didn’t maul me. You kissed me. And I kissed you back."

"I’m supposed to be protecting you," I snapped, the self-loathing making the words sharper than I intended. "I can’t do that if I’m... if I’m doing this. I need to be focused. I can’t be the guy who loses his head because you looked at him."

"I don’t need the protector right now. I need you."

"You don’t know what you need." I turned away because I couldn’t look at her pleading face and hold my resolve. "You’re scared. You’re reacting to the adrenaline. It’s not real."

"Don’t tell me what’s real," she said, her voice rising. "Don’t you dare tell me what I feel."

"I have work to do." I couldn’t have this fight. I couldn’t stand here and debate my feelings when every cell in my body was screaming at me to grab her and kiss her again. "I need to finish the truck."

"Ben!"

I walked off the porch and down the steps, heading not for the truck, but for the detached garage where I kept my tools and my workbench. I needed to be alone. I needed to fix something mechanical, something that followed the laws of physics and didn’t look at me with big, hopeful eyes. I stalked into the dark, cool garage and slammed the door behind me, leaning back against the metal surface. I slid down until I was crouching on the concrete floor and dropped my grease-stained head into my hands.

My heart was still frantic. My lips still tingled with the memory of hers.

And now that I knew what she tasted like—now that I knew she wanted me back—I had absolutely no idea how I was going to survive the next few days without tearing myself apart. I wasn’t the protector anymore. I was the danger. And I didn’t know how to save her from myself.

Chapter Fourteen

SUTTON

The air inside the cottage was thick enough to gnaw on. The humidity had been steadily climbing all morning as the sky turned a bruised, sickly shade of yellow-gray, but that was Mother Nature. The invisible cloud was the suffocating weight of everything that wasn’t being said. The silence that had once been a sanctuary had curdled into something tense and prickly, filled with the memory of a kiss that was apparently so regrettable it had turned Ben into a stone statue.