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All the nervous anticipation coiling tight like a fist in my belly was mirrored in his expression. His eyes were fixed firmly on myface, as though not trusting what he might do if he allowed his gaze to wander.
“Can I kiss you?” His voice had gone quiet. Almost shy. “I don’t want to make you—”
“Yes.”
It was the wrong decision in every way. I was too busy for romantic entanglements. He was avampire. But I shoved all of it to the side. I was a live wire, every nerve in my body awake in a way I had not experienced in god only knew how long. Iwantedthis. “You aren’tmaking meanything.”
I reached up and twined my fingers into his soft blond hair. He groaned, a broken sound, as I scraped my fingernails gently along his scalp.
When he kissed me, it was more a sweet mingling of breath, a gentle brushing of his lips against mine, than a proper kiss. He pulled back almost as soon as it began, leaving me breathless and wanting. Giving me the opportunity to end this if that was what I wanted.
“I realize that my touching you without an audience was never part of the original plan,” Reggie began, his eyes never leaving my face. His lips were so soft. Ineededthem on me again. Right now. “It certainly wasn’t part of mine. But ever since the night we met, all I have wanted was to touch you.”
I shivered at the heat in his words. “Since the night we met?”
“Yes.” His hold on me tightened as he pulled me deliberately into his lap. I straddled him, our bodies seamed together chest to chest. “Even as I walked away from you that night, all I could think about was what it would feel like to hold your hand. To kiss you.” His eyes dropped to my mouth. “The reality ofthatis way better than I imagined it would be. Which just makes me wonder if the reality of touching you in other ways would be better than my imagination, too.”
My heart raced at his words. His eyes fluttered closed as his nostrils flared. Could he smell it, the way my blood pumped harder through my veins? The idea of it shouldn’t have excited me as much as it did.
“You’ve imagined touching me?” I managed.
A long pause.
He nodded.
Outside, the wind was picking up again. I barely heard it. There was only the beating of my heart, Reggie holding me so close we were breathing the same air—and me, wanting so badly for him to kiss me again it felt a little like madness.
When I spoke next, it was in a brave voice I hardly recognized. “Then do it.”
His mouth was on mine before I could draw breath, devouring me in a way that left me gasping, showing none of the gentleness he had a moment ago. He kissed like a man on the verge of drowning breathes: desperate, and like he couldn’t get enough. His lips pressed so hard to mine it felt bruising, his tongue tracing the seam of my lips for only a moment before plunging within.
He asked me something that sounded vaguely likeis this all right?But I could hardly hear him over the thundering of the blood in my ears and the racing beat of my heart. I twined my arms around his broad shoulders by way of response, fingers reaching up to tangle again in his hair. This man made me reckless in a way I had never experienced before. Not with anybody.
I didn’t have the words to tell him any of this, so I showed him instead.
Kissing him was like finally working out the solution to a difficult problem, euphoric both mentally and physically. I needed him shirtless so I could run my palms over his chest and feel thebunch and flex of his muscles as I touched him. I slid my hands down his body, reveling in his sharp intake of breath, pausing only when I got to the bottom hem of his flannel button-down.
I fumbled with the buttons with useless fingers. “Off,” I mumbled against his lips, rendered monosyllabic with need. “I want—”
Before I could finish the thought, he yanked both the flannel and the thin T-shirt he’d been wearing beneath it over his head and tossed them over his shoulder.
Then he took each of my wrists in his hands and pinned me, arms above my head, to the mattress.
Our change in positioning seemed to unleash something within him. He kissed me again with a harsh groan, his grip on my wrists like a vise. He was everywhere, all at once, his mouth on my cheek, on my jaw, on the sensitive pulse point where neck met shoulder. I felt seconds away from bursting out of my skin, writhing beneath him as he kissed his way down my body.
What would it feel like, I wondered, to be pressed together with him flesh to flesh, with no clothes between us at all? All at once I had to know. In that moment, it was all I wanted.
I had just been about to beg him to take off my blouse and chuck it to the floor with his clothes when he released my wrists. He sat up, placing a hand on each of my shoulders.
“I need to eat something,” he said, panting hard. His voice was gravel on stone. “Before we…before.”
It took a moment for what he was trying to tell me to sink in. And then, all at once, it did.
He needed toeat something.
“Oh,” I said. And then, feeling like an idiot, I asked, “Why?”
He looked away, uncomfortable. “It’s just that it will be better if I do. Safer. For you.”
