Page 41 of Wild and Wanted

There was none.

‘I thought you might back out,’ he said as his hand slid to her belly, the muscles beneath jumping at his touch.

Her fingers touched his face, her thumb stroking the whiskers peppering the hard ridge of his jawline, the soft scratchy noise loud between them. He could see the pulse beating hard above the hollow at her throat. ‘Wild horses couldn’t have stopped me coming to the barn tonight.’

Clay nodded slowly. She was sure. She wanted to make out with him on this haystack. And he sure as fuck wanted it, too.

Still, he forced himself to temper the wild impulse to plunder her mouth, rake his hands down her body, rip open her buttons, put his mouth to her nipples, his fingers inside her panties.

He’d lectured her about going slow and slow he would go – even if it killed him.

Leaning in, he kissed her lightly then, his pulse a bull’s roar through his veins, her small, throaty moan a rodeo crowd ovation through his head. It was close-lipped but he let it linger on her mouth, her soft sigh telling him all he needed to know.

She was into it.

Drifting his lips north, he dropped kisses along her jaw to her ear then across her cheekbone, to her eyelids and the freckles across her nose before he sampled her mouth again. But this time, obviously not satisfied with a second chaste press of his lips, she was waiting for him, opening to him, her moan deeper now, more desperate, digging claws into his resolve as her hand furrowed into his hair.

Her rough breathing filled his head, accelerating the in-out chug of his own breath, each inhalation drenching his system with the perfume of her, chipping away at his determination to keep in check, swamping his control, the kiss getting deeper and harder and longer.

Where he found the wherewithal to pull away, Clay would never know, but he stepped back from the edge to rain kisses down her throat, shushing her protest at his absence against the rigid column of her throat, bussing hot, wet circles as his lips moved down, her thick swallow pressing against the flat of his tongue.

When he reached the frantic thrum of her pulse, he lingered, sucking lightly, the buzz of her life force sweet against his tongue, the knowledge that he was making her heart beat hard even sweeter.

The knowledge his was beating just as hard was a heady kind of rush.

As he dipped further, Clay’s lips moved to the shallow basin where her collarbones met, and lower still, tracing a wet trail to the scoop of her neckline and that first tempting little button.

He heard her gasp as his tongue flicked out to swipe under the shirt and his hand curled in the fabric sitting against her belly to stop himself from reefing the shirt down and sucking on one of those taut nipples he could see already tenting the lace.

Not yet.

Flattening his palm, he dragged his mouth back to hers, gratified at the slackness of her parted mouth and her not-quite-focused gaze, like she was a little high and he was her drug of choice. She looked in thrall and Clay wanted to beat his chest and holler like a fucking caveman.

He’d made her look like that. His mouth, his touch. She was in thrall to him.

‘You look good like that,’ he murmured, dropping a kiss to each corner of her mouth.

She gave a half laugh, which Clay felt reverberating through her abdominal muscles. ‘Like what?’

‘Intoxicated.’

Her lips curved into a smile as she made an effort to focus on him. ‘I am definitely drunk on you, Clay Calhoun.’

Her admission was like a lit match to the simmer of his libido. She was drunk on him. And he was drunk on her. He kissed her mouth harder this time and she responded in kind, the sweetness of her ardour a rising sugar tide in his blood, and he couldn’t get enough.

He was addicted to Stevie Everhart. God help him.

They kissed for long drugging minutes. Just kissing. Experimenting with their mouths, fitting together perfectly, twisting and turning, his tongue searching out all the spots that made her sigh and moan and twist the hand in his hair a little harder. When he pulled away, Clay was pretty sure he also looked intoxicated.

Her eyes fluttered open when she realised more kisses weren’t forthcoming. ‘Are we stopping?’

An unhappy frown told him stopping was not something she wanted to do.

He grinned as he shook his head. On the contrary. He lifted his hand from her belly, touching his index finger to her chin before trekking it down the path his mouth had taken before all that serious necking. It reached the scoop of her shirt and stopped.

‘You said only over clothes before?’

Her eyes widened a little. ‘Uh huh.’