Page 11 of Josephine and Clay

Once we cross it, there’s no pretending this is just flirting at a bar anymore.

I slip my key into the lock but don’t turn it. Instead, I look over to find him watching me already.

The porch light catches his eyes and the sharp edge of his jaw. He looks damn good standing there, like he was made for moments exactly like this, and he knows exactly what he’s doing to me.

“Last chance,” I say quietly.

“For what?” he asks.

“For me to tell you to go home.”

His gaze doesn’t waver. “You gonna?”

I should.

I know I should.

“No,” I admit.

And then he’s kissing me.

His hand slides to the back of my neck, pulling me closer, and I go easily, like my body already decided this before my mind caught up. I press closer, rising slightly onto my toes without thinking, chasing the feeling instead of pulling back from it. The world narrows down to this. To him.

It’s overwhelming.

I turn just enough to reach behind me, turning the key and fumbling for the door handle without breaking the kiss. Then the door swings open, and we stumble inside together, still tangled up in each other.

The door shuts behind us with a soft click.

We stagger inside, a hungry scramble of hands and mouths. I taste cedar, cotton, and the faint mineral tang of his skin. There’s a pull, magnetic and feral, that I didn’t know I was capable of feeling this fast.

There’s an edge to it too, a sharpness, because everything comes blistering to the surface at once: want, fear, the knowledge that we’re strangers really, but that only makes it better.

More reckless.

He pins me briefly, breath ragged, against the door, the wood thumping dully behind my shoulder blades.

I gasp, more in surprise than anything else.

It’s almost funny, how quickly I become the kind of person who lets a man crowd her up against her own front door. But I don’t stop him. Not when his mouth finds the angle beneath my jaw, or when his hands land on my hips and squeeze me tight.

His hands drag up my spine, pushing the fabric of my shirt higher, and when he finally gets it off me, I don’t care where it lands. His palms are hot against my bare skin; the feel of them makes me shudder.

I take the lead, shove him back enough to get my own hands under his shirt, tug at the hem. He grins into my mouth and lets me have my way. His chest is hard beneath my fingers, coarse with hair, and I want more. I want all of it.

“Fucking hell,” I moan desperately. “Clay.”

He groans into my mouth, then lifts me, just enough that I’m forced to wrap my legs around his hips as he carries us deeper into the cottage.

The old floor creaks beneath us, the only sound besides the wild thump of my heart and the short, hungry gasps I can’t quite seem to swallow down.

One broad hand fumbles behind him for the first doorknob to my bedroom, finds it, and shoulders through. My back hits the wall, again, and I laugh, breathless, startled by how much this roughness is what I want.

I want to be wanted.

He reads it.

His hands slide from my hips to my ass, and his lips graze my ear. A hoarse sound, almost a growl, escapes him and vibrates against my skin.