Page 27 of Lone Star Witness

Marise laughed. “Both,” they said in unison.

Slade was the one who continued. “I have this argument with myself a lot whenever I’m around you. Kiss Marise and cross a line that can’t be uncrossed. Then, I have to remind myself why the line crossing would be bad.”

“Same here,” she admitted.

And she felt the heat begin to stir.

Heat that trailed down from her mouth to the center of her body.

“Sometimes, like now, I have a hard time remembering… everything,” she settled for saying.

Everything in a nutshell was that need for friendship. But there was another component to this resistance, too.

“Roots and wings,” she reminded him. It was something Slade always brought up, and he considered it the main barrier to him ever having a relationship that lasted more than a month or two. “I’ve got the first. You’ve got the second. Hard to make things work when one stays put and the other is gone more often than not.”

They’d had this discussion so many times that Marise knew it was time for Slade to make his usual sound of agreement.

But he didn’t.

“I used to believe that,” he said instead. “Then, Jericho hooked up again with his first love. Rachel’s as grounded as… you are. Jericho is still with Maverick Ops.”

Marise frowned. “And they make it work?”

“They do.”

Those two words repeated in her head while she stared at him, and she felt some crumbling of the barrier they’d put up between them. A barrier that likely needed to stay in place because there was still that whole friendship aspect of it. But even that, as potent as it was, didn’t stop her from leaning in.

This time, she didn’t use her fingers to touch his lips.

She used her mouth.

Despite the alarm bells going off in her head, she sank right into the kiss. And Slade did some sinking of his own.

He made a sound, part protest, part grumble, and it came from deep within his throat. If she’d relied just on that sound, Marise would have thought he was ready to put a quick stop to this.

But nope.

Just the opposite.

His hand went around the back of her neck, and he hauled her closer. In a flash, he took the kiss out of the semi-friendly, semi-hot zone and all the way to scalding. Leave it to Slade to accomplish something like that.

Her body was mighty pleased with his reaction. With the hunger she felt inside him because it matched her own hunger. Her own need for him.

He moved his mouth over hers as if he knew every one of her erotic zones. He was clever and didn’t just use his mouth either. His hand slid down her throat and to the front of her shirt.

That need skyrocketed when he deepened the kiss. When she tasted him. And when that taste raced through her like wildfire.

So, this was what it was like to be swept away on a tide of heat. No cares. No doubts. No regrets. Those very well might come later, but for now, it was all about the heat, the need and the possibility of what might come next.

Her body wanted sex to be next, and she wanted it now.

But thankfully, there was still just a glimmer of sanity left, and that glimmer reminded her of something huge.

No, not that part of him that she thought might already be straining against the zipper of his jeans.

But rather his injuries.

Yeah, those.

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