Page 137 of Hunt for You

He held back and I couldn’t move him.

I turned to face him again, my breath coming fast and short. “For real?”

He scratched the back of his neck. “Not a priest, but… waiting for marriage now, remember?” he asked sheepishly.

I actually laughed. “You can’t be serious?”

His eyes flashed. “Deadly.”

Want pulsed through me, zinging in my chest, even though I was completely off balance andso unclear on what was going on here.

But I made myself hold his gaze, though I folded my arms across my chest because it felt stronger. “Okay then,” I kind of laughed. “So whatisallowed?”

He sidled right up to me, watching me with a question in his eyes, then slowly lifted his hands to cup my face. And when I didn’t break his gaze, or pull away, he leaned in slowly and… kissed me. Softly at first, his lips barely brushing mine. Gently. His tongue barely sliding beyond my lip, but that tender need stole my breath.

I unwrapped my arms from myself and gripped his forearms, holding onto him not to stop him, but because I suddenly felt like I might topple over if I wasn’t holding onto something.

And then he groaned softly, tilted his head and deepened the kiss—still keeping it slow, but intense, his lips dancing with mine, his tongue flicking, our breaths mingling…

I got lost in that kiss. I hadn’t had a guy kiss me without grabbing me somewhere since I was in high school. But somehow… somehow the innocence of it only made it hotter.

I leaned into him, slowly letting go of his wrists to wrap my arms around his trim waist.

But just as I leaned in and began to press myself against him, he broke the kiss, but didn’t let go of my face.

We just stood there, a bare inch apart, staring at each other.

I discovered that I was half-blind with need, and half-terrified.

Then he muttered a curse and suddenly, I was pinned up against the house, his hands in my hair, his body pressed against mine from chest to knee, and his breath thundering on my cheek.

Every thought that had been spinning in my head just flew out. The world was suddenly made up of nothing but his warmth, his strength, andthat tormented kiss.

Sam was shaking under my hands. As I wrapped arms around him and pulled him in, I felt him quiver. When he slid a knee between mine and pressed it right up high and firm at the apex of my thighs, I gasped and dropped my head back.

With a rasped,“Shit, Bridget!”he dove for my throat, and I clawed a hand into his hair, pulling him tighter against me as goosebumps washed down my arm and side.

I rolled my hips, pressing myself on his thigh, and it made my breath stop.

He shuddered again, and wantexplodedin my belly.

I reached down with both hands, scrambling for his belt-buckle, mentally mapping the route through the house to my bedroom, then deciding that was too far, and I’d tell him to hike me up on the sideboard in the hallway. But there was a couch in the living room that was closer and—

With a muttered curse, Sam suddenly tore away from me, and the night chill rushed into the gap he left as he stumbled away from me, practically fell down the step off my porch, rasping,“I’ll call you tomorrow,”then turned andfledto his car.

And to my shock, I was left there, panting and flustered, as the car screeched out of my driveway, then down the road, the gears grinding and engine whining because he was accelerating so hard.

I stood there, shocked and horny, for too long, still somehow convinced that he would come back.

But he didn’t.

When I finally accepted that he wasn’t going to, I turned on trembling knees and stumbled inside as the fierce disappointment and lingering sense of rejection slowly roiled inside me.

With a burst of spite, I almost left the door open, half-hoping that Cain was out there somewhere, watching all of this unfold. Half-hoping that he’d show up, pissed and needy, and finally take me.

But then, part of my heart screamed that wouldn’t be fair to Sam—who was being up front, and not leaving me in the dark…

And yet, I liked the dark. Ilikedit when Cain didn’t ask, just took what he wanted.

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