Page 29 of Hold on Tight

“I know.”

“This is a bad idea,” he told her. Then he gave up, let his fingers find the thick softness of her hair, and lowered his mouth to hers.

Chapter 8

His lips were cool and soft, but the rest of his mouth was hot, and something about the contrast lit Mira up.

It was too much, all at once. And there was the unfinished business in their far-off past, which was part of her excitement, twined up in it in a way she couldn’t untangle. Way back then, at the lake, she’d made him want her so badly he’d forgotten caution. And she had too, because no one had ever made her feel quite like that. Nothing before him had given her that sense of possibility, that rashness, that raw, sweet achiness.

The way she felt now, all eagerness and daring.

And here they were, his mouth not demanding butsuggesting. Here are a thousand lovely, dirty things I would like to do to you. I will start here with this slide of tongue over tongue, slow and sure. As if he had all the time in the world to get that one caress exactly right, as if they weren’t grumpy asshole, injured soldier, and beleaguered mom, woman in search of herself. His kisses were long and sweet, came to an end, began again, blurred together.

“You tasteexactlythe same.” He said it so close to her mouth that she felt his breath, his words, on her lips.

She pushed her mouth against his, trying to get closer, to fall into what he was telling her. That he felt it, too, the connection to that weird, splintered moment in the past, one long thread, her desire and willingness, his response.

He made a dark sound into her mouth and kissed her harder. He drew her lower lip in, sucked on it. The sensation pulled deep, tugged at her core. Caused heat to pool, to rise, to spread in her limbs.

She whimpered.

“Shh.”

He was kissing her jaw now, her throat, the hollow between her collarbones. His hair tickled her chin. She clutched his arms as his mouth brushed the curve of her neckline. “Jake—”

“Shh,” he said again. He drew back, his eyes dark, his mouth red and slightly slack, his breath quick. “Sam will hear. And how would you explain it to him? Can you imagine at school? ‘I saw Mommy kissing the babysitter.’ ”

Was that what this was? Just Mommy kissing the babysitter? If so, it should be easy to stop, to make the right decision and pull away. But her body refused the idea. It was begging for more, liquid heat between her legs, her breasts tight, her breath still searing her throat. Even parts of her that by all rights shouldn’t be involved felt jacked up. The backs of her knees. Her earlobes. The skin all over her body, hyperactivated, wide-awake.

“What is this? What just happened?” she asked.

“I don’t know.”

He didn’t say it like he was cutting off the conversation. He said it like he wanted more information. Like he wanted her to give him the answers.

“Just crazy chemistry?” She tilted her head.

“It feels crazy.”

“Crazy good,” she said.

He was looking at her that way again. Like he could barely keep himself in check, like he was thinking about every possible thing he wanted to do to her. It did terrible things to her self-control. It overrode caution and common sense and the absolute conviction that, yes, this was too complicated.

“Sam won’t come down,” she said. “I promised him snuggles if he stays up, and snuggles are important to him.”

He kissed her again. Slid his mouth over hers, his hands down her body, over her breasts, to her waist, up again. He pulled her close and sealed her mouth with his. He licked her and bit her lip and made her moan. Loudly. He found her earlobe and sucked the heat there to the surface, and her hands got out of her control and started wandering all over him. Over the hard muscles of his back, into his soft hair, across the rough landscape of his face.

Her thumbs described his pecs, and then she slid one hand down across the ridged plane of his belly and grabbed the waistband of his jeans. Held it in her fist. Her hands didn’t feel like hers. They felt like they belonged to someone else and like they might do something she’d have to apologize for afterward. Also, she thought she might bite him, right there, where a thick cord of muscle connected his neck to his shoulder—she did it, and he groaned, deep in his chest. He grabbed her ass, hard, as if to tug her against him, but he lost his balance and fell backward, barely catching himself with a hand on the counter.

“Motherfu—” He put his head in his hands.

“Jake—”

“No, don’t. I sometimes forget. My head was somewhere else, I forgot who I was, I thought I could do something the normal way for fucking once. My bad.”

Her heart hurt, and she reached out to offer him comfort.

He drew back. “This is a dumb fucking idea,” he said. “In every way. I can’t even catalog all the ways this is a dumb idea.”

---