Page 48 of Near Miss

Beckett nods, eyes never leaving me. His voice drops again, and it’s rougher than before, traipsing across my exposed skin like the brush of one of those calloused palms of his. “Is that what you like?”

“Sure, why not?” I say, finally extracting my wrist from him and leaning back against the arm of the couch, putting distance between us even though I’m not sure I want to. “But what you did the other night was satisfactory, too.”

His eyes move over my shoulders, my arms folded across my chest, before they come back up to find mine. “I can do a lot of things.”

“I’ll bet you can.” My voice is just a rasp.

“Want me to show you?”

I blink, and there are a million things I should be thinking about—why it’s a bad idea, why I should ask him to leave, why I shouldn’t let him in any more than I already have—but those things feel small, fleeting, and somehow inconsequential when he’s looking at me like that.

I think about the fact that the air in the room feels impossibly heavy—that it feels a bit like there’s a string between us, and it pulled taut the second I opened that door and he was standing there.

My eyes cut down to his mouth, full lips parted slightly, and I wonder what they would feel like against mine again.

I look back at him, barely nodding. “Sure.”

Beckett leans forward, every muscle in his body tight, plucking the book from my hands. His eyes never leave mine as he sets it on the coffee table.

They’re still on me when his hands wrap around my wrists. He leans back against the couch and pulls me flush to his side. I’m only there for a moment before his hands find my waist.

Like I’m nothing, weightless, not someone heavy with all this baggage they carry, stuck, sinking below water in a car she left years ago. He hoists me onto his lap until our chests and foreheads are practically flush.

I inhale. He smells like something I can’t quite place—but I think it’s something I used to love a long time ago when I was young and free and safe.

My hands find his shoulders and I can feel the ridges and valleys of muscle beneath his sweater as his fingers slide under the hem of my T-shirt.

“I don’t think business acquaintances sit like this,” I whisper, and I feel his hands tighten around my waist.

Even though I can barely see them this close, those green striations in his eyes light up, and the corner of his mouth lifts, the shadow of a dimple popping under his stubble. “They also don’t go down on each other in hallway closets. I’m pretty sure they don’t taste each other for days afterwards. And I doubt they spend every waking moment with their cock hard thinking about it.”

My lips part, my hips roll, and I glance down, where I can feel him straining against me.

But his thumb and finger grip my chin, lifting my face back to his. His voice drops, and I feel it all over me. “Dr. Roberts, look at me.”

His grip tightens, just for a moment, and his hand slides along my jaw, reaching the back of my head and tangling in the hair at the nape of my neck. His eyes are on me, and I think I might be a bit lost in them. My hips move again because the way he feels between my legs is something I can’t quite place either.

My fingers dig into his shoulders, my lips part in a tiny moan, and his grip tightens.

We’re staring, waiting, and I think I should tell him to go.

But his lips find mine, and then there’s nothing in my head at all but him.

I’m not sure it’s a kiss. It is by the definition of the word—our lips touch, his tongue finds mine.

I think it might be something else entirely.

His hand cradles the back of my head, the other splaying across my back, pushing me into him. His hips move up to meet mine, and we stay like that for quite a while.

Teeth nipping at lips, hands gripping at clothes and skin, and tongues moving against one another. My hips rolling down to his.

“Bedroom?” His words are low, rough, and punctuated by a groan catching in his throat when I arch against him.

He breaks away, mouth finding my neck and teeth scraping my skin. I tip my head back, words practically a whimper. “Around the corner.”

Beckett doesn’t wait, one hand cradling the back of my head and the other wrapping around my back, gripping the side of my waist. He stands, and my legs wind around him, desperate to be closer, ridges of his abdomen and obliques pressing into my thighs.

Like he knows where he’s going, like he’s lived here forever, he carries me out of the living room and down the hall, mouth on me, tongue never leaving mine, and he kicks my bedroom door open further.

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