Page 30 of So Bad It Must Be Good

She didn’t use that chance. His mouth touched hers, something unknown shuddering through him. Something unfamiliar flickering into life. A warmth, a centering as though he’d been waiting for just this. Always.

Which didn’t make any sense, but what did make sense was the way her body fit against his, the way her arms tentatively and then tightly wound around his neck. The way her mouth opened under his, a wet hot invitation to invade.

Which was not an invitation he’d decline in any universe. He swept his tongue over her lips and into her mouth, drowning in a flavor he’d never even let himself guess at.

Kayla Gallagher tasted like summer-sun-soaked berries. Sweet and warm and a bright, a delectable contrast to every damn dreary thing in his life.

She made some sound, a moan or sigh, and it made the hand on her cheek not nearly enough. He stroked one palm down the soft, elegant curve of her neck, let his other hand tangle in the wet red waves of hair—a shining beacon on a woman who’d always seemed so bent on hiding.

Until recently, anyway. She’d been the one to invite herself here, to step forward, and he may have been the one to kiss her, but it never would have happened if not for her first move.

It should feel dreamlike, but instead her body was a warm, delicious reality against him. He smoothed his palm down her spine and she arched into him, and there was no way she could miss the hard ridge of his erection against her midsection.

Would he feel the same response from her? If he tugged off his own sweatpants from her body and slid his hands between her legs, would she be as wet for him as he was hard for her from just a kiss?

His hands itched to do just that, to slide over her ass to the front of her pants and undo the flimsy knot that kept him from knowing.

She licked into his mouth, pressing more firmly against him, her fingers rifling through his hair, and it took every ounce of reason and restraint to keep his hands above her clothes.

Not everyone leaped ahead like he did. He’d been made aware of that a few more times than he cared to remember. Women always seemed to find him a little too something—his high school girlfriend had found the fact he had hair on his chest “problematic.” His last girlfriend had decided after a few months that he was just too “traditionally masculine.”

And everything he wanted to do with Kayla was very, very traditionally masculine. He wanted his cock inside of her and his mouth all over her skin. He wanted to know what every inch of her tasted like, and he wanted to hear her scream his name.

“Liam.” It was a whisper, but it was damn good enough.

Her head had fallen back and her eyes fluttered open, that dark blue meeting his gaze with a dazed kind of satisfaction, but it was the way her mouth curved into something very close to a self-satisfied smirk that just about did him in.

He splayed his hands on her lower back, sliding them over the curve of her ass, pulling her closer, settling the length of his erection between her legs and giving a little thrust.

Her head fell back even farther and she sighed, fingers digging into the back of his neck. She was stunning, the length of her pale neck exposed and glowing in the light of the candles and the camping lantern, her hair waving out of the braid she’d haphazardly put it in as it dried from the rain. Her eyes were half closed, though she watched him carefully.

He wanted to scrape his teeth across her neck. He wanted to grip his hands into her red shimmering hair. He wanted to do a million things that would probably be deemed too much.

So he settled himself on the least too much course of action he could think of. He held her gaze as he moved his hands to the front of her pants and found the tie. He tugged the string loose. She didn’t move, didn’t break eye contact, just looked at him, her arms still around his neck as the fabric fell to the ground.

She made another one of those noises, something that almost reminded him of a cat purring, as she trailed her fingertips down his chest and abdomen. She tugged at the hem of his shirt, lifting it as far as she could manage before he had to help her get it over his head.

It fell to the floor with her sweatpants. She inhaled sharply and for a second of intense disappointment, he was certain this was the moment where she decided it—he—was that little bit too much.

Instead, she reached out and put a palm to his chest, her fingers splaying across the hair there, then following the trail down to the waistband of his shorts. She paused, her eyebrows knitting together as if contemplating something of grave importance.

He wanted to touch her, feel the rough of his hands against the soft, creamy skin of her thighs, the hot wet center of her, but he willed himself to give her a second to figure out whatever problem she was trying to solve.

On another one of those courage-rallying deep breaths, she leaned forward and pressed a kiss to the center of his chest, and then higher, then where his beard met neck, and then his mouth, just a gentle brush of her berry-flavored lips, even as her fingertips moved softly across where his shorts hung on his hips.

She looked up at him through thick, burnished-gold lashes. “I don’t suppose you have any condoms?” she asked, her fingers dipping under the waistband of his shorts, teasingly far away from where he wanted them.

“Um, no.” Though he’d run out and get some first thing in the morning without hesitation. “But we do have hands and mouths,” he offered, a little too drunk on her proximity, on her taste, on how fucking gorgeous she was to care about anything being too much.

Her entire hand slid under his shorts and boxers, her cool, slim fingers wrapping around his throbbing cock. “I suppose that’ll do,” she returned with mock seriousness, before flashing him a grin.

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