Page 62 of Cowboy SEAL Homecoming

Chapter 14

Alex didn’t know what was happening to him. He never lost control like this. He shouldn’t. He couldn’t.

Except all he couldn’t do was stop. Stop touching those silky strands of hair, stop feeling the way her soft, lithe body molded to his, stop the impact of her tongue timidly running across his bottom lip.

So many things jolted through him—such deep physical connection, the taste of her, and something bright and happy and…foreign, really. He hadn’t felt like this in years, and even then there was something different.

She felt small in his arms, and yet she was strong and certain. She was definitely the one leading this. Prompting this. She was somehow in charge and making him feel upside down and inside out and, strangest of all, like that was a good thing.

The arguments in his brain got quieter and quieter the louder the heartbeat in his ears grew. His skin burned like fire and his breath waged a war against his lungs. He was hard and desperate and tired of the tight rein on his control he always employed.

He nibbled at her mouth. She made a noise that was somewhere between a squeak and a moan. He held on to her for dear life, and it was only the thought that he wanted to press himself against her hard enough to back her against the truck, that he wanted to have his hands under her clothes and hear her make that sound over and over in a freezing-cold parking lot to a crappy townie bar in Blue Valley, Montana, that cut through the insanity buzzing though him.

He had to stop this madness. He had to stop. Period.

It took a few more seconds for his body to accept his brain’s determination. He managed to pull her off of him, though she tried to arch against him instead. He was so hard and aching it nearly undid him. But he was a strong man. A soldier. He had to do what was right.

He untangled her from him and stepped a good few strides away. He didn’t have a clue as to what to say, but even if he had, he wouldn’t have been able to say it. His breath was still coming in short spurts. His heart was pounding so hard in his ears he wouldn’t know what his voice sounded like even if he could get it to come out.

When he looked over at her, she was grinning, her teeth sunk into her bottom lip, palm pressed to her cheek. She was looking at him like he was some kind of…something.

He took a breath, everything sharp and painful centering itself in his chest. This had been a dereliction of duty, plain and simple.

She sighed. “You’re going to be all weird now, aren’t you?”

“I’m not…” He had to clear his throat to speak without that odd rasp to his words. “I’m not going to be weird.”

“Okay. Then what are you going to be?”

He cleared his throat again and straightened his shirt, if only to give himself something to do while he tried to figure out what to say. “I’m going to be sensible and responsible and—”

“Boring?”

He glared at her. “You know as well as I do that was a mistake.”

“I actually don’t know that. I liked it. And I’d like to do more of that. With you.”

Christ, she was just going to kill him. Stab him in the heart and jiggle around the blade, then maybe kick him a few times while he was down.

“We are starting a business together,” he began, searching for the rules he’d laid out for himself.

“And?”

“And if we…” He had answers to that. He did. But maybe it was the wrong tack to take, because he needed this over. Or he was going to be a little too tempted by the moonlight reflecting off the moisture on her lips. “I mean, our parents were married. Which makes this weird.” That was the other rule, wasn’t it?

“Yeah, a little. But it’s not as if we ever lived under the same roof or…you know, anything that normal stepsiblings do. Our parents were married and you were far away. If it were really that weird, I don’t think the kiss would’ve been that good.”

“I thought you were sheltered and nervous and scared?” he demanded.

Her grin widened, if that was at all possible. “I did too. I guess I’m not such a mess. At least, not as much of one as I thought. I’ve spent a lot of my life living for someone else. To make Mom happy and to hopefully make her see that I was safe and healthy and happy. She sacrificed a lot for me, and I did the same for her. I don’t have to anymore. So I’m not going to. I guess that makes me…well, not as much of a scaredy-cat as I thought I’d be.”

“This…”

“Was a really great kiss. Like, really great… Right?”

There was just enough of a hint of vulnerability that he couldn’t lie to her, even though he should have. “Yes, it was a very great kiss, but that doesn’t mean—”

“It means that we have chemistry, right? And when you have chemistry with someone, you explore it.”

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