She steps closer, soft and slow, like she can feel the tight coil of restraint thrumming just under my skin, waiting to snap. One hand lifts to my chest. Just her fingers, brushing the lapel of my jacket like a promise.
I can’t breathe.
Her gaze lifts to mine. “Okay?”
I nod. Just once. Any more and I’ll fall to my knees.
She leans in. And God help me, she doesn’t go for a quick brush of lips or something sweet and polite like last time. No, she parts her mouth and kisses me like she’s tasting something she’s been craving for years.
Heat slams into me.
Her lips are soft but firm, sure in their pressure. She opens to me, invites me, and I fall like a man starved. I kiss her back, deeper like claiming. Her fingers slide up to the back of my neck, curl into my hair, and pull.
I groan. It’s not dignified. It’s not controlled. It’s the sound of a man unmade by a single touch.
My hands don’t even know where to land. One ends up on her waist, the other hovering just above her thigh, shaking with the need to feel more. To grip. To lift her onto the table and make her scream into my mouth.
But I don’t.
I just kiss her. And she kisses me back with slow, drugging pressure that makes the world dissolve.
When she pulls back, barely, like she regrets it, her breath ghosts across my cheek.
I’m panting.
She hums, flushed. “Yep. That’s going in the file.”
“What file?” I rasp.
She grins. “The ‘what we’re doing when I finally stop being polite and ride you like a stolen hearse’ file.”
I swear under my breath.
She pats my chest twice, a mockery of casual affection. “Goodnight, Edgar.”
Then she walks out.
And I just stand there. Drenched in her scent and aching in places poetry hasn’t named yet.
I’m in trouble.
Chapter Fifteen
Jennifer
I float through the front door. Not walk. Float. Because apparently, all it takes is one good kiss from a morally grey mortician to scramble my brain like supermarket eggs. The cheap kind. Over-handled. Probably cracked.
I should eat. I do eat. Something. I think it was toast. Or maybe the sponge I left by the sink. Same mouthfeel. Same total lack of taste. My tongue’s too busy running replays of Edgar’s mouth on mine like it’s hosting a late-night infomercial: “But wait, there’s more!”
I need sleep. I have a date in the morning. A date. Casual breakfast. No big deal. Just eggs. Just a man with sunbeam smiles and ditch-digging forearms who makes me laugh like it’s his religion.
My brain is melting.
I strip out of Edgar’s jacket with the reverence of a cultist handling sacred robes. Then I sniff it. Deeply. Like a deranged murderess in heat. Zero shame. I practically purr.
“This is fine,” I mutter, already crawling into bed like I’m escaping the consequences of my own bad decisions. “This is totally, rationally, emotionally fine.”
Spoiler: it is not fine. But I bury my face in his jacket anyway and let the scent of sandalwood, and sensual food choices lull me straight into horny little denial coma.