Page 43 of Stitch & Steel
The scent was all him—pine, engine oil, smoke, and something that made my toes curl.
He looked down at me with that crooked grin. “Better?”
I swallowed. “Yeah. But you’re gonna have to keep me warm now.”
His eyes sparked. Low. Dangerous.Male.
“Well,” he murmured, stepping in close, “if that’s what the lady wants.”
He took my hand then—rough, warm, and steady—and everything in me lit up.
He didn’t check his phone. There was no rushed “club business” or one-foot-out-the-door tension. He washere. Present. Looking at me like I was the only woman who’d ever mattered.
And God, was it a turn-on.
We sat down, but dinner was slow going. I barely noticed the food—though I caught the scent of roasted garlic and buttery pasta. He’d brought real Italian. Probably from that little trattoria downtown. That meant heplanned.
He poured wine from a chilled thermos into proper glasses. “Don’t laugh,” he warned. “Had to steal these from the clubhouse bar.”
I didn’t laugh. I couldn’t.
No one had ever done anything like this for me.
Not the Valentine’s Day boyfriends. Not the candlelit dinner promises from men who always forgot my favorite color or birthday. This was something else.
Something that left me aching.
After we picked at our meal, he reached across the table, brushing a loose strand of hair from my cheek. “You cold?”
“No,” I said, breath catching. “But I wouldn’t mind if you sat a little closer.”
His chair scraped as he moved beside me on the rug, his arm sliding around my back. The warmth of him seeped into me, his leather and skin making me shiver in the best way.
“You did all this,” I whispered. “Why?”
He didn’t answer right away.
Then he looked at me, eyes dark and honest. “Because I want you to know I’m not just patched and muscle. I can be the guy who builds things too. Good things. Real things.”
I looked at his lips.
He looked at mine.
And then the distance disappeared.
His lips brushed mine softly at first, like a question. When I didn’t pull away, he deepened it—slow, hot, coaxing. His hand slid to the side of my face, angling me just right.
The kiss tasted like wine, sugar, and something darker. Like heat waiting to unfold.
My fingers gripped the leather of his kutte, drawing him closer, until the space between us was gone.
We kissed like we had nowhere else to be. Like time didn’t matter. Like this spark, this pull, thisthingbetween us had been waiting for years to ignite.
By the time we pulled apart, my head was spinning and my lips tingled.
He leaned his forehead against mine and whispered, “That wasn’t just a first date kiss. That was a declaration.”
My heart thudded. Hard.
