Page 46 of The Grumpy Billionaire
I stared down at her for one charged second more, and then my restraint broke and my mouth crashed down on hers. Honestly, I expected a second slap—but it didn’t come.
The aggravation of a few seconds earlier morphed into something entirely different. Mara’s soft lips moved with mine, slowly at first but progressing quickly to a mad sort of mutual feeding frenzy, our mouths moving together hungrily as our bodies clung to each other.
This.This was the feeling of my youth, the trembling excitement that had filled me whenever Mara was near, the restless heat that had infused all our physical encounters, culminating in that one perfect night we’d shared before our abrupt ending.
I was a grown man, standing in a parking lot at the edge of the Atlantic Ocean, but I was also a lovesick teenager, swamped with desire for a girl.
This girl. This woman who kissed me with blistering intensity and held me so tightly it felt as if I’d never been out of her arms for a minute, much less for eleven long years.
We went on kissing, and I brought my hands to the sides of her face then pushed them into her hair.
Part of my brain warned this was a critical mistake—Mara had hurt me deeply. She could easily do it again. But I was drugged, powerless to stop what seemed to be inevitable between us.
Her hands came to my waist, moving in long strokes up and down my sides and across my torso. There was no question we were both fully involved now. She was absolutely kissing me back, meeting my trembling energy with her own, unable to keep her lips and tongue and body from revealing the secrets she’d locked away from me these past few years.
She still cared.
She still wants me.
That revelation, coupled with her fervent response and moan of excitement, dismantled my self-control completely.
All thought was ripped from my mind and carried away by the ocean breeze. I pulled her up to her toes, drawing her body more tightly against mine, kissing her with a desperation born of years of pent-up emotion and desire.
Finally, the kiss gentled, and Mara drew back slightly, looking up with dazed eyes.
Her voice was a breath, barely audible. “Reid.”
“Mara,” I whispered fiercely.
Then I kissed her again, deepening our connection, plunging into her mouth over and over with greedy, ravenous, hypnotic strokes.
Her fingers delved beneath my hair, caressing the nape of my neck and running over my body, clasping on my shoulders, my back, my arms, as if testing to see whether I was actually there with her or a figment of her imagination.
As my hand coasted over her ass and pulled her against my lower body, a soft pleasure noise hummed from Mara’s mouth into mine.
The sound shook me to my core. This wasn’t a dream. It was really happening. We were together again in the way I’d longed for daily since the night she’d left town.
And we were about to do it in a parking lot.
I pulled out of the kiss, feeling like a man emerging from a trance.
Still holding Mara close, I lifted my head and surveyed the area around us, taking note of the couples and families folding their kites and packing blankets and coolers into nearby cars. Some of them darted glances at us.
My gaze returned to Mara’s kiss-swollen lips, and I gave her a smile of utter satisfaction and fervent desire. “I don’t thinkthiskind of show was on the Kite Festival brochure.”
Dropping my forehead to rest against hers, I whispered, “Let’s go back to my house.”
As if a spell had been broken, the enormity of what we’d just done seemed to hit her. “No,” she yelped, stepping backward out of my arms and bumping into the door of my car.
“It’s three minutes from here.” I followed her, stepping close again and reaching for her waist with a naughty grin. “Unless you really don’t want to leave, in which case I’ll gladly risk an arrest for public indecency.”
She sidestepped me and almost ran to the other side of the car. I stared at her flushed face over the Porche’s roof, taking several head-clearing breaths and slowly gaining mastery over body parts that hadclearlybeen neglected too long.
Mara opened her mouth to say something then shut it again and got into the passenger seat without a word.
I opened my own door and dropped into the driver’s seat. “I would have gotten that door for you, you know,” I teased, repeating my line from earlier today.
Earlier today when I’d had so much hope for this carefully planned outing. Of course kissing her hadn’t been part of that plan, but I’d be lying if I said I was disappointed in the turn of events.
