Page 38 of Crossed Paths
I turn and start making my way back toward the bar. But before I can get there, a hand wraps gently around mine.
Warm. Firm. Certain.
I barely have time to blink before Hunter pulls me past the end of the bar, past the side entrance, and straight down the narrow corridor toward my office.
My pulse stumbles. “Hunter—?”
He doesn’t say a word.
The moment we’re inside, he closes the door behind us, and then—
He presses me back against it.
The click of the latch barely finishes before his mouth finds mine.
And it’s not gentle.
It’s not soft.
It’s aclaiming—a kiss like he’s starved of it, like he’s been waiting all day to do this and can’t hold it in a secondlonger. His hands frame my face, his body crowding mine in the best possible way, and I melt. Completely.
I should stop him. Say something. We’re twenty feet from the pub.
But I don’t move.
Because the second his lips touch mine, the rest of the world disappears.
His mouth moves like it knows me—like it remembers exactly where I’m softest, neediest, weakest.
He kisses me like he’s got something to prove, and maybe he does. Maybe we both do.
Then his lips trail lower, sliding along my jaw, over the curve of my throat, his breath warm against my skin. I gasp and my hands grip the front of his shirt just to keep steady.
“I missed you,” he murmurs against my neck, the words almost lost in the space between his mouth and my skin.
It knocks the breath right out of me.
Before I can respond, he finds my mouth again. Slower now, deeper. Less hunger, more meaning.
I kiss him back until I’m dizzy with it—until it’s not enough and somehow still too much.
Then I break away, just to breathe, my palms resting flat against his chest.
“Wait,” I whisper, still catching my breath. “How’d it go with Peter?”
His brow furrows slightly, like it takes him a second to remember that the world outside this office still exists.
“Oh,” he says, blinking, a slow smile pulling at his mouth. “Right. That.”
I raise a brow, still lightly pinned against the door. “Yes. That. My brother. The man who still thinks it’s 1998 and he’s in charge of my social calendar.”
Hunter exhales a soft laugh, then leans his forehead gently against mine.
“It went better than I thought.”
I watch him carefully. “Yeah?”
He nods once. “I told him. Everything.”
