Page 176 of Branded
But his mouth was against mine, his blue eyes were wide and beautiful and gentle, so I stopped thinking about demons and doors and just whispered, loving the way the word felt with his lips pressed to mine, “Okay.”
“Okay,” he repeated, lips twitching…and then he was moving again.
And then he was kissing me.
And it was good—so fucking good.
So good I knew he was going to be good at a lot of things.
Thank the hockey gods.
Seventeen
Raph
Her lips were softer than I’d expected, and she tasted sweet.
Like apples or cherries.
No. Like strawberries.
That thought had my lips moving into a smile against hers…and in the next instant my smile was fading because her tongue slipped out and brushed lightly against the seam of my mouth.
My cock was already hard.
That tentative touch of her tongue had it aching.
But it didn’t have me freezing.
Nope. It had me knowing that I needed to get into her bed before I fucked her right there on the top of the stairs. Normally, I wouldn’t have bothered carrying her up at all, not when I could have just as easily dropped her onto the couch, fucked her hard and furious right then and there.
But…it was Beth.
And I needed plenty of space for her.
And I needed plenty of space to care for her.
She wasn’t a quick fuck. She was—God help me for the slippery, frightening slope I’d just dove headfirst down—more.
I’d known it when she passed out at CeCe’s.
I’d known it with the tears in my car.
I’d known it with the nightmare.
I’d known it with how she banked her fears and talked Pru down.
I’d known it over pancakes, over pretzels, over fancy grilled cheeses.
Hell, if I was looking deep and getting my head on straight, I’d known it from the first glimpse of those red lips, those curves, that velvet rasp of her laughter.
Fucking around. I’d been fucking around in my own misery, and that shit wasn’t going to happen again.
No fucking way.
So, our first time wasn’t going to be with her or me crammed into the cushions or spent bending her over the arm of the couch—though both of those quickly etched themselves on my mental list of things I wanted to do to and with her, joining in with my plans to fuck her on that little table in her entryway, on her kitchen island, on the hood of my car.
In the shower. Yeah, I also definitely had to have her in the shower.
