Page 74 of Branded
“It’s easy with you all,” she said softly. “I don’t know if it’s the fresh start, or you all are just really nice, but”—she took a breath—“it feels like my lungs work better here.”
“All that sea air,” I said lightly.
A grin. “Maybe.”
Fingers through her hair, the shorter pieces that framed her face falling forward to tease her cheeks. “Or maybe it’s that we’re all nice.”
She snorted now, humor dancing across her face. “No, baby,” she murmured. “You’re not nice. Very not nice.”
My hand found its way to her thigh, fingers splaying, feeling the heat of her pussy blazing even through the denim of her jeans. Her color went high, leg twitching. I slid it up an inch. Two. “Should we see how very not nice I can be, little bird?”
“Why?”
My brows furrowed. “Why what?”
“Why do you call me that?”
The hard left in our conversation threw me for a minute, but then I caught the hint of naughtiness in her expression, her lips fighting a smile.
And I couldn’t resist bending my head, slanting my mouth over hers, and kissing the shit out of her.
Right in the bar.
Where anyone might see.
Where…she might be uncomfortable.
Fuck.
I pulled back, slowly, because it was almost impossible to have my lips on hers, my tongue in her mouth, and then just stop kissing her.
But I managed to straighten away from her, though I did pull her stool even closer so that I could turn and put my legs on the bottom rung of the stool on either side of her, trapping my little bird in place.
She leaned back against my chest, eyes glazed and lips damp and swollen.
And the need to kiss her again was nearly overwhelming.
A hand on my cheek.
Her thumb tracing over my lips.
“Why’d you stop?” she asked.
Fuck, why had I?
Because she was staring up at me, need written into the lines of her face, her body pressed to mine, and I was trying, searching desperately for a reason to not take her into the hall and find a storage room, a bathroom, hell a semi-dark fucking alley to alleviate this need that was burning through me.
Kailey first.
Kailey first.
I sucked in a breath, wincing when it bounced her against my chest. Placing a palm between her shoulder blades, I steadied her. “I thought you might be uncomfortable with the PDA.”
A quiet chuckle, her head tilting back so that her chin rested on my sternum.
And fuck, what I wouldn’t give to have her naked and on top of me and staring at me like that.
Then she totally undid me by saying, “Smitty, baby, do you think I could ever be anything but comfortable with you?”
