Page 45 of A Home Among the Snow Gums
He squeezed her hand and pulled her onto the sofa beside him. ‘There’ll be no kissing, brat. I am open to a hug, however, since I just coerced you into telling me something that I had no right to know.’
Something in her chest melted, something that had boiled itself into a hard nut. Part of her brain thought the melting might be a bad sign, not a good sign, but she told it to shut up. And then Tom pulled her in close, wrapped his arms around her and she dropped her head into his warm, broad shoulder.
This huggy nonsense was a totally unnecessary step in her plan to access his spermatozoa, of course. She’d buy a turkey baster for that, and she was pretty sure there was a whole chapter inBaby Making 101when it came time to learn the nitty gritty. But, gee, it felt delicious. She’d be putting a stop to it, real soon.
Well … sort of soon.
Okay, not at all soon.
CHAPTER
16
Tom held Hannah against his shoulder, letting his fingers sink into the messy braid of her auburn hair.
‘I’m sorry you went through that.’
‘Yeah, me too.’ Her breath was hot on his neck when she spoke.
This was his moment to be as honest with her.Hannah, kissing you in the stables was not normal or ordinary.Or maybe:Hannah, I’ve loved you since you wore pigtails.Or:Hannah, it’s too late, I’ve got a time bomb ticking away between two of my vertebrae. I’m no good for you.
Instead, he let his free hand stroke her back from neck to waist—slowly down, even more slowly back up.
‘Now or never,’ she murmured, then lifted her head and looked at him, her clear green gaze trapping his. Her face was pale but for the freckles scattered across her nose. Her eyebrows were straight, no nonsense, determined, but there was nothing no nonsense about her mouth. On the contrary, it promised fun, laughter, life.
He shouldn’t, because a kiss could go nowhere and her head was clearly a hot mess.
He wouldn’t, because he was a hot mess of his own.
But his brain seemed to have lost its ability to do anything more than think wouldn’ts and couldn’ts and shouldn’ts, because she lifted herself slightly and slid one knee across his legs so she was straddling him on the sofa. Her arms were about his neck and she was so close he could see the frayed hole in the neckline of the forest-green sweater she wore, the glimmer of pale flesh below.
He shouldn’t, but he was struggling to think, and the part of him that hadn’t remembered sex was on Dr Novak’s banned list was finding itself pressed up snug against the warm denim of Hannah’s jeans.
‘What are you doing?’ he said.
He didn’t get an answer—well, not a spoken one, anyway. He’d kissed her before, so he should have been prepared. He should have braced himself for the lightning rod that jolted deep inside where his dreams slept, woke them up and made them want.
He forgot caution. He forgot the deep ache that lived in his back; his angry, bitter father sleeping in the hospital-style bed in the homestead’s main bedroom; his worry over the blankness of the future yawning out ahead of him.
All he could think about was Hannah.
Nails scraped at his nape and he grabbed her hair in his fist and bowed her back so he could kiss her mouth, her neck, the swell beneath the ragged collar of her jumper. She tasted like daffodils in spring, like pure mountain air. His hands wanted to linger, but his lust wanted to race. Her thighs, muscles taut, lifted over his. Her stomach spanned smooth and warm when his fingers lifted the hem of her jumper. The rasp of satin. The tiny metal claw of clasps. He brushed a thumb over her breast and the sound she made turned the heat into an inferno.
‘Oh, yes,’ she murmured, and the words acted on him quicker than a bucket of ice water. There was no ‘yes’ for him. He’d lost himself in the moment and now she was reading something into his response that he couldn’t deliver.
He lifted his head and took a second to find his voice. ‘I’m sorry, Hannah. I should have told you. I don’t want this.’
She was still flushed and her eyes were bright. ‘I don’t understand.’
Shit.Could he mess this up any more? She’d been totally buying his ‘disinterested party’ bullshit and then he’d gone and lost his head and blown it.
He had to backtrack. But how?
‘I’m not in the market for a relationship, or for a—dalliance. With anyone, and that includes you. A snog on the sofa doesn’t change that.’
She turned away from him. ‘That’s good,’ she said in a thin, low voice that he couldn’t quite interpret. ‘That’s excellent, in fact, because I don’t want any of those things from you.’
‘No more bullshit, Hannah. I asked you here to talk about a town project, but no, you had something you just had to say, and—’
