Page 58 of Rebel Bride
“What do you mean by?—”
The rest of my query was swallowed by a kiss.
Chapter Nineteen
Summer
* * *
I had asked for this.
So he didn’t take much persuading, but then Shelby Mae never had problems attracting boys. Or men. Now Hatch was kissing me like he had no choice. Like I had given him no other option because I was some sort of siren, drawing him to his doom on the rocks.
His mouth moved over mine with assurance, sweet and full of promise, and when his tongue touched mine, the kiss exploded into pure, sexy filth.
I pulled him down into the gutter with me. His weight was perfect, though the hood was hard on my back. I didn’t mind. It was summer, and Stevie Wonder’s “As” had just come on the radio.
I’ll be lovin’ you always.
He drew back an inch and looked down at me, his dark head framed by the starry night sky and soft moonlight.
“This is a terrible idea,” he murmured. It would be the epitaph on my gravestone.
“I’m sorry.” And then I kissed him again because I truly was sorry, but I was mostly angry. With Dash. With myself. With Hatch for being so cold and stand-offish toward me this past year when it could have been this. Not that anything would have happened, but he had acted like he hated me all this time and I don’t think I realized until now the toll that took on me.
That hasn’t changed, dummy. Hate has never stopped a man from wanting in a girl’s pants.
Shelby Mae, right again!
So we were both agreed it was terrible, but then the worst ideas tended to feel so good. Maybe it was the taboo, the forbidden, the danger. Or maybe this was simply a reaction to uncommon kindness. The man who had whisked me away to safety, my reluctant rescuer.
So far, it was just a kiss. It could remain there, a bumped line but no further. Unless we pushed the boundaries yet again.
Shelby Mae had ideas. She always did.
The minx slid a hand under his T-shirt and splayed it over his abs.
He inhaled on a hiss, expelled on a groan, and the kiss turned feverish, as did his hands. They were suddenly everywhere, like my touching him had given permission to explore in ways he would never have dared. One hand held my head still for the mouth-fucking of a lifetime. The other wandered over my ass, my back, my ass again, then turned braver. He cupped my breast through the thin fabric of the shirt I wore—his shirt—and plumped what little I had in the way of boobage.
Now it was my turn to groan. I would never have considered my breasts sensitive—Dash hadn’t paid much attention to them because they were, in his words, “no bigger than mosquito bites.” He had promised to get me a boob job as soon as we were married, not that I’d asked. The idea of owning my tits was hilarious to him.
I had buried that one deep. People mix up love and possession, but they’re opposites. My former fiancé thought they were the same.
Hatch lifted his head. “Did I hurt you?”
“No, no, just—sorry you don’t have much to work with there.”
He remained silent.
“Meaning the itty bitty tittie committee,” I explained.
“What the fuck are you talking about?” He sounded annoyed. No surprise there.
“I don’t have a lot going on up there so?—”
He squeezed my left tit again and I arched off the hood with pleasure.
“Does it feel good?”
