Page 27 of Fragile Touch (Fragile 1)
Daring to lift her eyes, she saw from the visible side of his face that he was looking back down at her.
Her heart began to thud. “There’s not much light,” she whispered, intensely aware of their bodies barely an inch apart.
“It’s a little crowded,” he breathed. His breath smelled like raspberries and mint.
The faster her heart beat, the more she felt like she was entering an out-of-body experience. Thinking became impossible. Her blood rushed hot through her veins.
All it took was one minuscule movement for his fingers to brush against her wrist. Something inside her flipped around in circles and her vision flickered.
Time slowed. She felt his neck crane down and hers crane up to meet him. And suddenly, their lips were gently pressed together.
After too short a moment, he drew back and she thought it was over, but he put his hand on the back of her head and held her in place. He leaned down again, the tip of his nose on hers, their lips an impossible hair’s length away from touching again. Lillian smelled his skin, his shower gel, his shampoo, and his garden all at once.
Keeping his hand there, he withdrew enough to see her face. In the heat of the moment, she forgot about everything else in the world and realized how badly she wanted to be close to him. Her eyes flickered over every bit of his face.
“We...” he started, but it was no use. Lillian grabbed both sides of his head, tangling her fingers in his hair, and pulled him down again ferociously. Their lips crushed together, tongue teasing tongue. Cayden’s strong arms gripped her hips and tugged them against his own as their forms became one shape.
For half a second, her over-analytical mind returned and she froze. What are you doing, what are you doing, what are— But her thoughts were interrupted and pushed far away where they couldn’t come back for a while.
She lost track of what was happening. Cayden scooped her up like he did the night before when he found her on the porch in a drunken heap. That feeling of being weightless, encompassed by this strong creature in the dark, sent her heart soaring to the top of her head. Her fingernails lightly raked his scalp and trickled down his neck, tickling the nape and the tops of his shoulders.
A low groan rumbled from his chest, and he set her down on what felt like a bed. She braced herself with one hand to keep from falling back. The blankets were cold; she tensed.
He eased away, touching his thumb to her cheek. “Are you okay?”
It was too dark to see him, but she could see his outline against the dimly-lit doorway. One ray of moonlight came in the window, but all it revealed were the wooden floorboards. She reached up and grazed his chest with a knuckle. “Yes,” she purred, then added, “I’m not sure how to feel.”
Cayden slid his hand down to her waist. “Stop thinking. Be here for now.” The way his hands could wrap around her body so easily gave her chills, and she trembled. He felt it. “Are you cold?”
Try as she might, she couldn’t make any sounds come out. The only response she managed was tracing his collarbone with her finger, so he made an executive decision. Keeping one hand on her
, he took the top blanket and flung it down to the end of the bed. Lillian let out a little yelp of surprise as he moved her up so her head was on the pillows.
“This will be better,” he murmured, and climbed onto the bed, stretching out so his body was hovering over hers. He reached back and pulled the blanket up to his waist.
“You’re still shivering,” he pointed out, placing his hand tenderly on her arm.
“It’s not the cold,” she confessed.
Cayden let out a single hushed laugh. “Are you okay, other than that?”
She wished he could see her nod. “I think so.”
“You don’t sound convinced.”
But she was definitely convinced. In this position, there was no hiding from herself or trying to make excuses. All the effort she’d made to convince herself she didn’t want this got washed down the drain. She wanted his smell, his skin, his raspberry breath, his muscular body that tempted her, so close but so far beneath his thin cotton shirt.
“I’m convinced,” she purred, and wrapped her arms around him to pull his body onto hers.
Chapter 6
The bed was strangely warm. Usually she woke up with a little chill and pulled the covers over her head to hibernate before finally getting up, but not today. This was different. She was actually hot.
She felt a weight beside her. In her drowsiness she tried to figure out how the cats were so heavy, until the memory came back all at once: that weight wasn’t the cats.
It was Cayden.
There’s no way that really happened. She still didn’t open her eyes; instead, she squeezed them shut and recalled every memory she could from last night.
