Page 62 of Sheltered By Love

She shakes her head. “You don’t know. You have your brothers, Jaxson, the whole Bay, what do I have? A rabbit?”

I can’t argue with her. As much as I want to start asking her questions, she looks like one wrong word will shatter her.

Damn it. This would have been the perfect time to ask her about Arizona.

If she were anyone else, I would have. But when her knees drop out from under her, I don’t ask her a single thing, I just pull her closer.

Her chin is wobbling, and she’s started shaking, bad enough to let me know her concern is genuine.

Her body stiffens against mine. She looks into my eyes and lifts her chin as if daring me to kiss her.

I don’t know what the hell I’m doing, but my hands slide around her waist, and my lips press against hers before I can think about why I want to.

Her hands slide up my back, and my brain quits working. I open my mouth, and she responds in kind, giving me no reason to quit when I probably should.

I need to stop this. I should stop this. But I don’t seem to be able to tear myself away from her.

I’m subconsciously walking her toward the door of her bedroom.

Before I make it two steps closer to her bed, my oxygen-starved brain finally seems to recognize the civil defense siren blaring over the wind.

Felicity

I don’t know what happened. One minute I was fretting about poor Viola trying not to cry in front of him, then I was in his arms.

Kissinghim.

Really kissing him. Zane. The man who’s been slowly driving me insane since the day he moved in next door.

Now some terrible siren is competing with the wind, like some relic from world war two.

I’m so frazzled it takes me too long to recall I heard the siren not long after I moved here.

There must be an emergency somewhere in Blueskin Bay.

I can’t think about that right now, so I turn my thoughts to the immediate problem at hand. “Why did you do that?” I ask.

I can’t bear to say I enjoyed it way more than I should have given how upset I am about Viola.

Or that I was thirty seconds from ripping his clothes off.

My pride will never allow me to admit I want him. A lot.

“You were having a panic attack,” he says.

If I weren’t so utterly befuddled right now and worried for Viola, I’d have laughed in his face.

Instead, I blow out a breath and take a step back, legs wobbling so much, that I’m worried they might fold under me.

I can’t even say it’s because I’m upset. I’m growing more confused by my growing attraction to him with every moment.

It was easier when he was just an obnoxious ass with a hard body.

As neither of us says anything, and the wind blows even harder, rattling the roof above, the air in the room feels like it’s been charged with static electricity.

Finally, he speaks. “I shouldn’t have done it.”

That’s not something I want to hear right now. “Neither should I. But we did. So…”

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