13. Hunter #2
Her head turned — a fraction, controlled. Her eyes found him across the crowd. Two seconds. Her jaw tightened. She looked up at me and her eyes went sharp.
She nodded.
My hand moved from the small of her back to her forehead. I brushed some loose strands of hair off her face, my fingers trailing down along her jaw.
The moment my fingers touched her jawline, her breath stuttered.
I could feel it under my fingertips — the catch, the skip, the pulse beneath her skin jumping so hard I could count it.
My thumb settled against the hinge of her jaw.
My fingers curved along the bone. Her skin was warm and slightly damp from the heat of the day.
I tipped her face up toward mine, and her lips parted on an inhale that pulled the air from the space between us and left nothing.
I kissed her.
My lips pressed against hers — firm, deliberate, the pressure held for one full second. She tasted like beer and the powdered sugar from Clara Mae's funnel cakes. I pulled back.
My hand was still on her jaw. My face was inches from hers.
I could feel her breath against my chin — short, shallow, faster than it should have been.
I could see the flecks of gold in her irises and the way her pupils had expanded until the brown was barely a ring.
Her lips were parted. And the look in her eyes — the look wasn't tactical.
The look had nothing to do with Garrett Calloway or the arrangement or any performance either of us had agreed to.
Her eyes were wide and dark and completely unguarded, and the thing in them hit me in the chest with a force that emptied my lungs.
Her hand came up and gripped the front of my shirt — knuckles pressing into my chest, the cotton bunching in her fingers — and she pulled me back to her mouth.
Her lips opened against mine, her other hand found the back of my neck, pulling me impossibly closer.
Her fingers dug into my hair and the sound she made when our mouths connected broke something loose in me that I had been holding shut for months.
My hand slid back into her hair, the other settling low on her back. Her mouth was warm. Open. The taste of her flooded my senses. I'd imagined this a thousand times lying in the dark of my apartment, and the imagining had nothing on this.
My whole body pulsed when her tongue slid against my lower lip, asking for entry.
I opened my mouth. Her tongue found mine, and my cock hardened instantly.
A groan built in the base of my throat that I had to clench my teeth to contain.
The kiss deepened, and the world fell away — the fiddle and the funnel cakes and the crowd and the cobbler competition dissolving into white noise, into nothing, into the roar of blood in my ears and the heat of her mouth and the press of her body against mine.
My other hand found her waist and pulled her flush against me — the sundress thin enough that I could feel every degree of her skin through the fabric, the press of her breasts against my chest, the rapid hammering of her heart that matched mine pound for pound.
She arched into me. Her fingers tightened in my hair and pulled.
The sharpness of it sent a bolt down my spine that detonated at the base, and my hips shifted toward hers — involuntary, urgent, the wanting in my body overriding every rational system I had.
Her teeth caught my lower lip — a graze, a nip, a tiny bright shock — and the groan I'd been holding escaped into her mouth.
Low. Rough. A sound I had never made in my life, pressed against her tongue where only she could hear it.
She made a sound back. Softer. Breathier.
My name — the first syllable, just the H, just the breath of it — swallowed by the kiss before it became a word.
Her body was trembling against mine. My body was trembling against hers.
We were standing in the middle of Founders Day with our mouths open and our hands desperate and our chests heaving, and neither of us could stop, and neither of us was trying.
We broke apart the way you surface from deep water — gasping, disoriented, the world rushing back in pieces.
My hand was on her jaw. My forehead tipped forward until it pressed against hers. Her breath came in ragged pulls that I could feel against my mouth — warm, fast, uneven. My own breathing was worse. My pulse was slamming so hard I could feel it in my temples.
The square came back. The music — something slow, something country, the band playing on as if the ground hadn't just shifted.
Clara Mae's funnel cake stand. Shelly's barbecue smoke.
Mom examining a cobbler entry at the competition table with an expression of pure, serene concentration that was absolutely, categorically fake — the woman had eyes in the back of her head and had seen every second.
Clay, somewhere to my left, eyebrow raised so high it had disappeared into his hairline.
Maggie with her glass of lemonade frozen at her lips, not even pretending to look elsewhere.
Callie with her hand pressed over her mouth.
Maisie still inspecting her clipboard, blessedly, mercifully oblivious.
And Garrett. Across the square. His face pleasant. His posture casual. His eyes completely, utterly flat.
The only real thing was her forehead against mine and her breath on my mouth and my hand on her jaw and my heart trying to break through bone.
I said one word. Low. Rough. Just for the space between our mouths.
"Fuck."
Her jaw trembled in my hand. I could feel it — the faintest vibration running through her, the vulnerability arriving before the armor could catch up.
Her eyes were bright. The grin came — slower this time, building over a tremble she was fighting to contain, the humor arriving to cover something that had landed too close to the center of her to leave exposed.
"You can say that again."
Her voice cracked on the words. The grin held, but the crack was underneath it, and I could hear both — the joke and the breaking, the armor and the woman behind it who was shaking in my hands.
My thumb moved along her jawline. Slow. I traced the bone from her chin to her ear, and I felt her breath hitch and her eyes close for a half second, and the tremble in her body intensified before steadying.
I let go of her face. Slowly. My fingers trailed down her neck — a whisper of contact, the backs of my knuckles grazing her throat — and I dropped my hand to my side, and the air between us went cool and wide and wrong.
She reached for my shirt. Smoothed the fabric where her fist had crushed it.
Her fingers pressed flat against my chest — over my heart, directly over the pounding — and she held them there.
Two beats. Three. Four. Her palm absorbing the force of what was happening behind my ribs, and her eyes coming up to mine, and the grin fading into something unarmored.
Something quiet and real and terrified and brave.
We turned back to the festival. The sun was setting behind the courthouse the way June Parker had told Jessica it always did and the light came through the square in long gold bars and the band played the last song into the fading sky and the whole town went still and watched it together — shoulder to shoulder, faces lit amber, the evening holding them the way evenings in small towns hold people when the day has been good and the light is willing to stay.
Across the square, Garrett Calloway finished his drink. Set the cup on a ledge. Straightened his jacket.
And walked away.
His face was pleasant. It was always pleasant.
His eyes were not.