Chapter 13 #2
After a moment, she rises, refills my glass, and places it back into my hand.
I don’t realize how quickly I’ve emptied half of it until warmth begins creeping pleasantly through my head.
Maybe it’s the wine. Maybe it’s the fact that she’s close enough for me to notice the faint scent of cedar and wildflowers clinging to her. Maybe I’m just an idiot. Certainly I’m an idiot.
As she leans over me again, carefully smoothing another layer of herbs across the wound, my hand moves before my brain has the opportunity to object.
My fingers close gently around her wrist. Not to stop her. Just… To touch her. To feel her.
Her hand stills beneath mine, and I look up at her and smile.
“I just wanted to make sure you were real.”
For a long moment, Amara simply looks at my hand around her wrist before, with that same impossible composure she seems to carry through everything, she eases herself free and reaches for the damp cloth resting beside the bowl.
“I appear to have made rather a mess of you.”
“I’ve had worse spa treatments.”
“I doubt that very much.”
“You clearly haven’t seen me after a motorcycle race.”
She pretends not to hear me, although I’m becoming increasingly convinced she hears absolutely everything and simply chooses what deserves a response.
The cloth glides over my cheek, cool against skin that still feels warm from the wine. She wipes away another streak of green from my jaw before moving across the bridge of my nose with slow, careful movements that don’t match the woman who buried a man alive yesterday.
It’s… confusing.
One minute she’s tearing armed men apart without blinking. The next she’s cleaning herbs off my face like she’s worried she might accidentally rub my skin the wrong way.
“You know,” I say as she keeps working, “you’re making it very difficult to maintain a healthy fear of you.”
“I’m not concerned.”
“I noticed.”
The corner of the cloth catches another smear near my mouth. She leans a little closer, completely focused on what she’s doing, and I catch the faint scent of cedar mixed with something floral I can’t quite place.
Either the wine is stronger than I realized or she’s entirely too close for someone who keeps telling me to stay away from her. Probably both.
She brushes the cloth gently across my lower lip.
My hand moves before my brain bothers asking for permission, and I catch her wrist again. This time, she doesn’t try to pull away. She just lifts her eyes to mine.
Neither of us says anything, and for some reason that silence feels heavier than every conversation we’ve had since I crashed into her forest.
“I was starting to think you didn’t like me.”
“I have threatened your life on several occasions.”
“Yeah…” I nod thoughtfully. “Now that you mention it, there were some clues.”
“I suspended you from a tree.”
“I thought we were flirting.”
For the first time, a tiny smile slips onto her lips before she catches herself, and I swear the sight of it hits me harder than the bullet did.
“There you are,” I murmur.
Her smile disappears almost immediately, but she doesn’t step back. She doesn’t take her hand away. She just keeps looking at me with those impossible green eyes, close enough now that I can see tiny flecks of gold catching in the morning light.
“I should move,” she says quietly.
“You should. But you haven’t taken your hand away yet.”
“So it would seem.”
Neither of us does a damn thing.
“I don’t know if it’s the wine or if you’re actually letting me get away with this.” I laugh under my breath.
“You have consumed rather a generous amount of it.”
“So you’re blaming the wine?”
“I find it considerably easier than blaming myself.”
That makes me laugh again.
God…
She’s beautiful when she forgets she’s supposed to be terrifying.
Without taking my eyes off hers, I slowly guide her the last few inches toward me.
There’s no resistance, no fight, nothing except the steady rise and fall of her breathing as she watches me close the distance, and I realize she’s giving me every opportunity to stop just as much as she’s giving herself one.
Neither of us takes it.
My lips meet hers gently, more curious than confident, and I feel her freeze for the briefest moment. Her eyes widen. Surprise flashes across her face so quickly I almost miss it.
Then her gaze softens.
Her lashes slowly lower until her eyes close completely, and although she doesn’t kiss me back, she doesn’t retreat either.
She lets me take the lead, lets the kiss linger exactly as long as I want it to, and somehow the fact that she isn’t trying to control a single second of it makes the moment feel infinitely more dangerous than if she’d pulled me into her instead.
And before I can convince myself I’ve imagined the whole thing, her lips move against mine. Softly. Tentatively. Like she’s discovering what a kiss feels like all over again.
Her hands find my face, cradling it with a tenderness I never would’ve expected from the woman who threatened to bury me beneath her forest. She takes over the kiss so naturally I barely notice the moment it happens, stealing every ounce of control I’d convinced myself I had.
When our tongues finally meet, a shiver tears down my spine so violently I swear my heart forgets how to beat for a second.
I’ve kissed plenty of women.
None of them have ever kissed me like this.
None of them have ever made every nerve in my body feel as though it’d suddenly been set on fire.
My hands move before my brain catches up, sliding to her waist as I pull her closer.
Risky move.
I know.
She could throw me through a wall.
She could snap my neck.
Hell, she could probably make the couch eat me if she felt particularly offended.
Instead, she surprises me.
Without breaking the kiss, she gathers the skirt of her dress just enough to swing one leg over mine before settling on top of me, her knees bracketing my hips as she cages me against the couch.
The movement steals what little breath I had left.
The kiss changes with it. It stops being cautious. Stops feeling like two people trying to figure each other out.
It becomes hungrier, deeper, as though every second we spend tangled together only makes it harder to remember why we were ever supposed to stay away from each other.
For a woman who keeps telling me to stay away from her forest… she’s doing a spectacularly terrible job of convincing either one of us.
She kisses me like she’s spent centuries denying herself this exact moment. And unless one of us comes to our senses in the next few seconds…
Neither of us is sleeping tonight.