3. Holly #2
Preacher kissed his way down my neck as his hands slipped beneath my shirt, rough palms moving over heated skin while I clung to his shoulders. Whatever line still existed between us was being crossed without another discussion.
He lifted me onto Dad’s desk and stepped between my thighs.
The hard press of him against me made my breath catch, and his mouth curved briefly against mine before I pulled him back into the kiss.
The smugness disappeared as his hand tightened around my hip while mine moved over his back, tracing muscle and old scars before dragging him closer.
Every reaction I got from him made me bolder.
Preacher was always so controlled that I wanted to know what he looked like when that certainty broke, and I liked the answer.
Our clothes disappeared between increasingly impatient kisses, his belt hitting the floor somewhere behind him before my jeans followed.
Preacher lifted me again and carried me toward the battered couch against the wall. I saw where he was going and started to laugh. “My father bought that couch.”
He stopped and closed his eyes for a second.
“Oh, come on. If you stop because of Dad’s ugly furniture, I swear to God—”
Whatever threat I’d been about to make vanished when he lowered me onto the couch and came down over me, taking the laughter with it.
His weight settled against me, solid and hot, and this time the kiss was slower. He took his time in a way he hadn’t at the desk, learning every change in my breathing and every place that made my fingers tighten against him.
Dad's office, the buyer, and the town outside these walls dissolved into nothing.
There was only Preacher, and the weight of his hands on me.
His patience unraveled into the urgency already coiling low in my belly.
I felt his restraint snap in the ragged edge of his breathing, in the way his fingers pressed into my hips, in the bruising intent of his kiss as he stopped being careful.
He drew back only long enough to find my eyes, pupils blown, jaw tight, waiting for my answer. I gave it by pulling him down to me, by arching into him, by whispering his name like a demand. That was all the permission either of us needed. We crossed the final line without another word.
When he finally pushed inside me, the first shock of it seized every muscle in my body.
Preacher held still, his forehead against mine, letting me adjust, letting the sensation crest and soften before he moved again.
Whatever slow, patient rhythm he'd planned lasted about three seconds.
I wrapped my legs around his waist and dragged him deeper, and after that, neither of us was graceful.
The old couch groaned and shifted beneath us, springs complaining with every thrust. His breath tore out of him in rough, uneven gusts.
I felt every inch of him as he pulled back, then buried himself again, the drag of him sending sparks up my spine.
He kept me locked against him, one arm banded around my waist, while my nails raked down his shoulders and my heels dug into his back, urging him on.
The more his control slipped, the more I burned for it and for the sweat-slick slide of his skin against mine, and for the guttural sounds he made whenever my hips rolled to meet his.
For years he'd existed in my memory as the older biker on the other side of a line I hadn't understood when I was younger.
The one I wasn't supposed to want. There was nothing untouchable about him now.
He was right here, inside me, stripped of every careful distance, his weight braced above me and his mouth hot on my throat.
I could feel him everywhere, the heat of him, the roughness of his palms on my skin, and the way his rhythm stuttered every time I tightened around him.
His mouth crashed into mine again as the tension inside me wound tighter, sharp and unbearable.
I was right on the edge, hovering there, and he knew it.
He slowed, deliberately, just enough to make me whine against his lips.
Then he drove into me hard, once, twice, until I couldn't think around it.
I shattered against him, his name ripping from my throat on a broken gasp.
Preacher buried his face in my neck, his whole body shuddering as he followed me over the edge, holding me through every pulse of it.
For a while neither of us moved. As my pulse slowed, the office came back into focus and I found myself staring past him at Dad’s filing cabinets, desk and truly awful brown couch we were on.
A laugh escaped me, and Preacher lifted his head with a frown. “What?”
“We just had sex in my dead father’s office.” His eyes closed, which only made me laugh harder. “Jesus Christ, Holly.” He said as he shook his head.
“That might be the least romantic thing I’ve ever said.” I replied.
He shifted beside me but didn’t move away, pulling me against his chest instead. Some part of me had been waiting for regret to arrive, but it didn’t.
Preacher brushed my hair away from my face. “Your dad would’ve tried to kill me.”
“Definitely.”
Then he kissed me, slower now, with none of the urgency from before but none of the apology I’d half expected either.
“This isn’t a mistake,” he said when he pulled back. His arm tightened around me, and that was all there was to it. No lecture about my age, no sudden attack of honor and no attempt to put me back into the box marked Rowan’s daughter now that we’d crossed a line he’d spent years respecting.
Outside this office, somebody still wanted Curtis Freight badly enough to break in for its route information. Salvation had one sheriff trying to hold together a town he no longer had enough manpower to control, and the Unholy Few clearly had no intention of waiting for the law to catch up.
Preacher’s thumb moved slowly against my side. Yesterday, he’d been Dad’s best friend trying to protect me. There was no pretending that was all he was anymore.