Chapter 4 #2
The contact is soft at first. Exploratory.
His mouth is warm and tastes faintly of coffee, and his hand cradles my jaw like I'm something he's been waiting to hold.
I grip his wrist harder, and something in the pressure changes him.
The kiss deepens. His tongue slides against mine, and a sound comes out of me that I don't recognize, low and throaty and desperate in a way I haven't been in years.
He pulls me up from the chair. One hand on my jaw, the other on my hip, drawing me to my feet and against his body in a single motion.
The full-body contact is electric. His chest is hard against my breasts.
His hand slides from my hip to the small of my back and presses me closer, and I can feel him.
All of him. The hard length of his cock against my stomach, and the knowledge that this younger man, this man I tried to dismiss, is this aroused from kissing me sends a rush of heat between my thighs so intense my knees soften.
He catches me. Of course he does. His arm tightens around my waist, holding me against him, and he kisses me deeper.
His tongue strokes mine with a confidence that has nothing to do with age and everything to do with the man himself.
He kisses me like he's been planning this.
Like he mapped the approach and calculated the angles and now he's executing with the same precision he brings to everything else.
But underneath the control, I can feel him shaking. Fine tremors in his hands, in his chest where it's pressed against mine. He's not as steady as he wants me to believe.
Good. Neither am I.
I push my hands up his chest and fist the front of his thermal.
Pull him down to me. Kiss him harder. He groans against my mouth, and the sound is raw and male and does something devastating to my composure.
His hand slides up my spine, into the base of my ponytail, and he tips my head back.
His mouth moves to my jaw. My throat. The spot below my ear that I didn't know was sensitive until his lips found it and my hips bucked against him involuntarily.
"Hayes." His name comes out broken. Wrecked.
He pulls back. Not far. His forehead rests against mine, and we're both breathing hard.
His hand is still in my hair, his arm still around my waist, and his eyes are darker than I've ever seen them.
The gold flecks are swallowed by black, and the charming, playful man I've been watching for six days is gone.
The man looking at me now is focused and hungry and not remotely boyish.
"I've wanted to do that since you got out of that SUV," he says. His voice is rough. Unsteady.
"I know."
"This is still a terrible idea."
"Yes."
"I don't care."
His mouth covers mine again, and this kiss isn't exploratory.
This kiss is a claim. His tongue moves against mine with purpose, and his hand tightens in my hair, angling my head where he wants it.
I let him. I let this thirty-three-year-old man hold me against his body and kiss me like he's starving for it, and I give back everything he's giving, my hands pulling at his thermal, my hips grinding against the hard ridge of his cock, my breath ragged between kisses.
He walks me backward until my shoulders find the wall beside the kitchen window. Pins me there with his hips. The full press of his body against mine, his thigh slipping between my legs, the pressure exactly where I need it, makes me gasp against his mouth. He swallows the sound.
"You're not too old for me." He says it against my lips, and the words sink into my bones. "You're not too anything. You're exactly what I want."
My eyes sting. I blink it back, hard and fast, because I do not cry.
I have not cried since my father's funeral when I was fourteen.
But this man, this impossible, too-young, too-perceptive man just found the single insecurity I keep locked in the deepest vault of my psyche and answered it without being asked.
"We can't." The words scrape out of me. "This can't happen while you're protecting me. It compromises your judgment."
"My judgment is fine."
"Hayes."
"My judgment is fine, Lex. I've been protecting you for six days while wanting you so badly I can't think straight, and you're still alive and unharmed. I can do both."
"The world doesn't work that way."
"My world does."
He kisses me again. Softer this time. His hand loosens in my hair and strokes down my neck, over my shoulder, down my arm.
He laces his fingers through mine and lifts my hand to his mouth.
Presses his lips to my knuckles. The tenderness of it after the intensity of everything before cracks something in my chest.
"Okay," he murmurs against my hand. "Okay. We slow down."
I exhale. Shaky. Uneven.
"Not because you're right about the judgment call," he adds, his thumb tracing circles on the back of my hand. "But because when this happens, and it's going to happen, Lex, I don't want you waking up the next morning with an excuse to push me away."
He steps back. The cold air rushes into the space his body left, and I feel the absence in every nerve ending.
He's flushed. His lips are swollen. The front of his thermal is stretched from where I grabbed it, and the evidence of his arousal is visible against his jeans. He makes no effort to hide it.
"Lock the door behind me," he says. His voice is rough. "I'll be forty yards away. And I'm not going to sleep tonight either, so don't feel bad about that."
He walks to the door. Opens it. Pauses.
"For the record," he says without turning around. "When a woman who runs a Fortune 500 company, who performed cardiac surgery, who built an empire from nothing, says my name the way you just said it? That's not a terrible idea. That's the best sound I've ever heard."
The door closes behind him.
I stand against the wall for a long time. My lips are swollen and tender. My body is wound tight, pulsing with need that has nowhere to go. The spot on my neck where his mouth traced a line from my jaw to my collarbone feels branded.
The financial reports are still spread across the kitchen table. My wine is warming. My phone has three missed calls from board members and a text from Warren marked urgent.
I touch my mouth with trembling fingers.
I'm under threat. I'm trapped on a mountain with a man who just kissed me against a wall and told me I'm exactly what he wants, and I believed him.
Not because he's charming, although he is.
Not because he's attractive, although God, he is.
Because his hands were shaking. Because his voice broke on my name.
Because a man who can jump from helicopters into combat zones stood in my kitchen and trembled when he touched me.
That's not youth. That's not overconfidence. That's a man feeling something he can't control, and having the maturity to step back instead of pushing forward.
I finally move. Close the curtains. Lock the door. Lean against it, exactly like I did on the first night, and stare at the warm light of his cabin through the gap in the fabric.
His light stays on all night.
So does mine.