Chapter 12
Chapter Twelve
His mouth was on hers before she could say anything else.
They were outside, and the cool night, crickets playing a serenade all around them, the stars glimmering like candlelight through punched tin.
And he kissed like he didn’t want to do anything else in the whole world.
His mouth was firm, his movements leisurely. His tongue slid against hers, lazy and slow and delicious, as his hands went to her hips, held her fast while he pressed his body against hers, and let her feel the evidence of his desire.
She wanted him. She wanted this.
But they were outside, with an entire room full of people just on the other side of the wall he had her pinned against, and it couldn’t be anything more than this. At least not right now.
She couldn’t remember the last time she had kissed for the sake of it.
Maybe in the first couple of months that she and Aiden had dated each other, making out furiously in the back of his pickup truck, her nerves keeping them from going any farther, but not since then.
And she had already slept with Cody. The idea of making out with a man that she’d already had sex with seemed…
Wonderful.
He moved his hands slowly up her rib cage, just beneath her breasts, and she arched against him, her arms wrapped around his neck as he continued to explore her mouth.
He was thorough, in this as he was in everything.
How had she ever thought he was cold?
He was guarded, yes, but when he caught fire, he was molten. And he turned everything else into that same liquid flame.
Her heart was pounding rapidly, a pulse echoing between her thighs matching that same rhythm.
Then he moved his hands back down to her hips, his thumbs flexing, the sensation making her gasp.
“This is why I had to stay away from you,” he whispered against her ear. “My track record is terrible.”
“What about mine?” she asked, looking up at him.
“You’re not a whole lot better than me, but you didn’t instigate this.”
“I guess not.” She was trying to think of something else to say, but then she didn’t have to, because he kissed her again. Oh, she wanted to stay in this moment forever. It felt uncomplicated and glorious. She felt beautiful. Desired.
It didn’t feel big and scary, like the precipice of a cliff that led either to a whole new life or her doom, depending on whether or not she caught the wind and soared, or just plummeted to her demise.
It was safe, wrapped up in sensuality, and sensations she’d never before experienced.
Oh, she’d been turned on before, obviously.
She’d had orgasms before, clearly, but there was something about this. It was just different, and if she had years to try and untangle it, she didn’t think she would ever be able to explain it. It felt like balm for a wound in her soul she hadn’t even known was there.
One she still didn’t have a name for.
His mouth was hot, expert, moving from her lips to her cheek, her ear, down her neck, where he bit her, just slightly, sucking on her skin.
He might leave a mark behind, and even that excited her. It was the only thought about the future that she let herself have, and it was just about the idea of walking around marked by his passion. There was something about that.
Something about it that she liked.
A lot.
He pulled away from her again, breathing heavy. “I can’t stay out here. I have to… engage with this event.”
“Right,” she said, feeling drenched with a bucket of ice water also known as reality.
“Marlowe… I’m sorry, I was avoiding you.”
“It’s okay,” she said. “I knew where to find you if I needed to.”
“I’m your boss.”
“I’m aware.”
“And I shouldn’t do this.”
“Do you think it makes you like your dad?”
He smiled, but it was grim. “No, but I think it makes me into something I don’t want to be. This place is important to me.”
His words were like a finely sharpened knife stabbed perfectly between her ribs. She was so damned tired of being stabbed.
“I’m just a hookup,” she said, acerbic and angry now.
“I didn’t say that.”
She felt like he’d said it, though. Felt like she’d been brought back in and then pushed away. She hated it.
“No. But I feel like that’s what you meant.”
“It isn’t what I meant,” he said, his voice clipped. Hard. “I say what I mean, Marlowe, that’s the one thing you can trust me on. What we had… It was good. But I’ve spent my whole life building toward this moment.”
“And I’m a distraction.”
“Stop fucking telling me what you are. You don’t know what I think. It has nothing to do with you. Nothing to do with what you are, and everything to do with what I am.” He looked away, then down. “I don’t want a romance. I can’t give you anything.”
She wanted to knock the cowboy hat right off his head.
“Great,” and she said, “I don’t want anything.
I don’t want anything but this job. I don’t want anything but this new life that I’m building by myself.
I sure as hell don’t want a man covering it all up.
Been there, done that. Thanks for trying to placate me by doing the it’s not you, it’s me thing, but I didn’t need placating.
I just lost a whole husband, Cody. I’m not going to cry over a one-night stand. ”
She pushed away from the barn, and she stormed back toward the party. When he tried to tell her to stop, she flashed him her middle finger and kept on walking.
Maybe it would have been helpful for him to remind her again that he was her boss.
Because you probably, definitely, shouldn’t flip your boss the bird after making out with him, and telling him he wasn’t going to make you cry.
But that was just too bad.
There was only so much one woman could take, and Marlowe was at her limit.
One thing hadn’t been entirely true, though.
Cody was closer to making her cry than she’d like to admit.