Chapter 4
Serena
I was transfixed. Did his giant cock just twitch? Was it growing?
“Why…” I trailed off, mesmerized. I had no sense of self-preservation and definitely no right to touch, but still, I watched my fingers stretch out to see if that thing was real.
His hand clamped on my wrist like a vise.
“I’m sorry, I—” My face flushed hot with embarrassment. Where was an alien abduction when you needed one?
He hated me, but somehow sported an urban-legend-worthy dick salute. Why?
Maybe he liked to argue. I didn’t. Confrontation wasn’t my thing, the last five minutes to the contrary.
“I don’t—you can’t stand the sight of me,” I whispered the last few words. Right?
The hand gripping my wrist loosened, but didn’t let me go.
“Does this look like I can’t stand you?”
“Maybe? Do you have a hate-kink or something?”
“What the hell even is that?”
“I don’t know. Like, you hate me, and that turns you on?” What other explanation could there be?
“Fuck.” He closed his eyes for a moment, and I took the opportunity to drink him in.
We’d never been this close. His massive chest inches from mine, his rugged jaw close enough to finally touch the beard he’d grown over the summer fire season, to stroke my finger along the scar that ran temple to jaw, to kiss...
The heat pumping off him, along with a spicy, musky scent that was all Gavin, was like a potent drug.
That had to explain the sudden pull in my chest that made the hurt and anger muzzy and distant, replacing that feeling with the need to touch him. Be touched by him.
The few points of contact between us weren’t enough. My skin tingled across my shoulder blades, as though an invisible force urged me closer, closer to the man I dreamed about.
Every cell in my body wanted more, almost like I was being sucked into his space.
The muscles in his neck and shoulders rippled under his skin, moved down his massive arms, the vibrations hitting my forearm like an electric shock.
I gasped, and he opened his eyes. This time the golden-cinnamon flecks filled his pupil and the fierce, raw emotion there held me as sure as his grip.
“Serena,” he rasped out. “This is what you do to me every time you enter a room. Your smile, when I hear your laugh, the second you’re around—fuck.”
My body grew hot with the words he was saying, but my brain did not compute. “You’re saying I turn you on?”
“You turn me on when I think about you, when someone mentions your name, when I’m sleeping, when I smell vanilla, or citrus—”
“But—”
“I’ve had a hard on since the day I met you.”
“If you felt this way about me…” I swallowed, the idea of him walking around like this all the time made my breath catch and my pussy clench. “If you felt this way, why didn’t you say anything? Do anything about it?”
He stared into my eyes, that golden-cinnamon color shifting, moving. It had to be a trick of the light. Eyes didn’t change like that—did they?
The pressure points on my forearms sharpened, each finger pressing deep, until I swear I could feel him piercing the skin, becoming part of me.
Suddenly, I realized my position. Standing between his knees, one arm tied to his, both wrists held firm in his grip, his cock still straining to break free.
“You hate me,” I whispered.
“No, Sunshine. I don’t.”
A ripple of warm air skimmed past my shoulder, the rattle of leaves in the trees anchoring the moment in time. Everything around me surged golden and bright. Pointing me right back at Gavin.
The look in his eyes was pure hunger. Devouring, consuming, raw need.
My cheeks heated, the tips of my ears, the back of my neck, as if I was burning from the inside out. The trail of heat wound around me, and I wanted to pull away. To hide.
No one ever looked this closely at me. As if they could learn everything about me by counting my few freckles, or my lashes, or the wispy curls that refused to stay pinned out of my face.
I couldn’t look away, either.
Face-to-face like this, my brain was breaking under the harsh beauty of this ferocious man.
Broken, determined, rugged. A face that had seen the hardness of life and the landscape up close.
He wasn’t removed from the world by walls or a screen.
He lived fully, wide open in the air and sunshine, in the smoky black of fire, in the loamy green of forests and fields.
His beard held a glint of auburn, as though he always carried a bit of fire with him.
How soft would that beard be, trailing down my neck, between my breasts, over the crest of my hips, along my soft belly and down, down to my thighs and in between.
My nipples tightened at the thought.
“Sunshine…”
Then his lips were on mine, and he became my world.
His lips were soft, but sure, the scrape of stubble sparking a feeling I’d never experienced. This kiss was like nothing I’d known before.
His kiss pulled me inside out and wrapped me in heated threads of need. My eyes were closed, but if I opened them, those threads would be lit up like a shimmering, golden net pulling us together.
A groan came from his chest, and his kisses grew harder, sharper, more demanding. I wanted to give him more and opened myself to be devoured.
I pressed my legs together to get some friction between my thighs, to ease the slick, sweet, growing ache.
He bit my lip, and I made a noise like a crying kitten.
I needed more. I could see myself on his lap, legs wrapped around his waist, his thick cock pressed against my hot center, using his mouth on my aching nipples the same way he was kissing me.
I needed to get closer, to touch him, to be touched by him.
I wanted to close the gap between us, until I was enveloped in his heat and scent; covered in it so when I finally pulled away, I could take a piece of him with me.
Because this was a moment out of time. When the handfasting was over, he would go back to ignoring me; and I would go back to wishing I could hate him so it wouldn’t hurt when he turned his back on me.
But if what he was saying with the press of his lips, if each stroke of his tongue against mine was an apology, I needed more.
He needed to prove this was more than a kiss. More than two people scratching the surface and discovering that not just sparks, but a wildfire burned between them. But I had to protect my big, dumb heart.
Pulling away physically hurt. My whole body objected. As I’d finally found my match, as if this was more than a kiss.
If the glazed look in his eyes was anything to go by, this really was more than a kiss. But I needed to hear it. I sucked in a breath.
“How can you kiss me like that but refuse to let me any closer?”