Page 60 of A Real Goode Time

I rolled over to face her. “Hey.”

Inches separated us.

The blanket was molded to the curve of her hip. It was tempting to rest my hand there.

“I’m having trouble resisting you, too,” she whispered. And damn that whisper. It did me in.

“I thought you didn’t want to start anything.”

“I don’t. But you make it fucking impossible. You’re too…good. Too hot, too sexy. Too capable. Too nice, too funny. Too easy to be with. And I…I’ve never felt this way about anyone, and it scares me. And I have to go Alaska, and you have your life in New Haven.”

“And you don’t do hookups.”

She laughed, a sharp bark. “No, it’s safe to say I do not do hookups.”

That was an oddly sharp reaction. Was she hiding something, perhaps?

There was silence, then. I had no idea what to say, what to do. Touch her? She was acting like…like she’d changed her mind about me, about us. Or…that wasn’t exactly right. It’s not that she’d changed her mind aboutusorme, but about what there could be between us, and what that was.

She’d just said she was having trouble resisting me, and god knew I was finding it fucking impossible to do the same.

So, fuck it.

A gentle approach, just to see what she did. If she showed even the least sign of resistance, I’d back off again.

I slid toward her, only an inch or two. But it was enough to close the distance between us, to make the space and the moment go from close, but still mostly platonic, to definitely, unmistakably intimate.

I reached out, slowly, telegraphing my movement, and rested my hand on the swell of her hip.

A moment fraught with boiling sexual tension followed.

She said nothing, and neither did I. But our eyes, and the unexpressed feelings boiling between us…it said everything.

She wanted more. To be touched. To touch me.

But there was still the reticence, the fear, and the worry. The “but what if” lingering within her.

I was about to remove my hand when she hissed, a catlike sound. “Fuck it,” she murmured.

Her palm touched my cheek, scratching and smoothing and caressing my stubble. And then her lips touched mine. Soft at first. Gently questing. Testing. Tasting.

She broke away—mere centimeters—her beautiful pale brown eyes searching my face.

“Oh thank fuck,” I breathed.

And then I kissed her.

9

Torie

Lordy, but the man was a good kisser.

He legitimately took my breath away, stole it, demanded it, devoured it. His tongue was all over my mouth, searching and delving, and his lips were soft, pliant, and strong. His hand cupped the side of my face, and he brought me closer to him. His stubble was scratchy against my upper lip, tickling, sort of rough, but in a delicious, intoxicating kind of way.

I was under the covers, he on top of them. He’d tugged the blanket up to hide his hard-on, and I found myself wishing he hadn’t. I wanted to see it.

To touch it. To hold it.