Page 45 of Morally Black Betrothal

The scent of freshly cut firewood in the Berkshires.

A ray of sunlight gleaming through beach grass in Newport.

My mother’s voice as she welcomed me for a visit.

The sweet tang of cinnamon sugar on bread she toasted.

Kissing Simone wasn’t even on my mind, but right then, it was all I could do. The second our lips met, the word echoed like a gong through every cell in my body.

Home.

Home.

Home.

Doubt shot through me like an arrow even as I couldn’t stop kissing her. Even as she seemed, by some miracle, to have recovered her shock enough to start kissing me back.

I released her and stepped back as if shockwaves had literally pushed us apart. Simone stood in front of me, fingers pressed to her now-swollen mouth while she gulped air and stared at me.

I was breathing hard too. Even more heavily than when I ran the Boston marathon for the first time. I rubbed the back of my hand across my mouth and cleared my throat a few times before I managed to stand up straight.

“Jesus,” I mumbled. “I’m so—fuck, I’m sorry.”

Again with the apologizing.

“I—you’re sorry?” Her eyes were wide, round moons, watery with something that looked strangely like desire instead of regret. “But you’re…you’re here.In my home.”

Simone looked around herself as if to make sure she was still in her apartment.

I swallowed. Hard. She was messier than ever in a pair of faded jeans, a threadbare white T-shirt, and a black apron smeared with flour. Her blond hair was still in its ponytail, now loosened from our kiss, and her cheeks were painted pink too.

She was a goddamn masterpiece.

And I couldn’t help but kiss her again.

Her mouth was addictive. Full and lush, as sinful as the rest of her was angelic. Two seconds in, and I was already a junkie for that honeyed flavor, angling to kiss her deeper, groaning when she opened for me.

As my hands slid to grab two lush handfuls of the most perfect ass known to man, she hopped up, and when I caught her, she wrapped her legs around my waist to squeeze me tightly on a squeak, almost as if she had surprised herself with her response.

She looked like an angel, but she kissed like a demon.

The kind I’d happily follow to hell and back just for another taste.

“Christ!” I growled as I ripped my mouth away.

Her mewl nearly sucked me right back into that inferno. “B-Brendan?”

“Oh, fuck.” I dropped her to the ground and stepped back, trying not to notice the way her legs were shaking like a baby deer’s. “Fuck, that wasnothow this was supposed to go.”

She reached behind her like she was searching for something to steady herself. “I-it wasn’t?”

“No. It wasn’t.”

I couldn’t look up as I fixed my tie, smoothed my hair, and retucked my shirt. Because then I’d see just how debauched I’d left her, and I wasn’t sure I wouldn’t do it a third time if confronted by the evidence. My trousers were already indecently tight as it was.

It took ten deep breaths and a memory of my grandmother in a bathing suit to calm myself down enough that I could look up again.

To my surprise, I found humor lurking in those luminous baby blues.