Page 109 of Nowhere to Hide

I tore my mouth off hers.

“Stop me now, Cilla.”

CHAPTER 22

CILLA

“Not in this life.”I pushed at his shirt, wanting skin.

I was burning up with the need for more. To push away the fear and find something healing.

Don’t get ahead of yourself.

I strangled the logical voice in the back of my mind. This boat wasn’t reality. It was a space out of time. The healing water and sun had already done so much to heal the betrayal of Marcus and Lydia. The sixty hour weeks I’d put in to climb the ladder at Hartman & Hayes had meant nothing in the grand scheme of things.

I’d sacrificed everything only to have my whole world pulled out from under me.

Then...Salem.

And now, Safety Locke.

I’d run the gauntlet in a few short weeks, but it also made me realize how safe I’d been playing it in my own life. And with all that safety, I’d still been hurt—body and spirit—and I’d survived.

And maybe I was ready to thrive too.

He helped me pull the black T-shirt over his head. His skin was tan and scarred, soft and rugged at the same time. The difference of his face from just this morning was still jarring, buthidden under all that overgrown hair and beard were delicious angles and a man so attractive it made my breath back up in my lungs.

It didn’t stop there.

He wanted me.

The misty morning forest of his eyes held secrets and pain that rivaled my own. But all of that was banked under desire so complete that it could have singed my skin or worse—my heart. But I was so tired of being afraid.

I lightly trailed my fingertips along his temple to his cheek, my thumb swiping over his kiss-ravaged lower lip. He nipped at the pad of my finger and grinned as I grazed my teeth over his jaw to his ear. “Take me downstairs.”

He stiffened. “Cil?—”

I pressed my fingers over his mouth. “It’s not fair to ask you for more when you already have given me so much, but I want this. You gave me a second chance at life, Safety Locke.”

He shut his eyes, pain rippling over his features. “Pretty sure it’s the other way around.” His fingers dug into my hip. “You deserve gentle. I’m not sure I have that in me.”

The fact that he couldn’t see that he’d been gentle with me every damn day made the last fringes of fear fall away from my shoulders. “I just want you, Locke.”

He stood, gripping my thighs as he hiked me up until my breasts were in his face. “You have no idea how many times I wanted to bury my face in those gorgeous tits of yours when I carried you up and down the stairs.”

I laughed as I propped myself on his shoulders so we could get down the narrow stairs that went to the bedroom.

My dress gapped and I shivered as he licked at the skin along my collar bone. We got to the hallway, and he strode down the short space between the stairs to the large bedroom I’d beenstaying in. The bristles of his beard dragged against the soft skin of my breasts then up to my neck and found my mouth again.

He maneuvered us through the door and laid me on the wide mattress. I hissed as my wound pulled, but I gripped his shoulders before he could pull away. “I’m fine.”

“I don’t want to hurt you.”

“Worry about me hurting you if you stop.”

He laughed against my mouth, then the kiss was wild and savage. His hands raced over me, pushing and pulling in all the right ways. My breasts ached and he kept skipping over where I wanted his fingers most.

His arm slipped under the small of my back as he lifted me to the top of the bed, but instead of covering me he dragged the hem of my skirt up my thighs. He brushed his nose along the sensitive skin of my left thigh.