Page 19 of The Marriage Deal (Sunset Falls #1)
FIVE ALARM FIRE
LILAH
Fireworks detonate under my skin.
His lips are on mine.
Briggs is kissing me. Kissing. Me.
I can’t think. I can’t think. I. Can’t. Think.
He tastes faintly of beer and man with the echo of the hot, hot sun burning up a vineyard. He tastes like the leap from the falls into the blissfully cool pool beneath. He tastes like life.
A blade of something foreign and undoubtedly dangerous twists violently in my belly, loosing the knots of desire I wish I didn’t feel for this man. Unravelling them. Unravelling me.
But oh, I do feel it. Desire.
I do want him.
God, I shouldn’t. Even still, I feel my hand rising. His fingertips, rougher than my own skate over my palm to trace the vein of my arm as I lift my hand to the back of his neck. I need to be closer. I want more of this thing, this kiss—this man that I shouldn’t want at all.
With my hand on the back of his neck, I pull him closer. A groan so dark and decadent I nearly fall to my knees escapes him to invade my mouth, crawling over my tongue. The vibration of it invades my soul and promises dark wreckage I may never come back from. Do I want to come back from it, really?
I’ve never been kissed like this.
Briggs’ hand—the rough one he put the ring on my finger with—the very same one he trailed across my skin as I hooked my hand around his neck scoops me around the waist, slamming me into the solid mountain of his body and hiking me up.
Maybe my knees really did give out. I can’t think as he urges my legs around his waist, crushing me again to the fridge as his mouth plunders my own.
A blaze of flames erupts inside my core, struck by the match of him his he pins me to the fridge with his body.
His tongue explores my mouth in strokes that play between slow and deliberate to a frenzied hunger neither of us can hope to feed.
Thoughts shatter in my mind. Splinters of longing imbedding deep into the voice of caution that urges me to end this before we cross a line we can’t uncross.
His fingertips dig into my hip as he grinds into me. If there are any lingering thoughts of protest, they escape on the moan I let loose.
The moan he devours like it’s his last meal.
He groans. It’s a feral, wild sound.
Gooseflesh erupts over every inch of my skin. A shiver quivers bone deep.
He sucks my bottom lip into his mouth to soothe the sting of a quick nip in the moment before he glides the tip of his tongue over the undoubtedly kiss swollen flesh.
Oh, good lord…
Have my lips ever been swollen from a kiss before? Have I ever been kissed so deeply? So thoroughly? So decadently invasively?
Never. Not in my twenty-seven years have I been kissed in a way that leaves my soul feeling bludgeoned by sensation and need. Raw.
Briggs pulls away, but he doesn’t release me. His green eyes are blasted with a dark hunger that knifes at the core of me where desire and forbidden cravings thrive.
He clears his throat, but it fails to remove the raspy rumble from his words. “Pretty sure with a kiss like that, we don’t have to worry about someone seeing through the game we’re playing.”
I feel the shock slide into my expression, so I know he sees it. “You mean to kiss me like that in public?”
Briggs grins, slow and dangerous. “I mean to kiss my wife in public.”
The feelings those words invoke are…
“There’s no hospital in Sunset Falls. It’s—” I shake my head. “At least a twenty-minute drive to the nearest.”
Briggs’ brows slam down. “Why are you telling me where the hospital is?”
“If we kiss like that in public, we’re sure to give someone a heart attack.”
The man chuckles, and with the rasp of desire still lingering I must attest to the fact that it’s hot as sin. Not that I’d ever admit it to the man.
There are some things a girl takes to her grave. Telling her fake fiancé that he’s hot as sin is one of those things.
“We’ll be sure to cool it just a bit.”
It’s my turn to laugh. “So, we amped this kiss up for…?”
“Practice, of course.”
“Ah.” I nod. “Of course.”
I give him a pat on the shoulder and wiggle my hips where he’s currently lodged himself between my legs in an unspoken demand to be put down. Only it does the opposite when I feel the bulge of his arousal there.
A low sound alarmingly similar to a feral growl permeates the space as Briggs’ hands hold my hips tighter and he slides me slowly down the fridge. When my feet connect with the floor, I realize that my knees are still pathetically weak.
Because I’m me, and I can’t let him see how affected I am by all of him, I force myself to hold steady on my feet. I’m definitely using the fridge, though.
I lift my chin to look up at him. The man may have put me down, but he’s hardly put any space between us. I can still smell the scent of him. Cologne and earth and leather.
I ask, “What now?”
He wets his lips. The way he’s looking at me, I’m pretty sure he’s still thinking of the kiss. The idea that he might be is enough to land a splash of gasoline on the simmer of need he left unresolved in my core.
“Now I cook for you.”