Page 30 of Until the Storm Breaks (The Midnight Men #1)

MAREN

“Maybe you should just go,” I say, eyes narrowed, trying to rebuild my walls. “I can’t do this right now.”

He doesn’t move. Just stands there looking at me with those dark eyes that make rational thought impossible, and I hate him a little for it. For coming in here and dismantling my carefully maintained control with his confessions and his intensity and his stupid perfect face.

“Did you hear me?” I ask, though my voice betrays me by wavering.

“I heard you,” he says quietly.

“Then why aren’t you leaving?”

“Because you don’t want me to.”

The arrogance of it should make me angry.

Should make me tell him to get out. Instead, it makes heat pool low in my belly despite my best efforts to stay angry.

To stay safe. Because he’s right, damn him.

I don’t want him to leave. I want him to stay and finish what he started with all those confessions. To push me up against the wall and…

“You don’t know what I want,” I manage, but even I can hear how unconvincing it sounds.

“Don’t I?” He takes a step closer, and my breathing picks up, shallow and fast.

“Calvin, don’t—”

“Look me in the eye and tell me you don’t feel this too.” His voice is rough now, scraping over my nerves. “Tell me you don’t want this. Tell me to leave and mean it, and I’ll go. I’ll walk out that door and we can pretend this conversation never happened.”

I open my mouth to do exactly that. To protect myself. To be smart for once in my life. But the words won’t come. They lodge in my throat like broken glass, cutting me from the inside. “I meant what I said about temporary,” I whisper, my last defense.

“I don’t want it to be temporary either.”

“You don’t mean that. You’re going back to Seattle and—”

“Fuck Seattle,” he says roughly, and then his hands are framing my face and his mouth is on mine.

The kiss is desperate from the first second. No gentle buildup, no tentative exploration. Just heat and want and weeks of tension finally snapping. I make a sound against his mouth and my hands come up to grip his shirt, pulling him closer, always closer.

He kisses like a man starving. Like he’s been thinking about this as long as I have. Like he wants to consume me whole and I’d let him. His tongue sweeps into my mouth and my knees actually buckle. He catches me, one arm banding around my waist, holding me up, holding me against him.

My back hits the bar and he follows, pressing against me until I can feel every hard line of his body.

And God, he’s hard everywhere. Solid chest, strong thighs bracketing mine, and when he shifts I can feel exactly how much he wants this too.

The evidence of his desire makes me dizzy.

One hand tangles in my hair while the other grips my hip, fingers digging in possessively, like he’s afraid I’ll disappear.

I’ve never felt anything like this. Like being consumed and worshipped at the same time. Like I might actually combust from wanting someone. Every nerve ending is firing, every cell reaching for him.

I nip at his bottom lip and he groans, the sound reverberating through me, making me feel powerful and reckless.

The taste of him that’s better than any drink I’ve ever served.

His hand tightens in my hair, angling my head exactly how he wants it, and I let him.

God help me, I’d let him do anything right now.

“Maren,” he breathes against my lips, and my name in his mouth sounds like salvation and damnation all at once.

“Don’t stop,” I gasp, pulling him back down. “Just don’t—”

He cuts me off with another kiss, this one slower but no less intense.

Like he’s trying to memorize me. His hand slides from my hip to my waist, fingers spreading wide across my ribs, and I arch into him shamelessly.

He makes a sound of pure satisfaction that goes straight to my head like top-shelf whiskey.

My hands find their way under his shirt, nails dragging across his abs, and he shudders against me. The power of it, of affecting him this way, makes me bold. I scrape my nails harder and he tears his mouth from mine to curse.

“You’re going to kill me,” he mutters against my neck, then trails hot kisses along my jaw.

“Good,” I manage, then have to bite my lip to hold back a moan when he finds that spot behind my ear that makes me melt.

His hand slides higher, thumb brushing the underside of my breast through my shirt, and I’m about to suggest we lock the door, consequences be damned, when—

“Maren, the beer delivery is—holy shit!”

We spring apart like guilty teenagers caught by parents. My heart is hammering so hard I’m sure everyone can hear it. Jayson stands frozen in the doorway to the kitchen, eyes wide, mouth hanging open, a case of beer in his arms that he nearly drops.

“This is not what it looks like,” I say immediately, even though it’s exactly what it looks like. My lips are swollen, my hair’s a mess, and Calvin’s shirt is half untucked.

“It looks like you were making out with Calvin Midnight against your bar,” Jayson says, a grin spreading across his face. “Which, respect. Get it, boss. I can uh… give you a minute if you need to finish—”

“No!” I say too quickly, my face burning hot enough to light the whole bar on fire. “No, we’re... Calvin was just leaving.”

Jayson’s grin widens to shit-eating proportions. “Sure thing.” He backs into the kitchen, still holding the beer. “I’ll just be back here. Being really loud with the dishes. Maybe singing. Badly.”

The kitchen door swings shut. Calvin and I stand there, three feet apart that feels like three miles. My mouth still tingles. His shirt is twisted, half untucked. His hair looks like I’ve been running my hands through it, which I have. We look absolutely wrecked.

“Holy shit,” he breathes, chest still heaving.

“Yeah.” It’s all I can say. My vocabulary has apparently been reduced to single syllables.

The silence stretches, filled with everything we’re not saying.

The bar feels too bright suddenly, too exposed.

I can’t look directly at him because if I do, I might pull him back in or push him away, and I don’t know which would be worse.

My body is still humming at a frequency that apparently only he can hit, every nerve ending reaching for him even though we’re not touching anymore.

This is what addiction feels like, I think. One taste and you’re ruined.

“This complicates everything,” I finally get out, stating the obvious.

“I know.”

We stand there, neither of us moving toward the door or toward each other.

Suspended in this moment between what just happened and what comes next.

I can feel the weight of all the reasons this was a mistake pressing down on us.

But I can also still taste him, still feel the ghost of his hands in my hair, and my traitorous body doesn’t care about complications.

“Maren—”

“You should go,” I interrupt, because whatever he’s about to say will either make this worse or make me want it more, and I can’t handle either right now. My control is hanging by a thread. “Please. I need to think.”

He nods slowly, jaw working like he’s fighting words. “Right. Okay.”

He moves toward the door, each step deliberate, controlled. But before he leaves, he pauses at the threshold, hand on the frame, looking back at me with an expression I can’t quite read. Desire mixed with something softer, something that makes my chest ache.

“For what it’s worth,” he says quietly, “I’m not sorry.”

“Me neither,” I admit, the words escaping before I can stop them, surprising us both.

A small smile tugs at his mouth, just the corner lifting. “We should probably talk. Later. When we’re not...”

“When Jayson’s not listening through the kitchen door,” I finish, needing to break the tension before I combust.

“I can hear you!” Jayson calls out, proving my point. “And I’m not sorry either! This is the most exciting thing that’s happened here since Dolores fell off her barstool!”

Despite everything, I laugh. It bubbles up unexpected, slightly hysterical. Calvin does too, and for a moment the weight of all our complications lifts, and we’re just two people who want each other, standing in a bar, laughing at the absurdity of it all.

“Later,” he agrees, and there’s a promise in it that makes my stomach flutter. “Tonight? After you close?”

I should say no. I should establish boundaries. I should protect myself. Instead, I nod. “Tonight.”

Then he’s gone, the door closing with a soft click, and I’m alone with my racing heart and unsteady hands. My legs feel like jelly. I might actually slide to the floor.

I lean against the bar, trying to catch my breath, trying to think. Calvin Midnight just kissed me like the world was ending. Like he’d been dying to do it. And I kissed him back like I’d been waiting my whole life for it, which maybe I have been.

The kitchen door creaks open. Jayson’s head appears, cautious, like he’s checking for live ammunition. “Coast clear? He gone?”

“Yeah.”

He comes out fully, trying and failing to hide his grin. “You good?”

“I have no idea.” But I’m smiling as I say it, which probably tells him everything. I can’t seem to stop smiling, even though this is a disaster waiting to happen.

“Fair enough.” He starts opening duties without being asked, but keeps shooting me these knowing looks, clearly dying to ask for details but restraining himself for now.

Every time he passes by, he’s fighting back a bigger grin, occasionally humming what sounds suspiciously like a wedding march under his breath.

I catch my reflection in the mirror behind the bar and almost don’t recognize myself.

My hair is a disaster. My lips are swollen.

My cheeks are flushed. I look like someone who just made a potentially life-altering decision against her bar at three in the afternoon. I look thoroughly kissed. I look alive.