“Because you’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever met, Annika, that’s why,” I say, snapping with impatience. “Because I bet I could kiss you standing up and not have to bend double to do it. Because you fuckin’getit—where I’ve been, what it means, and you wouldn’t hold it against me. And you’d know what to look for, if I ever started slipping. Because you’re strong. Because I have a feeling once you learn how to trust in what we’d have, you’d have a whole fuckin’universeof sweet to give me, and you’d have that to give because you’d be getting that from me—all you need and want and more.”
She rolls away, at this. Rocks to her feet, limping away, raking her hands through her hair. “Shutup, Chance.”
I follow her. She halts halfway across the tiny room, and I only need one long step to reach her. Stand behind her. “Not gonna shut up, Annika.”
“I don’t have a universe of sweet to give you, and no matter how much you think you could give me, you’d be pouring it down a black hole.”
“That’d be my problem to worry about, not yours.”
“Why are we even having this fucking discussion, Chance? You don’t know me. I don’t know you. We just met. This isn’t the start of something between us.” She shakes her head, ringlets bouncing. Shoulders are tense and tight. Her posture is standoffish. “It’s nothing—we’renothing. Thereis nowe. I’m not fucking you and I’m sure as hell not falling in love with you.”
“You want the first and you’re just scared the second will happen if we do the first.”
She whirls, green eyes spitting sparks. “You’ve got an answer for everything, don’t you?”
I know I shouldn’t. It’s too soon. She’s not ready. But I can’t help it.
I kiss her.
It’s a surprise to me as much as it is her, that I suddenly have her yanked up against me, my hand snarled into her mass of red curls, the other wrapped around her back, a few inches up from her ass. I’m as shocked as she is when my mouth slams down on hers.
What truly shocks me, though, is when her tongue is the first to taste my lips, the first to demand I open for her. I do, eagerly, and I taste her, feel her lips on mine and her taste her tongue, her breath.
The match is lit, then. Lit, and tossed onto the pile of dynamite that is the sexual and emotional tension conflagrating between us ever since we met.
It’s a wild kiss. All teeth and tongues. Her arms are crushed and trapped between us, caught there in the surprise attack of my kiss. Yet, when she twists them out from between us, it’s not to push me away. It’s to reach up, wrap them around my neck, and pull me down. Kiss me harder. Opening her mouth to mine, she demands more. Her fingers knot in my hair, then release and clasp at my head, my neck. My shoulders—I’m shirtless, as I always tend to be when I’m not on duty in the club. Her palms roam my shoulders, my back, my arms. She lifts up on her toes, pressing her body against mine—sweet soft curves squishing beautifully into me.
My cock rages, hard as a steel I-beam.
I long to fill my hands with her body, but I don’t.
I made a promise, and I intend to keep it.
Instead, I take her tongue and I kiss her all the harder.
5I Know Your Soul
Annika
God, his mouth. It’s fucking magical.
It eraseseverything. The present, the future, and even the past. I always kinda thought nothing could ever erase the stain of filth from my past, but somehow, his kiss manages to do just that.
I’ve had plenty of partners. A few lovers. A lot of hookups. And there’s been a few men who can claim to have gotten there with me only through what I might call coercion—and that’s putting it far too nicely.
But none of them have ever kissed me like Chance is kissing me.
He manages to communicate via his mouth, but without words. His kiss speaks to me. It whispers to me. Sings to me. What does it say?
I need you.
I want you.
Kiss me back, Annika.
Yeah, mama, kiss me just like that.
Feel this, mama? There’s more where that came from.
