“I missed you,” he slid over the cracked vinyl seat until they touched from shoulder to thigh.
“It’s been less than a day since you saw me.” She left her hand palm up on her thigh and he slid his fingers between hers.
The contact sent a shiver through them both and his jeans went tight over his lap. She tried not to stare, but had to take a peek or two. Blood rose to the surface of her cheeks and neck to match the burn in the tips of his ears.
“Maybe I’m obsessed.” He kissed her ear.
“Maybe I am too.” Blood pounded in her head, boom, boom, boom, and the cab of the truck crackled with tension.
Tonight was the night.
***
Kit knew he should have taken off instead of meeting her again. Even innocent contact challenged his control.
He’d keep his cougar in check and in a few years when he could take care of her, he’d complete the mating. Until then....
This was going to be damn near impossible.
“So I was thinking, uh, this summer maybe I could come back to visit. If you want me to.” Rhiannon kept her stare fixed on the road ahead, guiding the truck around ruts and chuck holes in the hard packed dirt surface.
Kit couldn’t tear his gaze away from the purplish bruise he spotted just under the collar of her shirt on the back of her neck. He traced the hickey with one finger. Goosebumps erupted under his touch. So close to being a mating bite.
Maybe his discipline was better than he thought.
Maybe his cougar was fucking with him and trying to see how far it could get before he lost his hold completely.
But...mmm, she tasted good...smelled like something he wanted to roll in to coat himself in the scent....
“Kit?”
Concentrate, idiot.
“I’d like it if you came to visit. Although I don’t know how your dad would handle that.” Kit let his anger and hopeless fury wash over him. “He hates shifters.”
The cougar snarled. Kill him.
If Kit had less control of his beast, he’d do just that. But Rhiannon would never forgive him if he hurt her father.
“I’m eighteen. I’ve got a few months of school left and then I can do whatever I want.” She hit the brakes and released his hand to put the vehicle in park. “I thought you’d want me to visit.”
God, he wanted so much more than just a visit. He wanted forever. But if he pushed her too soon, forced a mating on her before she was ready, they could end up like his cousin Janice and her mate Brent—stuck with each other forever, both of them miserable and hating the other.
“I do want you to visit. I want...” Kit couldn’t stand the dejected way she held her shoulders. He turned toward her, a thousand million things caught on his tongue. “You can stay with me until you’re ready to leave for college in the fall.”
“What if I don’t want to leave? What if I just want to stay with you forever?”
The cougar gloated.
“I thought you wanted to go to college. Don’t you want to experience life outside a cattle ranch? Get a degree and write a bunch of research papers?” He kept his tone light, his finger still circling the hickey.
If she went to college, she’d meet new people all right. Male people who’d be crawling over each other like a bunch of starving dogs after a prime piece of beef.
The cougar growled, low, too low for human ears. Rhiannon shivered and rubbed her arms, a petulant frown tugging at her mouth.
She scooted away from the steering wheel and crawled over him, one foot dangling. “I wanted to get away from my dad. College looked like a good way to do that so I applied.” Their noses touched. “But you’re something different to me. You’re like...something I didn’t know I was missing.”
Kit swallowed a joke about using college to troll for a husband and a rude statement about her father. Hope and honesty and vulnerability all surfaced in her eyes. Maybe she didn’t quite understand what they had between them, but she felt the connection.
He kissed her. A light brush of lips at first that grew into shared breaths and the brush and slide of their tongues against each other.
Hands that a few days ago had stayed on top of clothing slid beneath shirt hems and waistbands. She gripped his length through his jeans and he thrust his hips into her touch.
Rhiannon unfastened the button of her jeans and slid the zipper down. The deepening twilight would have hidden her face from the vision of a human man, but Kit’s heightened cougar senses allowed him to discern her dilated pupils and the scent of her arousal.
“Touch me Kit,” She guided his hand to the front of her panties and dragged her shirt over her head. “I want to be with you.”