“No more Sharpe.”
“It’s a pet name.”
“It’s bullshit. I’m not a last name to you.” He gave her braid his normal tug, but still didn’t let go, keeping it wrapped around his hand. Because he didn’t want her to look away or bullshit him again.
Something in her expression changed. Not just a softening, though there was that. The way her lips parted, her gaze drifted to his mouth.
Okay, yeah, something was definitely hard, and he’d kind of forgotten about that whole “wanting her to go home” thing as he leaned across the console and tugged her mouth to his. Pretend life’s not hard? Yeah, he liked when they did that.
Because as sharp as her words could be, her mouth was soft, sweet. As much as every cell of her screamed capable and strong, she melted into him, and it made him feel capable and strong.
Her hand curled around his bicep, but the other one clutched the front of his shirt. He never knew what to do when she did that. When she held on to him for dear life. He wanted to tell her to run at the same time he wanted to not let her go for a second. He wanted to assure her he could be whatever it was she wanted or needed.
You will disappoint her. But she didn’t believe he’d stay. She believed so little about him—what could he possibly disappoint?
“D-don’t let go.”
He didn’t know if she was talking about her hair or in general, and he didn’t really care. Because he had no intention of letting go. This thing she filled him with, this feeling she gave him, nothing, not hockey, not being here, nothing else made him feel that way.
Luckily, her hand moved from his arm to his abdomen, and then trailed over his erection, and he didn’t have to linger on the discomfort that realization caused.
He kept one hand curled in her hair and used his other to slide up her shirt, pull one of the bra cups far enough down that he could touch her nipple, circle it until it was hard, until she groaned, her grip on his cock going tight.
“We have to go inside to get condoms,” she said against his mouth, against his lips, not letting him go, not putting any space between them. Those seemed like foreign words. All he could think about was the heated air around them, her grip on him, her breath shallow against his neck.
His eyes met hers, and he refused to get lost in that overwhelming feeling. This was about sex, which was its own kind of escape and distraction. “Well, then let’s go.”
It took her a minute to release him, and only then did he realize the drizzle had turned to a full-on downpour. He glanced at her, and she flashed him a grin, a grin he’d never seen. Dark, dangerous, like she could light the world on fire. Him on fire. And nothing would survive.
“Better run,” was all she said before she pushed her door open and stepped into the night.
He stepped out too, the lash of a cool rain immediately hitting him, soaking him. He thought it might ease the incessant heat in his veins, the tight ache in his groin, but it did nothing. He was all set to jog, but Mel was just standing there in the dimmest of porch lights, head up, eyes closed, the rain surely drenching her.
For a moment, he just watched. The shadow of her in the middle of a storm. Lightning sizzled across the sky, thunder boomed, and he needed to get inside. He needed to be inside her.
She screeched when he bent and managed to leverage her over his shoulder. “Dan!” She pounded a fist on his back, but then her laughter bubbled up, a sound he could not resist if he tried.
He carried her to the porch, water pouring over both of them as thunder rumbled again.
“Put me down.”
But there was nothing insistent about her voice in the least, so he carried her all the way inside, and didn’t put her on her feet until they were in his kitchen.
He flipped on the light, trying to catch his breath. But the look of her took it away again.
Water was dripping off the strands of hair that had fallen out of her braid. Her T-shirt was plastered to her breasts, her stomach, and she was smiling. Smiling. Yeah, that killed him.
It only took one step before she was stepping toward him too, meeting in the middle, and they were kissing each other as if it had been months instead of minutes since they’d had their hands on each other.
He could have sworn the water sizzled between them as their mouths found some kind of solace in each other. Every lick and nip was a desperate need to forget, to have, to take.
She unbuckled his belt, undid the snap on his jeans, which were now tight from the rain, but it didn’t stop her. Her hands were greedy and determined, and his body strained in response. She pulled him free, her hand cool and wet against his erection.