Page 58 of After You

She nodded.

“Romantic. Considerate. A gentleman.”

She couldn’t disagree.

“And look what that gotme.”

Okay, that hit her directly in the chest. “Kyle. You were…an amazing boyfriend. We were good, right? For a longtime.”

“Maybe. But maybe good wasn’t all we needed. Maybe we needed more. Maybe we needed hot. Andwild.”

Oh, Lord. Hot and wild. Two pretty simple words with lots of meanings, but Hannah felt her stomach flip. “What does thatmean?”

“I think it means that this idea to romance you might not be complete.” He was studying her lips, and Hannah wasn’t sure she’d ever been as aware of her mouth. “I think maybe I should do more than remind you of what you left behind. I should show you what you could have here now instead.”

“But you don’t want me to stay,” she said softly. She’d said it before too, and she wasn’t sure why she kept saying it. To remind him? To remind her? To hear him change his mind? The last thing she needed was more reason to not want to leave.

“I want leaving to be the hardest thing you’ve everdone.”

Already there. She hadn’t exactly left Sapphire Falls but not coming home had been hard. Veryhard.

“And you managed it pretty easily when I was sweet and gentlemanly,” he went on. Now he lifted his hand and ran his thumb over her bottom lip. “So maybe I need to step thingsup.”

She didn’t have a chance to reply or ask what he meant because he leaned in and took her mouth again in a hot, wet kiss that made fire lick along her limbs.

The limbs that he was now running his hands over. He slid his big palms up and down her arms, tangling with her fingers and then pressing her hands back against the wall behind her. She laid her hands flat on either side of her hips. It was a small sign of submission, she knew. It wasn’t pulling him closer, but it certainly wasn’t pushing him away. Kyle definitely understood. His hands gripped her hips as he deepened the kiss, holding her as he pressed into her, his erection obvious against her fly. Her body felt like it was melting at the evidence of his reaction. He stroked lower, his fingertips meeting her bare thighs, and she sighed.

He ran a finger under the edge of her shorts on both sides, and she felt the sensations shimmying straight to her clit. Oh, boy. It had been a long time. And Kyle had been the last man to really make anything shimmy right there.

He trailed his lips down her neck, licking a path that made goose bumps skitter down her arm. “Damn, you taste so good,” he said roughly.

Hannah tilted her head back to rest against the wall, not to give him better access, but because her body was quickly losing the ability to do anything but just be. The wall would hopefully keep her upright.

A clatter sounded from the front of the bar, reminding her that there were people just on the other side of the door. She started to lift her head, but Kyle already had her hips in his hands again and was sliding her along the wall and around the corner.

“If they come in and I push you away, they won’t see it here,” she said, her voice hopelessly breathless.

“I know. So no sense pushing me away justyet.”

Then he put his mouth back on her neck, and she decided that his ideas were brilliant. Maybe even this one about turning things up from sweet and gentlemanly to hot andwild.

He was cupping her butt now, and she felt herself arching her hips closer to his as he kissed her in that one especially sweet and hot spot. She’d never understood why that spot just behind her earlobe made her crazy, but it did. And he’d clearly remembered. In fact, five seconds after he put his lips there, she was grinding against him. She still had her hands against the wall though, so she could tell herself that he was making her do it. She was a complete liar, of course, but as long as that pressure stayed right there, she wasgood.

“Unbutton forme.”

It took her a second to process his words. Her eyes flew open—the first time she’d realized they were shut—and she looked up at him. “What?”

“Unbutton.” His hot gaze dropped to the front of her shirt.

Why couldn’t he unbutton her? “You do it,” she urged. Okay, that was definitely the opposite of pushing him away, but she didn’t care. Every inch of her skin seemed to be anticipating his touch, cravingit.

“You do it,” he said firmly.

She swallowed. Okay, actually, that was the opposite of pushing him away. Not just letting him touch her, but encouraging it, helping him doit.

Was he testing her? Was he trying to see what she woulddo?

Well, had he not kissed her behind her ear, she might have kept enough sense to try, even halfheartedly, to return to the plan of resisting him. But he had kissed her there and so this was all his fault.

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