Page 85 of #Awestruck

“Do you know how badly you make me want to lose control?” he asked, his words hot against my bare shoulder. I literally couldn’t uncurl my toes. “I want to feel your skin against mine. To be that close to you.”

I wanted that, too.

He kissed the base of my neck, which sent delicious swirls through my limbs. I wanted to back up, press myself against him, turn around, and convince him that control was highly overrated.

His hand went to the top of my zipper. I felt like I was standing at the top of a high hill, running down with total disregard for my safety. Feeling off-balance and as if I was always one step away from plunging down.

Evan tugged at the metal tag, inching it down so slowly that my heart started keeping time to it.Thud-thunk. Thud-thunk. Thud-thunk.The backs of his knuckles brushed against my skin, leaving tiny pools of fire everywhere they touched.

“You’re so soft,” he said against my earlobe, and I almost collapsed against him at the sensation. “Are you this soft everywhere?”

“Yuh-huh” was my artful reply. Now my heart had sped up, and my earlobes, fingers, and feet throbbed in time with it.

The zipper kept going down oh, so slowly, and my veins ached in response to how he was drawing this out, torturing us both.

He took it all the way down, and I gasped when he touched the small of my back, wrapping his hand around the curve of my hip. I could feel my body rise and fall beneath his fingers, and I was ready to shatter from the tension.

It was too much. I couldn’t take a second more without reacting. I whirled around, and before I could even make a move, his mouth was on mine. Hungry. Desperate. Wanting. Kissing me in exquisitely hot and intense strokes.

His kiss made my entire world shrink down to that point. So that the only thing I could feel was how my body went fluid against his, my softness crashing into his strength. He was all I could taste, all I could feel, the only thing that seemed real to me.

My stomach tightened and swirled with heat, the need for him growing stronger and stronger with each passing moment. My heart transformed itself into a hummingbird, wings flapping faster and faster inside my chest.

His arms crushed me to him, making it impossible to breathe. I didn’t care. Who needed to breathe when you could be kissed like this?

Evan said something that might have possibly been my name as he moved from my lips to just under my jaw. He left hot, feathery kisses there, and it shorted out my knees. I grabbed at him, trying to stay upright. His kisses inched down along my throat, and the rest of my limbs gave way. He hit the spot beneath my ear that made me insane, then kissed his way down to my shoulders, tasting and kissing me there.

His other hand was on my one sleeve, pulling at it. That one action started a tiny warning bell in a corner of my mind.

I wanted this. I wanted him. I loved him. It seemed like the most natural thing to do.

But there were so many reasons why we shouldn’t. I couldn’t think of a single one at the moment, but this needed to stop.

“Evan, wait.” I backed up, putting some much-needed distance between us before my body could overthrow my brain and put us right back where we’d been a second ago.

His gaze was unfocused, hazy. He was panting, hard. So was I. My chest was heaving as I tried to both catch my breath and slide my sleeve back into place.

Then the reasons returned. Evan wanted to wait. And I couldn’t do something like this, be that intimate with him, when I was still keeping a secret from him. I had to tell him the truth.

Although I was in no condition right now to do that. He needed to leave before I lost myself in him and his touch.

“We can’t,” I said. He looked regretful but nodded. “I don’t want to be the reason you break a commitment you’ve made to yourself.” I said it as a reminder to both of us.

“Right now you seem like a pretty good reason.” His voice was low and sexy, and I only just stopped myself from jumping back into his arms.

Then I felt bad for my impulse. I knew he wanted to wait, and here I was, throwing down gauntlets. “I’m ... I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have pushed—”

Evan cut me off. “Don’t apologize. You weren’t alone in any of that.”

Would I ever breathe normally again? “You should probably go.”

“Yes, I should.”

He opened the door, and I didn’t know how he’d managed it. Nothing in my body felt like it was currently under my control.

Evan paused in the doorway. “Lock your door.”

“Are you still worried I’m going to get murdered?”

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