Not literally, but she was hovering close to his shoulder when he shrugged out of his coat. She couldn’t even enjoy his outdoor snow smell he brought with him; she was too busy whittling her teeth on the dry bits on her lip.
Worrying herself silly.
“Tait… I messed up I think and I’ll preface it by saying I was upset and it just happened…”
His two eyebrows popped up. “Can I get in first?” He half laughed and she apologized and moved out of his way, but he didn’t move into the living room, only cupped her cheeks with his cold, beautiful hands and tipped her head back. “How are you feeling?”
“Mortified. Worried. Sick to my eyebrows. But if you mean from yesterday, I’m fine, thank you. Can I tell you what I did now?”
In the hallway, even before he’d kicked off his boots, she pressed her forehead to his chest and moaned, seeing that earlier scene in her mind all over again.
She expected the whole gang of bikers at the door for the last hour.
“I think I went off half-cocked, Tait. I mean, I’m pretty positive that’s what I did.”
He flashed a smile like he thought it was going to be something cute.
She hadn’t known she could be badass, she had no clue she had that in her, until it came to defending him.
“What did you do?”
“Okay, here it is. Brace really good. Today at Paige’s shop. I kind of...yelled at some bikers. And then a blonde woman called Zara yelled at me. And I kind of yelled at her back.”
“You did?”
“It was… bad, Tait. I might have started a turf war or something, do we have to move now? Maybe enter witness protection. I don’t know what happens if you offend a biker gang.” She whined and clung to his chest, pawing at his shirt.
Hiding there right against his hard muscles seemed like a good idea.
It was only when she felt his shudder that she pulled back to see him cracking up laughing.
“You and Zara had words?”
“It’s not funny! It was brutal. I thought they were talking badly about you and I waded in. There was like twenty of them. Paige’s husband comes to make out like rabbits with her and the others follow for cake. Okay, it was more like six, but they’re big, so it felt like twenty, Tait.”
He went on laughing.
Hooking his arm around her shoulder he took her into the living room while she had a mild breakdown.
“Little girl, tell me it all before we break out the nun chucks, okay?”
She told him everything and though his face got soft when he heard how she jumped in for him, then he grinned when he had the full picture.
“I’m sorry. Did I make things worse with them for you? I didn’t mean to, Tait, it just all came out of me before I could stop it.”
Her tears never got the momentum to start because before she knew it, she was covered in a huge man pressing her into the back of the couch and his mouth was animal attack kissing her.
His kiss came as a relief.
His tongue and taste and smell all soothed her worry into relaxing as he swallowed and sucked on her mouth with vitality that she matched.
He kissed away any words she might have said and kept on, only the shallow breathing when they parted and his intoxicating flavor on her tongue.
His breaths were wild inside his expanding chest, and every inch of his expression washed over by lust when he pulled back to stare down at her.
“Good, glad we settled that,” he smirked and something flared behind his eyes while Poppy was finding her equilibrium again. All his desire. Every last inch of unchained need, she saw it all and swayed near him.
And that shame she felt this morning? It was gone, it evaporated under that intense heat he was pulsing out of his eyes.