Page 75 of Fighting For You
His gaze narrowed like he couldn’t figure out what I meant.
“I’m not worried about kissing you being the wrong thing, Jude. I want to kiss you because…”Because some partof me has wanted that since the minute we met, and you tried not to smile when I said your name. Because until I got my wires crossed and started believing Kurt could give me a place to belong and a real home like I’d always wanted, it was you I thought I wanted.
I wouldn’t say any of that, though. Not now. Not when I’d already spilled my guts everywhere earlier.
“Because?”
His hands squeezed me at my waist where he held me now, the physical nudge paired with an urgency in his voice I couldn’t resist answering immediately.
“Because I like you. I want to keep getting to know the man you are now. And that includes the you who is grieving, just like the me who’s here with you is dealing with crap I’ve buried for too long. But that isn’t all Kurt’s fault.” I eyed him because he’d certainly had a hand in tossing my world upside down lately.
He waited, like he needed more from me before he could move or take a breath. My heart squeezed and my blood raced, but I womaned up and gave him more.
“I want to kiss you because you’re the person I’m looking for in any room I enter and you’re who I want to spend time with more than anyone else. I want to kiss you because I can’t stop thinking about it, and I?—”
That must’ve done it, because he yanked me forward, taking practically all of my weight in his capable arms, and slid me onto his lap right as our lips met.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Jude
If she was going to talk like that, she was going to get kissed.
We crashed together in a hurried way, but I eased off, slowing the pace to a savoring kind of lilt which eased her mouth open to taste her. Damn if she wasn’t the most intoxicating thing I’d ever encountered.
And of course, she followed the rhythm, the slide and lick and press of the kiss perfectly. Like everything she did, she was excellent at this.
Jess did nothing halfway, so when she kissed it was a full body commitment. Her weight on my lap anchored me and her hands slid into the hair at my nape, nails scraping gently against my skin. She tilted her head in response to me, a pleasured sound sending my logic and all that clear thinking about how rushing things between us would be foolish into thin air.
Wait? For what?
How could I wait for anything when every good thing on this earth had collapsed into this moment with this woman and this kiss?
My hands ran along her back and down, taking liberty with her curves and relishing the way she pressed tighter into me, kissed me deeper.
She pulled back enough to tug at my shirt, then rucked it up and tossed it before I could do anything but pull her back to me. But she pushed away with a “Wait, wait,” and I froze.
Her gaze tracked down to my chest.
“Sorry. Sorry. I shouldn’t have done that,” I scratched out, worried we’d already gone too far.
One hand slid from my sternum to the waistband of my jeans in a trail so deadly slow I could hardly breathe. My skin lit on fire in the wake of her touch and the look in her eye as she followed her own progress.
“I did that,” she said, her voice kiss-roughened and low.
My heart sprinted, the glint in her eye so intoxicated, I could hardly look at her without being swallowed by the desire swirling around us.
“You did,” I said, a question in the words.
That exploratory hand mapped back up my chest before she spoke again. By the time it reached my collar bone and traced along the ridge of one to the other side, I was crawling out of my skin with fast-dissipating restraint.
“I always knew you’d look like this.” She swallowed and her gaze found mine. “I just don’t know where we go next.”
I have a few ideas.
I didn’t say the words springing to mind, nor would I, but a vast majority of my body wanted to speak them and draw us into more—more heat, more connection, moremoments where space collapsed between us and this tension gave way to satisfaction.
But she was halting our progress wisely. There was sense in this breath we were taking, and I wouldn’t disrespect her by being flippant with my response.
