Page 55 of Dove
And wander they did. Straight to Josh.
Since the moment we’d started working on the fence, a tingle of awareness had broken out over my skin at our close proximity, summoning scenarios where I allowed myself to lean over and shift his concentration tomeinstead. Now that we were so close, the urge to trace my lips along the line of his strong jaw—to find out whether the scruff there was coarse or soft—was so tempting, I nearly trembled with it.
Ididtremble when Josh’s hand slide beneath my hair to palm the sensitive skin at the back of my neck, my breath hitching when our gazes locked.
“Just being thorough,” he murmured with a low rasp that made my stomach flutter.
The air between us thinned, each inhale weighted and slow. A jolt of pure desire coursed through me, connecting the gentle grip of his callused hand straight to the apex of my thighs, where I could feel myself growing wet just from his simple touch.
Even after all these years he still had the hands of a working man. Suddenly I needed to know—desperately—what he’d been doing all this time. What he’d filled his days with that wasn’t the farm.
Wasn’tme.
“Josh…” His name left me in a raspy whimper instead of the question I’d intended. His eyes darkened, the brown of his irises taken over by expanding black pupil as he swayed closer, like a moth to flame. His expression intensified as if caught in a cross between pleasure and pain. Now wasnotthe time for questions,not when that look had my stomach tightening and my core throbbing.
I licked at my dry lips and his eyes flickered down to follow the movement. God, that look. It nearly burned me with how heated it was. I’d never seen that look on his face before. A tiny spark of something like hope ignited in my chest. This couldn’t simply be a one-sided crush on my part, not when the evidence was staring straight back at me. Josh’s eyes had gone nearly black with want, and I had absolutely no idea what was building between us, but it felt charged, like the air before a lightning storm.
If I was being honest, I felt it since he’d been back. I’d tried so hard to ignore it in my anger, but I was the opposite of angry right now. Half of what sparked between us was from Josh, so rich and heady it was near palpable in the air surrounding us, and I found I didn’t want to take shelter from whatever was heading our way.
I tilted my face up, relaxing back into his hand that had moved to cradle the base of my skull, and closed my eyes, waiting. My heart pounded against my ribcage as hard as a drum and twice as loud as he leaned down, drawing closer, until a puff of air ghosted across my lips?—
A horn honked a friendly greeting in rapid succession, and gravel crunched under tires as someone barreled down our long driveway.
The spell was immediately broken as I jumped from the unexpected sound, my eyes flying open in shock. Josh was a solid wall of muscle along my front, and I gulped as I noticed how close we had drifted together. A drop of sweat ran down the length of my back, from the heat of the day or the heat radiating from Josh, I had no idea. My eyes darted nervously between him and the approaching vehicle, and the warmth in my chest sankinto a fearful chill when I saw how close they were to reaching us.
Josh felt me tense as I prepared to pull away and reacted by tightening his hand around the base of my neck, as if he could hold me in place. But when I shifted out of his grip, he let me go, fingers trailing over my skin as I stepped back until a few feet separated us. Josh’s eyes shuttered with the distance, extinguishing the flame of desire burning within them into a longing smolder. The hand that had held me so delicately, yet so firmly, hovered in the air for a single beat before it lowered, curling into a fist by his side.
I squinted against the sun and focused on the baby-blue Jeep Wrangler as it rattled down the drive with its windows rolled down, not bothering to avoid the various dips and holes scattered across the dirt road. My heart began to pound in my chest for an entirely different reason.
I knew that Jeep.
“Reverie,” I breathed. Partly from shock, partly because I’d yet to regain my breath from where Josh had stolen it away.
Josh released a heavy sigh, either for what we were about to get into with Reverie being back, or for what she’d interrupted.
God, what she’d interrupted…
I risked a glance at him, but his eyes were focused ahead. My lips still tingled from the air he’d exhaled along them. I pulled my bottom lip between my teeth, worrying it. A part of me was disappointed, but…
Another part was relieved.
My head was starting to clear from the fog it’d been in from Josh’s touch, and I couldn’t believe what we’d been about to do.
Reverie came to a skidding halt in front of us, jarring me from my contemplation, and threw open her door. She hopped down and opened her arms wide. “Surprise!”she sang, a large grin fixed on her face.
My warring thoughts were pushed aside as a tidal wave of emotion overcame me. I hadn’t realized how much I’d really missed her until she was standing right in front of me.
“Rev!” I threw myself at her, wrapping my arms around her middle as hers slid around my shoulders. We hugged tightly and something that had been missing clicked back into place. I needed my best friend right now. I had no idea why she was back in Haven, but here she was.
“What are you doing here,” I mumbled into her hair, inhaling the fancy shampoo she always used to take care of her artificial blonde locks.
“What, am I not welcome back home anymore?” she teased, then leaned down to whisper in my ear. “It’s a long story, I promise we’ll talk later.”
She squeezed me once before she said pointedly, “I think we havea lotto talk about.”
I pulled back, seeing the questioning glint in her eyes and the knowing smirk quirking her glossy lips. Okay, she’dtotallyseen how close Josh and I were.
“Reverie,” Josh drawled, stepping up from behind me. “Good to see you.”
