Page 33 of Guarded By the SEAL
She crossed to him, desperate to ease the stress he was feeling. She lifted her hands to rub his shoulders, but nerves had her dropping them before they got halfway there. She tucked her hands awkwardly in her pockets. “You should do something to take your mind off it.”
He turned to face her, looking entirely unconvinced. “Like what?”
“We could play a game.”
“No.”
“We could talk.”
“About what?”
She rolled her eyes. “You’re not making this easy on me.”
“We could neck on the couch,” he suggested.
Her cheeks heated as she gauged his expression. He wasn’t kidding, and the possibility intrigued her.
He lowered his brow. “What were you going to do when you came over here?”
“Excuse me?” she evaded.
“When you walked over here, you were going to do something. Were you not?”
She shrugged, so embarrassed she wished she could disappear with a poof like a magician’s assistant. She knew her face must be as red as an apple. “I was going to rub your back.”
He took a small step toward her, cutting the distance between them in half, and the scent of him wafted from his warm skin to her nostrils. “And why didn’t you?”
Oh, this is dangerous territory.
“I don’t know.”
He reached out, taking her jaw lightly in his hand. “I want to kiss you again. Do you want to kiss me?”
She nodded, her nerve endings tingling where he touched her, the rest of her body longing for the same attention.
He didn’t move, and she knew instinctively he was waiting for her this time. She moved closer to him, her hands resting on his chest as she leaned in and kissed him tenderly on the lips.
She wanted him to take control of their kiss as he had earlier, but he simply responded in kind, meeting her kiss with a mirrored subtle tenderness. A small noise of frustration snuck out of her throat.
He slanted his head, continuing his soft caress of her mouth with his own. “Something wrong, sweetheart?”
He knew damn well what was wrong. He was insisting she take the lead, and she needed to fight her self-consciousness to do it. There’d been a time in her life when she could put on a sexual act like a master, tantalizing and tormenting men with her display of physical affection. But that hadn’t been real, and acting that way now made her feel like a tramp.
He trailed kisses to her ear and whispered, “Show me what you want.”
Her back arched of its own accord, pressing her chest to his as her arms went tentatively around his neck. His arms closed around her lower back and he held her to him, his kisses meeting the wilder demands of her mouth and hands as she made herself seek what she wanted.
Excitement spread through her in a rush of heat. Her hips moved against him and he held her there, his strong hands grabbing her ass and pulling her in tightly. She exhaled on a moan of pleasure. Kissing Wyatt felt different than kissing other men. It felt better. Way better.
He bent down and grabbed her leg behind the knee, lifting it to his waist so his hardness pressed against her heat, shocking her with the intimacy of the pose. “This is what I want,” he growled, claiming her mouth, his tongue plundering and retreating in a show of exactly what he wanted to do to her body.
It was what she wanted, too, but the words wouldn’t come. She was lost, her face and chest hot with desire. Her quickened pulse beat between her legs, and she pressed herself against the evidence of his desire, desperate for more. Her remaining foot barely touched the floor, and she fought the desire to wrap that leg around his waist as well.
What would he think of her if she did? What must he already think of her, reacting this way to his advances? She’d told him she wasn’t that kind of girl, and she worked to reconcile her need for this man with her years-long effort to be a woman who didn’t operate on the lowest rung of the ladder of human desires.
He cursed softly. “I can’t get enough of you.”
His mouth returned to hers, her concerns about propriety seeming like a mere breeze in the face of a gale force wind. This was stronger than simple attraction, more than a passing interest—at least on her part. She didn’t know if her time with Wyatt would last beyond this day, but she knew that she wanted it to. She cared about him, and that changed everything.
