Page 26 of Tasting Fire
This. This was the passion and yearning and need that had been missing from her life. She’d been without it for so long that she hadn’t realized what she was missing until the night Oliver had executed his clinical proposal.
Go away, Oliver.
One hand in Cash’s waistband, she grabbed hold of his hair with the other and yanked. Oh, God. A brick wall at her back and a hard man at her front.
The perfect kind of trapped.
Cash obviously thought so, too, because his erection was hot against her stomach even through the fabric of their clothes. Sure, they’ddone ita few times when they were dating their senior year, but those had been quick, furtive encounters the few times they could find privacy.
Not easy in a small town.
Once down at Deadman’s Creek in the front seat of the truck he’d driven back then.
Once on her couch when her mom had taken Kris to see a play in Asheville.
They’d had plans, though, for sharing an apartment one day. Sleeping and loving together in their own bed. But she’d rejected all that.
Cash’s hands came up and framed her hips, pulling her up the wall and tilting her pelvis against his. It made Emmy want to claw at him, tear at their clothes until they were skin to skin and he could slide inside her. Fill up the places she’d recently discovered were so empty.
She even went so far as to flip open the top button of his jeans, but before she could shove her hand fully inside his pants, something whooshed past them and crashed through one of the Murchison building’s plate glass windows.
Cash’s head came up, and he dropped Emmy back to her feet. “What the fuck?”
He spun around, giving her a view of Main Street. A truck was screeching away like a bat out of hell. The brake lights blinked once and disappeared as the vehicle hung a right onto a cross street.
With unsteady hands, Emmy dug into her bag for the building’s keys. But Cash didn’t wait for her to retrieve them. He simply put a boot heel against the glass clinging around the window frame and kicked it in. Then he stepped through the yawning jaws of jagged remnants.
“Dammit, Cash!”
She made to follow him, but he looked back at her and barked, “Don’t you dare.”
Bossy butthead.
Unbelievably, her hands were no longer shaking, and she fit the key in the front door lock on the first try. Inside, the main floor was a mess of broken glass, but Cash was stomping across it toward the staircase leading upstairs. He hunkered down, pulled his jacket cuffs over his hands, and picked up something.
Emmy hurried toward him and leaned over his shoulder to get a look at what had interrupted their very public, very hot kiss. One that she’d been completely steeped in. “What is it?”
“Something heavy enough to go through plate glass.” His hands still covered by his jacket, Cash fumbled with the heavy-duty rubber band until it popped off. The paper that had been wrapped around a brick—red and unremarkable—floated to the ground.
It was simple. White copy paper. Black magic marker. Only four words.
Go home, Dr. McBitch.
Cash stared at the piece of crumpled paper that had fallen to the floor. Inside him, the blood that Emmy had already heated with their kiss outside upgraded to a bubbling boil that quickly advanced to a raging torrent.
He jumped to his feet and started for the door. “Call Maggie and tell her what happened. She’ll be over in a flash. Until then, I want you to go upstairs and lock yourself inside the apartment.”
“What?” Emmy caught him by the elbow. “Where are you going?”
“To find the jackwad who threw that brick.”
“They’d already turned off Main before we came inside. They’re probably a mile or more away now.”
“I’ll find them.” Because letting them get away with this was not an option. Maybe ithadbeen a wakeup call, reminding him that kissing Emmy was probably a shitty idea, but she could’ve been hurt. And even though she’d once hurt him, he never wanted to see her in pain.
“By yourself? Not happening. If you’re going after them, I’m coming with you.” The stubborn line of her mouth told him that it would be hard to convince her to stand down. “Besides, I saw what kind of truck it was.”
“What about the license plate?”
