Page 105 of 10 Rings I Hate About You
“I really need to kiss you.”
Her lips parted.
I made myself wait. “Can I?”
She nodded. A small, certain nod.
“I need to hear you say it.”
“Yes,” she whispered. “Marc. Yes. Kiss me.”
I cupped her face and closed the distance carefully—slowly, deliberately, giving her every chance to change her mind. Her eyes fluttered shut as my lips pressed to hers once, lightly, testing. Controlled, so I could determine what she wanted, what she liked. Her pleasure fueled mine.
Her hands came up to my chest, fisting in the fabric of my Henley.
That was her answer.
I kissed her the way I did most things—carefully, at first. Learning. The soft give of her mouth, the way she tilted into it like she’d decided to commit entirely. The kiss deepened by degrees, unhurried in a way that required more restraint thanI’d anticipated. The small moan she made against my mouth was perfection and nearly ended the restraint entirely.
Twenty years of completely ignoring this. Twenty years of filing it incorrectly, labeling it wrong, building a case for something that was never the real thing. And now her hands were fisting my shirt, and her mouth was moving against mine, and my heart rate had doubled.
I ran my tongue across the seam of her lips, and when she eagerly opened them, our tongues slid across each other seeking a rhythm that worked for us.
I pulled back just far enough to breathe. The air between us was thin. My voice came out rougher than I’d planned. “You okay?”
Delaney blinked up at me. Color high in her cheeks. Lips slightly parted. Her fingers still twisted in the fabric of my shirt. She seemed to become aware of that as her eyes dropped down briefly to her hands.
“Marc.” She exhaled my name on a short, unsteady breath. The corner of her mouth curved—slow, devastating, entirely aware of what she was doing. “If that was you holding back—” She let the sentence sit there for a moment, unfinished.
I slid my hand from her jaw to her waist. Pressed my fingertips into the soft warmth of her. Felt her shift closer in response—not away, not uncertain. Closer.
“Please don’t hold back,” she said quietly.
The words landed somewhere at the base of my spine.
For years I had been careful. Controlled. I had built distance between us and maintained it with both hands because I thought in the back of my mind, I understood that, in a way, I wasn’t ready for this to happen.
But I was ready now.
And apparently, so was she.
I tipped her chin up again, watched her eyes close, and this time I didn’t hold back at all.
Chapter Eighteen
DELANEY
The countertop dug into my back, but I could not fucking care less.
Marc’s lips were on mine, and my entire body had stopped taking instructions from my brain.
He kissed the way he did everything else—with total, unhurried focus. One hand slid into my hair, tilting my head exactly where he wanted it, and the other settled at my hip with a certainty that made my knees unreliable. I’d spent years looking at this man and cataloging all the reasons I found him aggravating. I had not, apparently, been paying nearly enough attention to the rest of him.
I pulled him closer, wanting less space between us, wanting none at all. My body had moved ahead of my better judgement entirely, and I was choosing not to interfere. Twenty years of pretending we were nothing but antagonists, and now his hands were tangled in the strands of my hair. The moans and whimpers that escaped me were loud and uncontrolled. With every swipe of his tongue, every touch of his hand, I wanted more.
As though he knew exactly what I needed, he parted my thighs with his knees and shifted into the space he made. The sound that escaped me wasn’t dignified in the slightest. He swallowed it immediately, like he’d been waiting for it. Every gasp I made, he collected. Like they were something precious he wanted to keep.
He pulled back just enough to speak. “Tell me what you want.”
