Page 65 of At First Spark
Her gaze lifts and locks on mine.
“You’re making this something it’s not,” she says.
“Then tell me what it is.”
She opens her mouth, but stops. My hand lifts slowly, deliberately. Giving her time to stop me as my fingers settle at her waist.
Her breath catches, and I physically fight back an answering smirk at that reaction.
“You should stop,” she says.
“You want me to?”
A beat.
“No.”
That’s all I need. The space between us closes slowly, like we both understand exactly what this is and neither of us is pretending we don’t.
My mouth brushes hers first. I don’t kiss her. Not because I don’t want to, but because I know I won’t stop if I do.
It’s barely there. A test. A question. She answers by leaning in. And in a matter of nanoseconds, it deepens. Her hand comes up, catching in my shirt, not pulling, just holding, grounding herself like she needs something steady to anchor to.
I slide my hand fully to her waist now, fingers pressing just enough to feel her there, to know she’s real and not something I built up in my head over the past two days.
She exhales softly against my mouth. And the way she’s kissing me like she’s been holding this back just as long as I have. The sound shifts everything. I angle closer. The kiss intensifies, not out of control, not rushed, but building in a way that feels inevitable, like this was always where we were going and we just finally stopped pretending otherwise.
Her body presses closer. Every inch of space between us disappears until there’s nothing left but contact and the slow, steady slide of something that feels a lot like losing control in the best possible way.
Time stretches. I don’t know how long we stay there. I don’t care. Because for a second—there’s no Nolan. No inn. No reason this is a bad idea. Just her.
And the way she’s kissing me is like she’s been holding this back just as long as I have.
Then the front door opens, and we break apart instantly. Lark steps back first, her chest heaving with uneven breaths, eyes wide.
I stay where I am for half a second longer, knowing that if I move, I might end up right back with her.
Nolan steps inside, stops, then looks between us. The shift in the room is obvious.
By the look on his face, I can see he knows something happened, just not sure what.
“What did I miss?” he asks.
Lark turns away too quickly for my liking.
“Nothing,” she says.
But we both know that’s not true. And there’s no chance in hell that I’m going to pretend it is.
Chapter Eleven – Lark
The kiss follows me back to Holt’s home. In the silence of the truck ride back to the farm while Holt keeps both hands on the wheel and his eyes on the road like the line between us can be undone with enough discipline. In the way my mouth still feels warm long after the moment itself has passed, as if memory can live in the skin longer than reason should allow. In the way I step out of the truck and have to actively stop myself from looking at him first.
The farm stretches around us in the late evening light, wide and golden and almost offensively peaceful after the kind of day we just had. A breeze moves through the grass, bending it in long, soft waves. Instead of veering toward the dirt road leading to his house, he stays on the gravel drive until a gorgeous ranch comes into view. A barn sits off to the left, doors half open. The house glows warm through the windows.
Nothing about the place looks complicated.
Rook hops down from the back seat and does one quick circle around my legs before trotting toward the porch as if he’s been born to this land and not dragged into it half starved and suspicious three days ago.
