Page 190 of Where Your Scars Meet Mine
“You say that like you wouldn’t enjoy it.”
Tightening his hand at my hip, his eyes close briefly, as if the sentence costs him more than it should.
“Beautiful,” he says, so low I almost miss it. “You have no idea how much I would enjoy it.”
The music shifts, the beat softening even more, the movement between us turning less into dancing and more into swaying, my whole body aware of his in sharp, aching detail. The line of his chest. The strength in his arms. The heat where our thighs keep brushing. The way he keeps finding excuses to touch me more without making it obvious to anyone except me.
His hand slides higher again, fingertips tracing the edge of my shoulder, then down my arm, then back to my waist like he is mapping me in little private circuits. Each pass is subtle. Each one leaves a fresh trail of heat behind.
“I’ve wanted this all day,” he says.
“What?”
“This.” His gaze drops briefly to where our bodies meet, then lifts back to my face. “You under my hands with everyone forced to see I’m the one touching you.”
My breath catches, the movement between us faltering for a second before he steadies it with a small shift of his hold. The room around us continues to spin politely in candlelight and conversation while something much less polite unfolds in the space between our bodies.
His thumb drags once over the bare skin at my side.
“Say stop,” he murmurs, “and I’ll behave.”
It is almost laughable, the idea of him behaving while he is looking at me like this.
Tipping my head closer, my lips brush the edge of his jaw just enough to feel the roughness there. “I think we both know I’m not going to do that.”
The sound he makes in response is wrecked enough to send a tremor through me.
One more turn. One more drag of the music. One more impossible second of pretending this is just dancing when his hands are slowly unmaking me in public and I am letting him.
Then he stops moving.
Not abruptly. Gently. Like he has reached the edge of what he can survive while pretending this is still innocent.
My pulse is pounding everywhere.
His gaze locks to mine, then drops to my mouth with such naked hunger that for one suspended second I forget where we are entirely. The hand at my back spreads wider, pulling me fully into him.
“Tell me to take you home,” he whispers.
The question is a plea disguised as a command. A last thread of control.
My lips part. The answer dies the second I see his face.
Because he is trying so hard. Trying to give me the choice. Trying not to just take the kiss he has been starving for since the moment I stepped into the room.
Instead of answering, I rise onto my toes.
That is all it takes.
His mouth crashes into mine.
The kiss is hungry, yet, controlled for the first half-second, as if he is still trying to remember we are standing in the middle of Spokehaven’s formal. Kissing him back with all the heat he has been pulling out of me one whisper at a time, whatever remains of his restraint tears cleanly.
His hand leaves my hip only to cup my jaw, angling my face exactly where he wants it. The kiss deepens instantly, his mouth moving over mine with the kind of starving intensity that makes the room disappear. Slipping my fingers into his hair, his mouth opens mine, the low sound that leaves him swallowed between us.
There is nothing polished about it.
Nothing careful.
