Page 61 of Tracked
“Yes,” I answered, terror coiling from my toes all the way to my throat as Ben’s footsteps sounded right on top of us.
What would he do? Would we get kicked out? What if he realized we’d just broken into the doctor’s RV? What if he found her notes—
Calder took my jaw in his hands.
Air burrowed into my lungs. Hot and electric. And then there was nothing else—not the forest, nor the fear, nor the past, nor the future. Only the tachycardiac tension spiraling at hundreds of pulses a minute between us.
“Trust me,” he rasped, and I realized just how little space there was between my mouth and his ... right before there was none.
The touch of his lips was like three hundred volts to my stagnant heart.
I would know. I’d delivered the life-saving shock countless times in the ER. Yet I hadn’t recognized any signs of my almost-demise until he was kissing me.
I hadn’t recognized the way his hands padded the sides of my face, grounding me for what was coming. I hadn’t recognized the urgent tremble of his voice needing me to trust him and stand clear of his plan. And I hadn’t recognized the beat of blaring silence that warned of impending electricity before his mouth delivered the life-saving shock.
I hadn’t recognized how dead I was until Calder’s kiss brought me back to life.
I wished it was pure electricity that jolted my lips to part. Just like I wished it was pure panic that made my heart beat against its seams or adrenaline that infused my cells with heat. But it was none of those things that sent my senses into uncontrolled abandon—only his kiss.Only him.
I was kissing Calder Stone. My sister’s ex-boyfriend. In the middle of the Wyoming wilderness. And there was nothing I wanted more.
Meanwhile, his mouth was firm with purpose, restraint holding his lips tight and his body tense. “Trust me.” His words held him back—hispromise not to take anything more than absolutely required, and I should’ve accepted that, but I couldn’t.
From the moment I saw him again after twelve years, a steady IV of ache had been dripping into my blood. Intoxicating me. Addicting me. Even though I knew the warning signs—understood the side effects—I wanted more anyway.
More of something I couldn’t control. More ofthis thingthat promised to control me. Maybe it was my wild core ... or maybe it was simply wild.
I slid my tongue along the seam of his lips, pleading for him to set it free, and instantly it altered him.
The hand that was cuffed over my jaw and neck tightened. The firmness of his mouth hardened into ferocity, deceit turned into desperation. His chest rumbled against mine, the sound of a tree splitting in two, and then his mouth opened and his tongue delved for mine, and a kiss that had started as only a cover story became a tangled web neither of us could escape.
From protective to possessive, he plundered my mouth with a dangerous kind of control. Licking to the very depths, marking every corner. Like an unmarked wilderness, Calder mapped every inch of my lips and teeth and tongue as though it were a treasure he’d long searched for. A treasure he’d never thought he would find. Hold.Taste.A holy grail that was now his for the taking.
He angled my head, allowing his tongue deeper, every stroke like a spray of gasoline over the fire in my bones.
It had been so long since I’d been kissed—even longer since I’d felt anything that made me hungry for more.
I gripped the coarse fabric of his shirt, pulling him tighter. Every breath was a mixture of forest and midnight and masculine, heady how it mangled my senses like a weed of want.
But Calder’s kiss ... it was nothing like I’d expected. Nothing like what Rachel had hinted to me. Not that a person’s kiss, or their experience, couldn’t evolve over twelve years, but the parts Rachel had described to me weren’t the details, but the tenor. Restrained. Reserved. Proper.
This kiss was born of those things but had grown into something more. Something ravenous and raw and possessive.
A knee pressed between my legs, and my back butted up against a tree. I was pinned. A prisoner to his untamed beast. A willing captive to this feral storm.
I didn’t need more encouragement to grind on him. To use him to ease the ache that he’d caused.
It was cold out, yet I felt nothing but his heat. Nothing but the burn of something I couldn’t stop. Even if I could, it might blow our cover, and because of that, I didn’t have to admit that I didn’t want to stop it at all.
“Fuck, Lara.” His low groan entered my mouth with a quake, and a shift of his hips allowed me to feel the hard length of him against my leg.
“Hey!” The rough shout was like the slap of a cold wave straight to the chest, dousing the heat and knocking the air from my lungs. “What do you think you’re doing?”
Ben approached, his roughshod steps smashing into the forest floor.
“Let me,” Calder muttered as he slowly pulled away, making sure I was completely shielded by his big body.And consequently, keeping me encased in its absorbing warmth.
“Sorry, Ben. Went to the bathroom and then got ... distracted,” Calder said with a husky chuckle, giving off an air of ease the rest of him clearly didn’t feel.
