Page 76 of Unexpected Shot
“Don’t kiss me.”
CHAPTER 17
SHELBY
Oh this mother fucker…
He thinks he has me. He thinks he can look at me like that, with his brown eyes trying to snatch my soul, and that I’m just going to give in and kiss him.
I’m not.
I’m stronger than that.
I think.
Wait…have I kissed him before? I feel like I have. But I haven’t? Shit…did I kiss him last night? Do I want to do it again?
No! Focus Shelby! Just say no!
“I’m not going to kiss you.”
There. If I keep saying it, I’ll will it to life.
“Really? You’re not? Then why do you keep staring at my lips?”
All I can do is shake my head to break the stare. The only problem with that is, not focusing on his lips means I can let myself wonder what his beard will feel like against my palm.
Just as I try to pull my thoughts away from that, I realize that his fingers are tracing down the curve of my neck, across the bare skin of my shoulder.
Don’t get goosebumps…don’t fucking get goosebumps…
“It’s okay if you want to,” he says, stepping even closer to me.
I suck in a breath as our chests make contact, my body suddenly on fire in places that haven’t felt this alive in…ever.
“I don’t.”
Two words have never come out of my mouth more unsure in all my thirty-six years.
“Really?” he says, his hands now running down my arms. “You don’t want to kiss me?”
“No!”
I mean for it to sound harsh. Decisive. That’s how my brain—the logical part of me who remembers that I hate Beau Devereaux—says it. In reality, it comes out soft. Breathy. Like I’m just saying it on instinct, but it’s not what I want.
I don’t want it.
But I do.
And I hate that I do.
“You don’t sound so sure, Belle.” Beau wraps one of his arms around my waist, turning my back against his front. I slowly blink my eyes open, fighting off the urge to rest against his muscular chest, when I notice we’re standing in front of a full-length mirror.
“I’m sure.”
Except my eyes flutter closed as he takes his free hand and traces it up my side, my head falling back against one very-well defined pec.
“Eyes on me, Belle. Watch how much you don’t want me to do this to you.”
