Page 23 of Claimed on the Ridge

He kisses the way he does everything, unhurried and completely in control, and the control makes me want to test it.

I bite his lower lip. His breath catches, and the noise he makes against my mouth is involuntary, almost pained, as if the contact costs him something he's been hoarding for years.

My hands flatten against his stomach. The muscle tightens under my palms.

I slide them up, tracing the ridges of him through thin cotton, and his fist in my hair tightens in response, tilting my head back so he can take the kiss deeper.

The angle opens my throat to him and I let it happen, let him control where my mouth goes. The surrender of it sends heat pooling low in my belly and settling between my thighs.

He walks me backward, one step, then another. My lower back hits the edge of the counter and the solid surface traps me against him.

His hips pin mine. The weight of him is enough to hold me in place, and the hardness pressing against my stomach tells me exactly what this is doing to him.

The knowledge lights me up. I arch into him. My fingers curl into the fabric of his T-shirt and I pull, wanting the space between us erased, the barrier of cotton gone.

He responds by pressing harder against me, one hand still fisted in my hair, the other closing on my hip with a possessiveness that sends a jolt of heat straight through me.

His lips drag along my jaw, slow and rough, his beard scraping my skin raw, then down to my throat.

He finds the place where my pulse is hammering and his mouth closes over it, hot suction followed by the edge of his teeth.

I moan. The noise fills the kitchen and I don't care.

My hips roll against him without my permission. His fingers dig into my hip, holding me still or holding me closer. The distinction has stopped mattering.

"Alex." His name comes out wrecked. My own voice is unrecognizable, and some distant corner of my brain notes that Kendall Jackson, who has maintained conversational composure through years of hell, has been reduced to a single syllable by a man in flannel pants.

He drags his teeth along my collarbone.

His breathing comes hot and uneven against my skin, each exhale landing like a brand, and the evidence of a man this controlled losing his composure is doing things to me that I will not recover from.

My hands slide into his hair and I pull him closer, desperate for his mouth back on mine, for everything I haven't let myself want in years.

He gives me what I'm asking for. His mouth returns to mine, harder now, hungrier.

His hand slides from my hip up the curve to my waist. His palm drags up my ribs, fingers spread wide.

His thumb finds the bruise.

The pain is sudden and sharp, a hot spike that runs from my ribs to my spine.

My body does the thing it's been trained to do. The flinch takes me before my mind can override it.

My shoulders come up and my breath cuts short. What escapes me isn't pleasure anymore. It's the small, choked gasp of a body remembering what hands on ribs have meant before.

Alex stops, immediate and complete. His hands leave my body as if I've burned him, and he takes a step back that puts a foot of cold air between us.

I'm pressed against the counter, breathing hard, and the shame arrives before I can brace against it.

The shame is hot and total, flooding up through my stomach into my throat. It belongs to something deeper than the flinch itself. It's the shame of being a woman whose body carries instructions she didn't write, whose skin still answers to a man who isn't in this room.

The disconnect between what I want and what my body just did is so violent I could scream.

The bruise throbs where his thumb pressed it. The throbbing is Gary's message, delivered through my own skin.

Alex looks at me. His breath is coming hard. His hands, hanging at his sides, are trembling.

The tremor is visible even in the low light, and the sight of it, this man whose hands are always steady now unable tohold them still, cuts through the shame and reaches something underneath.