Page 38 of Working For Her Second Chance

The ride back takes eight minutes. I don't remember a single turn.

Macy

The front door hasn't fully closed before his hands are on me.

River pins me against the hallway wall, one hand flat beside my head, the other on my hip, fingers digging into denim. His mouth finds mine and the kiss is nothing like the slow, deliberate ones from the porch. This is the other River—the one who runs hot lines in storms, the one who grips live wire because the job demands it. His tongue pushes past my lips and I open for him and the sound that comes out of me is shameless.

"The bike," he says between kisses. "You can't do that on the bike."

"Do what?"

"Your hands. Your—" His breath catches as I hook my fingers into his belt and pull his hips against mine. His cock presses hard against my stomach and the contact makes us both groan. "That. You can't do that at sixty miles an hour."

"Seemed like you handled it fine."

"I almost drove us into the reservoir."

"But you didn't." My hands slide under his shirt. His stomach contracts under my palms—muscle and heat and the fine trail of hair below his navel that I've memorized with my fingers and my mouth. "You never drop anything you're holding, River. That's your whole thing."

His eyes go dark. The green-brown irises narrow to rims around blown pupils and his jaw works and his hands move from my hip to the zipper on his jacket—the one I'm wearing, the one that smells like leather and motor oil and him—and he pulls it down slow, watching my face, watching the way my chest rises as the jacket falls open.

The tank top underneath is thin. White. I chose it this morning knowing exactly what I was doing and he knows Iknow and the knowledge crackles between us like static before a storm.

"Upstairs," he says. Not a question.

"Here."

His hands stop. "Here?"

"Here. Now. I've been pressed against you on that bike for forty minutes and if you make me climb stairs I will lose my mind."

Something shifts in his face. The control slips—the steady, measured lineman's composure that he wears like a second skin—and what's underneath is raw and immediate and my legs nearly buckle.

He lifts me. Both hands under my thighs, my back against the wall, and the strength in his arms isn't performance. It's function. He carries heavy things for a living. The realization that I am one of those things—held up, handled, gripped with the same confidence he brings to everything he touches—floods between my legs like heat through copper.

My ankles lock behind his back. My fingers dig into his shoulders through his shirt. His mouth drops to my neck—not gentle, not careful, teeth grazing the tendon, tongue flat against my pulse—and my head falls back against the wall and the hallway tilts.

"Shirt. Off," I say, pulling at the fabric. He shifts my weight to one arm—one arm, the scarred one, the arc-burn hand gripping my thigh like I weigh nothing—and strips it over his head with the other. The sight of him shirtless, flushed, breathing hard, the muscles of his shoulders and chest moving under sun-dark skin—I've seen it a hundred times and the wanting hasn't learned to behave.

My tank top goes next. His fingers are rough against my ribs, calluses catching on skin, and the friction is a language I'velearned to crave. No bra. His eyes drop and his breath leaves him in a sound that's almost pained.

"Macy." My name in his mouth like a load-bearing wall—structural, necessary, the thing the rest of the room leans on.

He carries me to the kitchen table. Sweeps the newspaper and the coffee mug aside with one arm and sets me on the edge, and I pull him between my legs by his belt, working the buckle while his hands work the button on my jeans.

The denim peels down. His fingers trace the line of my hip, the edge of black cotton, and he pauses—thumb hooked under the elastic, eyes on mine, waiting. Not asking permission. Asking if I'm watching. Making sure I see what he sees.

"Don't stop."

The cotton goes. His hand slides between my thighs and finds me soaked, swollen, and his jaw clenches and his fingers press and my hips buck off the table.

"Six months," he says, low, working me open with two fingers while his thumb circles my clit in a slow, devastating rhythm that makes my vision white out. "Six months and you still react like this is the first time I've touched you."

"Six months—" My voice breaks. His fingers curl inside me and my spine arches and my nails dig into the table edge. "Six months and you still—god, right there—you still know exactly where?—"

"I pay attention." His mouth finds my breast. Tongue flat, then teeth, gentle and then not, and the combination of his mouth and his hand sends me up fast, too fast, the orgasm building at the base of my spine like a current with nowhere to go.

"Wait," I gasp. "I want?—"