Page 146 of Ignition

His still damp lips curled into a knowing smirk.

I swallowed, hard, and opened my mouth to say something—anything—but no sounds came out. Only a slow, almost pained breath.

“Use your words,” he taunted, peppering a few kisses on my lower stomach, muscles seizing under the warmth of his lips.

Easy for you to say.

He sucked a bruise right over the line of my panties, and I dragged in a sharp breath that only brought in his scent—warm skin, sandalwood, something spicy, and the smell of winter night clinging to him.

“Push me away,” he drawled, smirking, “or shove my head down.”

My hand twitched in his hair, before I forced it loose again and bit down on my lower lip, the coppery taste of blood cutting through the haze.

Taking that as an invitation, his fingers hooked into the waistband of my pants and tugged them down a slow and torturous sliver.

Goose pimples bloomed under his touch, and need pooled molten inside me, even as my mouth remained shut.

But it wasn’t stubbornness this time.

I just… didn’t know how to ask for it.

His hands dragged light, maddening patterns on my thighs, inching closer to my panty line, to where I ached and simmered for him.

“Let go,” he urged, as my hips bucked into his touch.

My cheeks burned with a mixture of mortification, shame, and desperate arousal—and still, I said nothing.

“Nobody’s coming, Mia. It’s just you and me,” he coaxed, pupils huge in the dim light, voice a slow caress.

“I’ve got you. Just let go, baby.”

Let go.

Such simple words. And god, I wanted to.

Never before had I resented being so speechless.

My hand crept over my stomach to cover his, fingers twitching around his knuckles, hesitant to guide him down.

Daniel di Angelo’s Drive you insane spilled from the speakers, crackling like electricity between us and tingling along my stripped-bare nerves.

Despite my feeble protests, I hadn’t heard a car in half an hour, no headlights cut across our silhouettes, and I couldn’t make out anything outside, save for faintly luminous snow.

“Josh,” I breathed, voice soft, wrecked, and entirely foreign to me.

His hands tensed, as if he sensed the conflict in me.

I wasn’t sure he was breathing.

I wasn’t sure I was.

But no other words came out.

His shoulders slumped with a slow sigh, and I wanted to hide my burning face in my palms.

Ugh, why can’t I just—

“You’re making this so hard.”