Page 53 of Then You Happened
“I’m keeping a promise I made to my father.”
“And what do I have to do with that?” I ask.
His lips twist as our stares hold for a beat. “Nothing really. It’s—It’s complicated.” He scrubs a hand over his jaw, and the scrape of it over his stubble fills the room. “Maybe I’m just escaping everything that’s expected of me and trying to figure out who the hell I am before I have to get back to it.”
His words hit me to the core, and even though I have no idea what he means, I feel like we have found a tentative common ground. We both feel a bit lost and need to regain a bit of control.
We get each other. It sounds stupid and is even more ridiculous to feel that way . . . but I can’t explain it—I do.
“Enough about me, Knox.” He breathes the sentence out as he tucks a strand of hair behind my ear. There’s something about Jack Sutton that calls to me, and it’s so much more than learning how to trust again.
“Jack?” I murmur.
“Hmm?” He darts his tongue out to wet his lips.
“What happened tonight? Why are you . . . I don’t understand why you’re—”
“Because I need to make sure I’m right in my thinking.”
His eyes dart down to my lips then back up to my eyes as his fingertips trace a line down the side of my neck until his palm rests on my shoulder. I want to know what he needs to be right about, but his hand is stealing all my focus. The warmth of his skin and the possessiveness in his touch have my body reacting, aching, wanting, needing.
“If I’m right”—he brushes his thumb back and forth over my collarbone as I force myself to remember to breathe—“then I can do what I’ve thought about doing all damn night.”
“What’s that?”
He looks toward the door for a split second, as if he’s making a decision, and then turns back to me.
“Jack?” His name is a plea because I hope he wants to do the same thing I’m terrified of and thrilled about at the same time. “What is it you’ve thought about doing all night?” My murmured words reverberate through the sexual tension that’s palpable.
“Get you out of my goddamn system.” Then his lips crash onto mine and his hand fists in the back of my hair as he holds my head right where it is.
React.
Feel.
Savor.
The second his tongue demands to taste mine, my breath catches.
My body freezes. My hands and heart are statues as I try to process what’s happening, as I let him chase away the uncertainty that wants to creep in.
I don’t want to think. All I want to do is feel anything other than the doubt and the worry and hate that have consumed me for the past year. With his lips on mine and with such intention in his touch, I know I could get lost in these feelings.
The scrape of his stubble against my chin. The roughness of his fingertips on my bare arms. The taste of beer on his tongue. The humming noise he emits in the back of his throat that rumbles against my lips.
To feel. To ache. To want.
To run my hands up his chest and fist in his shirt.
To remember nothing but the last caress of his tongue.
To want him to kiss me slowly.
The moment I sink into the kiss completely and allow myself the possibility that I could deserve this, Jack tears his lips from mine with a groan that’s part desire, part regret.
His hands are on my shoulders as his eyes close momentarily.
“This isn’t . . .” He takes a step back, a grin of disbelief on his lips and desire lacing the edge in his eyes. “You deserved better than that.”
