Into the Fire - Leslie Kelly [37]
She moaned. As he watched, her head fell back and her eyes closed. Lacey's sweetly curved lips parted and her breath deepened as she asked, "How can I want you so much when I don't like you?" Her voice held a note of desperation.
Nate didn't answer right away, instead doing what he'd wanted to do since he'd walked in the door. He slipped his fingers into her hair, fingering its damp silkiness, then tugged her closer. Her eyes flew open, though she didn't pull away. Before he took her mouth with his, Nate whispered, "You just don't know me yet."
Then her lips met his, frantically opening, kissing him back, meeting his tongue with the sweetness of hers. Nate slipped one hand lower, to tug her closer, while the other remained tangled in her hair. Breaths mingled, sighs became moans, and Nate fell headfirst into the maelstrom of intensity and desire he'd felt with Lacey when they'd met.
Their kisses were sweeter now. Sweeter because she knew who she was kissing … and kissed him anyway. Sweeter because he knew who he was kissing … and wanted her that much more for it.
"This is … I can't…"
"Shh," he whispered against her lips. And she did, sighing in surrender as she slipped her arms around his shoulders. Her fingers moved beneath the cotton of his shirt, brushing against his sensitized skin. His body reacted, driving toward her, and she met his instinctive thrust, pressing herself tightly against him from shoulder to hip.
She didn't object when he lifted her by the waist and sat her on her sturdy butcher-block kitchen table. She kept kissing him, holding his shoulders, then his hair.
Nate wanted her closer. Cupping her hips, he tugged her forward on the table. Moving his hands to her thighs, he gently pulled them apart and stepped between them.
"What … oh," she said with a sigh as he stepped between her legs, pressing himself against her heat. The hard ridge of his erection, throbbing against his jeans, met the sweet warmth between her thighs. She moaned again, and her body jerked hard against him.
"I've wanted to touch you like this since the minute I saw you," he said, his voice hoarse as sensation washed over him and his body demanded more.
She curled her fingers into his hair and pulled him close for another one of those slow, wet kisses that made him lose his mind. One of her long legs curled around his hips as she leaned back on the table, tugging him down with her.
"This isn't supposed to happen," she whispered when he moved his mouth to her neck. "Our assignment. The story…"
"Do you really care about the story right now?"
She shook her head, dosing her eyes as he lifted her cotton shirt and stroked the smooth skin of her stomach. "I can't make my brain work at all when you're touching me like this."
Nate knew what she meant. It was overwhelming, intoxicating, this urgency between them. It had been like this from the beginning. Intense. Demanding. Instinctive. Thought played no part. That, unfortunately, was the problem. Thought is playing no part. Though it nearly killed him, Nate dropped her shirt and eased his body back so they weren't so intimately pressed together.
Lacey immediately felt him pull away. "What's wrong?" she asked, her brow furrowing in confusion and disappointment.
He ran a frustrated hand through his hair and shook his head hard, as if to clear it. "I might have to shoot myself later for saying this, but … damn, Lacey, I want your brain involved in this decision."
Of all the things Lacey might have imagined hearing coming out of Nate Logan's mouth at a moment like this, that wasn't one of them. "You … you want my brain involved?"
A tender smile crossed those amazing lips she'd curled her tongue over moments before. "Yeah. We both know what our bodies want. Maybe we should give our minds a chance