Between Here and the Horizon(67)

“I’ve never kissed a girl for the first time without being drunk, y’know?” he said.

“What? You’re not about to, either.” I tried to step back, embarrassed, too shocked to even believe for a second that he was being serious. He slipped an arm around my waist and stopped me, though.

“God, Lang. Not much in my life is easy. Just getting out of bed at the moment is a goddamn uphill struggle. Breathing is far more taxing than it should be most days. Don’t go making this difficult, too.” He smiled his reckless smile, dimples locked and loaded, ready to kill, and my chest squeezed tightly. He was being perfectly serious, and I had no idea how to react. I just kind of froze, alarmed and unarmed, caught completely off guard.

“I—”

“You don’t want me to kiss you?”

Slowly, I nodded my head. “I do. At least, I think I—”

“No more thinking.” He rushed me, bending down to meet me, his mouth crashing into mine, stealing what little breath I had right away. If I’d wanted to react in some way, to fend him off or object, I’d never have had the time. He drew me into him, holding me carefully against his body, his chest pressing up against mine, the buckle of his belt flush with my stomach. His hands were firm and persuasive; it seemed as though he wanted to touch me everywhere, to feel the texture of my skin beneath his fingertips, to revel in the sensation of our bodies aligned so perfectly against one another. The kiss was the kind of kiss that made people wolf whistle in the street. It was spectacular—a ground shaking kiss that would send your head spinning and your knees collapsing out from underneath you. I didn’t know what to do. I had two options: I could shove him away and slap his face hard enough to knock him into next week, or I could go with it and kiss him back.

I wanted to do both, he had no right to be planting kisses on me out of the blue, slingshotting my sanity into outer space, but then again it really was perfection.

I kissed him back.

Winding my arms around his neck, I popped up onto my tiptoes in order to claim his mouth just as feverishly as he was claiming mine. His tongue flicked quickly at mine, and then Sully was cupping my face in his hand, rubbing the pad of his thumb against the swollen flesh of my lips. He drew back, smiling in the most unimaginably nefarious way, like he was plotting my ruin inside that wicked head of his.

“Your mouth…” he whispered, laughing softly under his breath. “You have no idea how much time I’ve spent fantasizing about your mouth, Lang.”

“You have? Why?” That was an incredibly na?ve question. I knew why he’d been daydreaming about my mouth all too well. Sully looked like he was glad I’d asked, though.

“Well,” he said, taking a step forward. We were flush up against each other, so I had no choice but to take a small step back at the same time. “Your lips are rather ridiculous. They look so plump and bitable, for f*ck’s sake. I’ve imagined trapping them between my teeth more times that I can remember. It’s made staying mad at you really f*cking difficult. And just so you know, Lang, every time you lick your lips, every time that tongue of yours darts out of your perfectly formed mouth, I love to imagine what it would feel like to have that tongue of yours licking at the head of my dick. It drives me crazy.”

I couldn’t believe he just came out and said that so easily. Will and I never spoke about sex. We tried talking dirty to each other a couple of times, but he said it made him feel shitty. Disgusting, even. He felt like he was taking advantage of me.

Will was the most vanilla guy, in and out of the bedroom, and I already knew deep in my bones that Sully was the polar opposite. He was mint and strawberry, chocolate and pistachio all rolled into one. Where Will was cool as ice, Sully was blazing fire. Where Will was reserved, always too worried about what the neighbors might think, Sully was fiercely determined to lay claim to whatever he wanted, and screw anybody else of what they thought.

He tangled his fingers up in my hair, twisting it into a messy knot at the nape of my neck, then gently pulling on it, tilting my head back.

“And this?” he said, slowly tracing the index finger of his free hand down the line of my throat. “Your neck, Lang. Fuck. You have the sexiest neck.”

“Necks aren’t sexy,” I countered, trying to ignore the erratic tattoo of my heart as it stumbled all over itself in my chest. Fear was bubbling up inside me. The way Sully was handling me was more than sexual; it was vital. My body was humming at his touch, filled with electricity, and every time he grazed his mouth against mine I felt myself soaring higher and higher away from reality.

I wanted him. He wanted me, too—that was very obvious, given the rock hard erection I could feel pressing into my lower stomach. But this was such a terrible idea. A terrible, terrible idea.

Sully was Connor and Amie’s uncle. He was crazy, as far as I could tell, and he wanted nothing to do with his brother’s kids. I shouldn’t want him. I couldn’t. Pulling myself away, I gasped in a deep breath, already hating myself. I was balancing on a knife edge. The right look from Sully, the right word, and I would be falling back into his arms. Sure enough, when I looked up at him, the dark, brooding expression on his face was like tinder to a flame; I took three giant steps away from him, until my back hit the wall behind me.

“Whew. That was pretty stupid,” I said, laughing nervously. “Being locked up in this lighthouse must really be killing you, Sully. If you’re willing to make out with me to stem the boredom, then we should probably think about getting you out of the house as soon as possible.”