Protecting What's Mine(63)

Mack knew what would happen if she opened the door. He knew it, too. A frisson of understanding passed between them through the glass.

Her heart thudded in her chest. The familiar tendril of adrenaline awoke in her belly like a sleeping dragon.

She wanted this. She wanted him.

She reached for the handle and slowly slid the door open. Another pause. Another beat as they eyed each other. The attraction so palpable, she wondered how she ever thought she could ignore it.

“Send me home, Dreamy,” he rasped.

In this moment, there was nothing she wanted more than this man’s hands on her.

She shook her head. And it didn’t take any more than that. Linc stepped inside. Into her space, into her arms.

He smelled of smoke and rain. His skin was wet and hot beneath her eager palms as she roamed his arms, his shoulders, his back. She felt the energy crackling off him, recognized the adrenaline of a call that couldn’t be slept off.

There were other ways to burn it off, to ride that wave until the blood was cool again.

Carefully, he pulled the door shut behind him. Then his mouth was closing over hers.

Teeth and tongues tangled. Lips bruised. His hands slipped under the hem of her t-shirt to rest on the bare skin of her waist. Thumbs skimming just under her breasts. She breathed him in, tasted him.

She let him lead as he backed her farther into the kitchen.

He lifted her onto the counter. Rain pattered steadily on the window above the sink.

“Linc.”

“Don’t change your mind. Please, Dreamy.”

She cupped his face in her hands. “I’m not changing my mind. I just like saying your name while your hands are on me.”

He dropped his forehead to hers. “Jesus. You level me.”

“Hoping you plan on returning the favor,” she said, nipping at his jaw.

He growled low in his throat and shoved a hand into her hair, gripping it tight.

She saw the clench of his jaw, the flutter of his pulse in his neck, as he carefully loosened his grip.

“You don’t have to be gentle, Hotshot. I’m not some fragile flower.”

“No, you’re not,” he said. His fingers tightened on her hair again, testing her. He guided her head back and took her mouth.

The fierceness of his desire sent her own heart galloping.

She ran her hands up his chest and dug her nails into his shoulder. His muscles tensed and bunched under her touch. His palms worshipped her skin, stroking over the flat of her stomach, the subtle dips of her waist and hips, and finally, finally the curves of her breasts.

Thank God she hadn’t bothered with a bra tonight. If she had, she still wouldn’t know exactly what it felt like when her nipples hardened against Linc’s rough calluses.

Her head fell back, knocking smartly against a baby blue cabinet door.

“Are you okay?”

But she was too busy reeling him in, tightening her legs around his hips so she could feel him.

“Hallelujah for sweatpants,” she moaned when that thick shaft those pants didn’t even try to contain notched against her clit.

Big, hard, and impossible to resist, just like the rest of him.

The ache that started between her legs before he touched her intensified to an empty throbbing.

Now she knew want. Desire. Lust. Need.

Everything before was a faded black-and-white photo. But Linc’s body pressing hers against cabinet and counter was in full, high-definition color.

This was what had been missing.

He was who had been missing.

The magnitude of her train of thought, the tsunami of physical sensation, overwhelmed her. Terrified her to the bone. This felt like life and death. And that only made her more excited.

She reached between them and dragged the waistband of his sweats down. His cock sprang free triumphantly.

And those blue eyes bored into hers as she closed her fingers around his shaft. She stroked up and down and reveled in the shudder that rolled through his body, the moisture that leaked from the blunt crown.

He wanted her. Craved her. She knew it in her bones. And knowing was powerful.

Boldly, she slid her other hand into his pants and cupped his balls.

“Dreamy, if you don’t stop looking at me like that or touching me like that, this is gonna be a real disappointment for us both,” he said, gritting out the words.

“Make me.”

His nostrils flared at the challenge, and she thought it was the sexiest thing she’d seen. At least until he slid his hands down to her hips and yanked her tight against him. She stroked him again, harder this time, taunting him. The head of his hard-on was pinned between them. The fabric of her shorts was saturated. Every time she stroked him, he was nudging up against her hungry clit.

With impatience, Linc grabbed her shorts and pulled.

She was so fucking glad she’d shaved her legs.

“Fuck me, Mackenzie,” he breathed, skimming his hands up her bare thighs to her hips.

“That’s the plan.” Her breath was coming in quick draws already. She reached for him again, but he stopped her, pinning her hands to the cabinet behind her.

They both looked down. His veined cock strained toward her aching, empty pussy. Her muscles clenched and closed over nothing, anticipating what it would be like to be filled by him.

“I need a condom,” he said.

He licked two fingers like they were a popsicle, and Mack nearly blacked out watching him slide them into her wet flesh.