Banishing the Dark (Arcadia Bell #4)(36)

Was he making fun of me? I honestly didn’t know. But in case he was, I shoved him again, hard. His eyes tightened as the smile fell away from his face. Crap. Before I could move away, he grabbed my forearms and yanked me closer. “Go on,” he murmured in a rough voice near my ear. “Push me one more time.”

I tried to think of a sharp retort, but several seconds passed, and all I did was hold my breath and stare at the collar of his jacket while my pulse swished in my temples. When I finally drew in a quick breath, I smelled leather and soap and the intoxicating scent of Lon. My body liked that smell quite a bit—so much it temporarily forgot about being angry.

“Listen to me,” Lon said in a low voice. “I’ve got about as much interest in seeing Evie Rooke again as I do in getting chicken pox, so I hope you pried some helpful information out of her father. And just so we’re clear, I haven’t touched another woman since I met you.”

Oh. Wait . . . “Why?”

He released one of my arms to tentatively trace a lock of hair framing my face. “Because I haven’t wanted to.” The hand holding my other arm slid around my back and held me closer. “You might have trouble believing this, but I spend most of my time being grateful you’re near me or counting the minutes until you will be again.”

My heart fluttered wildly. “You do?” I whispered.

“I do.”

“Lon . . .” I rested my hands on his chest when he pulled me closer. His heart pounded under my palm. I surveyed his face for some sort of proof. My gaze shifted over the hard jaw darkened with stubble. The long hollows of his cheeks. The narrowed green eyes and the fine lines radiating from their outer corners. It was a heart-stopping, wildly handsome face.

One that I desperately wanted closer to mine.

And as if compelled by my will, that face did come closer.

“Please don’t let this be a mistake,” he murmured.

His lips grazed mine, light and soft. Seeking permission. I exhaled a shaky breath, and he kissed me. Slowly at first. Reverently. A kiss that would be forgiven with a single Hail Mary. But it was enough to send goose bumps over my arms and a rush of joy through my chest. My arms wound around him as if they’d done it a thousand times. And as I molded my hands to the hard planes of muscle covering his back, he crushed me against his chest.

And just like that, all bets were off.

Tongues tangled. Teeth clashed. We kissed each other like desperate addicts who’d stumbled upon a forgotten stash of drugs, grunting and moaning with pleasure—too lost to care about the headlights that crossed over us as cars sped by or the distant drunken laughter from the club at the end of the block.

None of it mattered.

When I momentarily pulled back to gasp for breath, he dragged his mouth down my neck, kissing me like someone intimately familiar with every architectural detail of my body: the underside of my chin, the pillar of my throat, the shell of my ear, and the hidden alcove of sensitive skin below it. By the time he’d circled back to my mouth, my knees were wobbly, and I was wetter than the ocean.

I don’t think I’d ever wanted anyone so badly. If he’d asked me to, I would have stripped off my clothes in the middle of the sidewalk.

He pulled back, chest heaving. “We can’t do this.”

“Too late,” I said with a lazy grin. “I think we just did.”

He gripped my jacket tighter, trying to stop our bodies from swaying together like magnets. “We need to focus. This is a distraction.”

“And a damn good one,” I murmured, dipping my head to capture his earlobe between my teeth. Christ, he smelled good. He groaned and palmed my ass, holding me against the substantial hardness between his legs.

“Yes,” I encouraged wantonly.

“No.” He pushed away again and rested his forehead against mine. “I mean it, Cady. This is weakness and . . . complicated. We’ve got other things we should be focusing on. We need to be on guard, in our right minds.”

“Okay, okay,” I said, breathless and frustrated.

“Let’s just cool off,” he said, but that was hard to do when his hands were stroking up and down my back. “Think of something else.”

“Like what?” My fingers trailed down his chest, trying to cop whatever feel I could get over his T-shirt. “Something boring like baseball? Margaret Thatcher naked on a cold day?”

“Gonna need more than that,” he said with a slow grin, peeling away my straying hand to thread his fingers between mine.

“Hmm, what about all those flying cockroaches in the abandoned cannery?”

“That’s better. What else?”

“Smell of wet dog,” I suggested. “No—smell of Foxglove after she rolled around in that dead animal carcass she found in the woods.”

He laughed. “Christ, that was disgusting.”

“I couldn’t stop gagging.”

“You weren’t the one who had to bathe her.”

“I held the hose! And I never could figure out what was worse, Foxglove’s fur or Jupe barfing all over the grass after he handed you the shampoo.”

Lon grinned. “Jupe was worse, hands down.”

“Ugh, so gross.” I squeezed Lon’s hand tighter. “I remember you took two showers afterward, and no one felt like eating dinner. Then we watched that old stop-motion movie with the fighting skeletons.”