Sinful Love (Sinful Nights #4)(13)

She moaned his name, feeling its familiarity yet utter newness on her tongue as her fingers flew faster between her legs. There, standing against her hotel room door, shoulders rising and falling, breath tumbling rapidly from her lungs, sex on her brain, Annalise made herself come for the first time in two years.

Her orgasm slammed into her, fast and sharp as a hot knife. Seizing her body. Lighting her up. Racing across every inch of her skin. It was everywhere, rapid and furious, pulsing, and over far too soon. She was left panting, and not nearly sated enough.

His name fell from her lips once more.

She didn’t feel cold tonight.

She was burning up.

Her body was alive again, and she feared she would become addicted to this feeling before her heart was ready.

*

The dog’s legs flew, like a flip-book at high speed, as Michael cruised down the trail.

No one ever beat the dog. Not even Colin, and he’d recently finished the Badass Triathlon. But today Michael was a few footfalls behind Johnny Cash, and his brothers Colin and Ryan, were eating his dust.

Pent-up lust could do that to a man. Desire could drive him to finish faster, push harder, focus more intensely.

With sweat slicking down his chest and his heart pounding, Michael ran as the sun peeked over the hills at Red Rock Canyon. His thoughts cycled between the bare-bones one-foot-in-front-of-the-other adrenaline and sheer, unrepentant want.

Last night was intense, sure. But it was only physical. It had to be that way. His ex-girlfriends had simply been wrong. As he whipped around a switchback, the black and white border collie in his crosshairs, Michael felt more confident than ever that his past relationship woes were never about Annalise. He wasn’t a player. He didn’t have a string of three-and-out dates trailing behind him. He’d had plenty of serious girlfriends over the years. He hadn’t settled down with any of them because he simply hadn’t met the right woman.

Not because he was hung up on her.

That was so not the case.

As the dust churned up beneath his sneakers, his mind flashed back to his ex-girlfriend Katrina’s comments from a year ago. He’d been with her for ten solid months—so long Colin had placed bets on him getting down on one knee. Funny that the proposal possibility had crossed Colin’s mind but never Michael’s. Katrina was a massage therapist, and he’d met her working out at his gym, his home away from home. They’d had a good time together. At least, it had felt that way to him.

They’d done dinners and movies, and had fun trading gym playlists. Their favorite activity after a late-night gym visit was getting sweaty in another way. They’d f*cked well, and often. But apparently that hadn’t been enough for Katrina.

When she’d ended it, she simply shook her head in frustration and said, “You’re in love with the past.”

He’d scoffed, doubtful. “What does that mean?”

“Ask yourself. I’m done trying to figure you out.”

“There’s nothing to figure out. What you see is what you get.”

“Well, what I’m getting isn’t enough. You’re stuck someplace else, Michael.”

His quads burned from the fast pace on the dusty trail. Stuck. Ha. He was fine. Work and family were all he needed. Besides, he had too much going on. Business was booming, and the investigation into his father’s death had gotten its first big break in ages last month when the police had arrested the getaway driver.

Michael was stuck on absolutely nothing.

Seeing Annalise had proved that, hadn’t it? He wanted her, but he wasn’t caught up in her. He’d be a stone-cold idiot to be hung up on someone who’d moved on more than a decade ago.

That kiss had proved it, he reasoned, as he neared the trailhead.

That was enough to get her out of his system.

Except he couldn’t stop thinking about that kiss.

That intoxicating kiss.

That f*cking kiss, which had ignited all his fantasies last night. She’d felt like fire in his arms, and just as hard to contain. But he’d craved the danger, the risk of touching her. Of what it might do to him to have her.

It would either free him or wreck him.

Those thoughts powered him the final feet to the end of the trail, where he caught up quickly to Ryan’s four-legged best friend. Johnny Cash panted hard, tongue lolling from his snout. Michael’s heart beat furiously as he pressed the spigot on the water fountain. “Here boy,” he called, giving the dog first dibs on the water as Colin’s relentless pace boomed closer.

“You bastard. You on the juice now?” he shouted as he caught up.

“No. Ryan is. That’s the only way he can manage to finish within a minute of us,” Michael said, panting.

Colin laughed as Michael took a drink of the water, then stepped away from the fountain for Colin to get his shot. When Ryan arrived, wiping his palm across his brow, Michael adopted a look of feigned disgust. “I see your almost-married life is slowing you down,” he said, teasing his brother, who’d recently gotten engaged.

“Nothing slows me down. Not ever,” Ryan said. “I let you win.”

“You wish.”

Michael wandered over to the wooden fence that edged the lot, parking his foot on a post to stretch. Colin and Ryan joined him, and Johnny Cash trotted behind, slumping in a furry black-and-white heap at Ryan’s feet.