Page 73 of Hard Pursuit
“I brought you here,” he muttered against her mouth, “because I needed one place on this mountain that can be just ours, even just for this moment.”
She dug her fingers into his shoulders, her eyes blazing with unshed tears, and he kissed her again, deeper now, tasting tears and fury and the woman who had somehow become the center of every thought, the one thing his rigid discipline couldn’t touch.
She ripped his shirt free of his waistband. The shirt hit the floor. Her sweater followed.
He pressed her up against one of the old potting tables, their mouths fused and their hands everywhere. The ache of the coming separation made every touch feel sharper.
When he slid his palms under her bra, she arched into him with a broken sound that almost undid him.
“Archer!”
“I know, baby.”
She stilled, searching his eyes. “No, you don’t.”
“Then tell me,” he grated out.
“I’m so angry at you.”
He laughed once, rough and stripped raw. “You’re not the only one. Get in line.”
She yanked his head down and kissed him hard enough to erase his smile and make his blood pound in his ears and his cock batter his fly.
He found the clasp of her bra and sprang it free. Dragging the cloth off her beautiful body, he stared at her for five heartbeats…ten…and slowly lowered his lips to her hardened nipple. When he closed his mouth around it, her knees nearly buckled.
He caught her under the thighs and lifted, setting her on a table among clay pots and old seed trays. She wrapped her legs around his waist as if she’d been made for this.
Made for him.
His chest burned with all the things he couldn’t say, and he threw himself into loving her as the reflection on the snow flooded the room and the glass walls turned into a brilliant sanctuary all their own.
As she worked the button of his jeans, her fingers were shaking too much to work it free. “Help!”
He stripped them both with frantic efficiency until their clothes lay scattered among the dust. Laying her down on the weathered wood table, he paused to drink her in.
Cheeks flushed, hair wild. Eyes locked on his.
So goddamn beautiful it wounded him…and left behind a fresh scar.
“Why are you stopping?” Her whisper was a rasp in the silence.
He swallowed hard. “Because if I keep going, I don’t know how to stop.”
She issued a low sound that snapped the last restraint in him.
Scooping her off the table, he took her down to the floor with him, cushioned by old canvas tarps he’d barely noticed before, and Jolie moaned when he settled between her legs and kissed her again.
He took his time exploring the way her skin flushed under his fingertips and goosebumps broke out under his mouth. Her silky thighs held him against her, and his cock surged against her slippery folds.
“Condom,” he gritted out. “In my jeans.”
She released him long enough to stretch out an arm and locate his jeans. In seconds the condom was in place, but he slowed again to worship her with kisses, spattering them over her throat, shoulders, breasts and stomach.
She stroked him with the same fixation, kissing scars and sucking his skin to leave a new mark of her own.
Neither of them could pretend this was simple anymore.
“I don’t want to leave.” Her confession spread across his neck and struck him square in the heart.
