Page 74 of Shattered By the Currents

“Goddammit, why are you so stubborn?”

“Why areyou?”

“Because I have a lot to lose.”

“A lot being what? Your life? Mine? Is he going to kill someone?”

“Maybe! Or maybe he’ll just put me in prison.”Stop talking, Raven!

Connor frowned. “How would he be able to do that?”

Nope. No, no, no. She spun away. “I’m not doing this. Not while I’m wearing barely any clothes. Not after you’ve broken into my motel room. And certainly not?—”

“Raven.” The heat of his chest on her back, the strength in his fingers circling her hips, all of it made her freeze. “Don’t send me away. Please. If you do, I’ll sit in my truck all night and not sleep a second, just so I can watch this room.”

Something melted in her chest. Maybe a little bit of armor. Maybe the block of ice that had formed around her heart.

His mouth lowered to the crook of her neck, and she instinctively tilted her head to give him more room. His breath whispered over her sensitive skin as his lips grazed her.

“I don’t know where we go from here,” she whispered, hating the uncertainty in her voice.

“Me neither.”

She turned her head toward him, and his lips were right there. “What if you get hurt because of me?”

“Not gonna happen.”

The need to kiss him, taste him, took such a firm hold she couldn’t think of anything else. And for once, she didn’t try to fight it. She closed the small space between them.

The second they touched, the second she felt his mouth on hers, all the tightness in her body, all the worry and frustration and fear that had been sitting on her shoulders like an impossible weight, shimmered into nothing.

She turned to face him and cupped the back of his neck. He tugged her a bit closer, so her entire front pressed to his. At her gasp, he slipped his tongue inside her mouth.

He tasted like air she’d been deprived of. Water she’d been starved of.

His hands slid down her body and lifted her like she weighed nothing. She felt weightless and protected and held all at once.

He stepped forward until her back hit a wall. Then he was everywhere. Caging her so closely to the wall that he surrounded her.

This right here was exactly where she wanted to be. Where she wanted to stay. Where she was safe.

He lifted her shirt over her breasts and lowered his head, taking a nipple between his lips.

A moan hummed from her chest and she fisted his hair, desperate to hold him in place. She arched and ground her core against his hard stomach.

“Yes.” She flung back her head and just breathed, the first full breath she’d taken in hours.

Fuck,Raven tasted good. Like the sweetest candy that had ever touched his tongue. So sweet he wanted to bathe in her. Tasteher inch by inch until he knew her as intimately as he knew himself.

He switched to her other breast and swirled her hard nipple in a circle with his tongue. She writhed, her fingers tugging at his hair.

But it was her moans that really toyed with him. The sounds flowed from her throat in soft, uneven gasps, fraying the last threads of control he possessed.

“Now,” she whispered. “I need you now.”

He released her nipple and kissed up her throat while reaching between them. One quick flick of her panties to the side, and he slid a finger over her clit.

She shuddered and whimpered. He did it again. Her cry was louder.