Page 26 of Untamed Hunter Daddy

I get off the stool. My ankle holds. I cross the kitchen and stop behind him, close enough that my breath moves the fabric between his shoulder blades.

He stops washing. His hands go still in the water. "Zoe."

"Don't say my name like it's a warning. Say it like you said it when you told me you wanted to kiss me."

He turns off the water and dries his hands but doesn't turn around.

"The team gets here tomorrow," he says, voice raspy. "Once they're here everything changes. Oversight. Documentation. If we do this tonight and it comes out, it compromises the case. It compromises you. I won't give Tyler's lawyer a single thread to pull."

"Look at me."

He turns, his expression a battlefield as duty and desire pull him in opposite directions.

"I've spent weeks having decisions made for me," I say. "I'm done with that. Here's my choice. I'm choosing you. Tonight. Not because you're the only option. Because you asked before you kissed me and you stepped back when I needed space and you sleep in a chair three feet from my bed so you won't cross a line. I'm choosing you because of who you are. And if you can look me in the eye and tell me the badge outweighs that, then I'll go back to the bed and you'll go back to the chair. But I don't think that's what you want. And I know it's not what I want."

Silence settles between us. His breathing turns uneven.

"Zoe." He says my name differently this time. Like a surrender. "Are you sure?"

"I'm sure."

He closes the distance hard. His hands come up to my face, both of them, cradling my jaw, and he kisses me like the last of his restraint just snapped. The kiss is deep and hungry, nothing careful about it. His hands slide from my face to my neck to my shoulders, then lower, gripping my waist hard enough that I can feel every finger.

"Fuck," he mutters against my mouth. "I've been wanting this for days. Wanting you. You’ve got no idea what you've been doing to me."

He lifts me onto the counter like I weigh nothing. Our faces are level now. He steps between my knees and pulls me forward until I'm flush against him and I can feel how hard he already is.

"Look at you," he says, voice rough. "Sitting there all pretty in my shirt, looking at me like that. You know what that does to me?"

I shake my head no.

He groans. “It makes me so fucking hard.” He grabs my hand, and places it over the ridge of his pants. “Feel that? That’s what you do to me.”

I unbutton the flannel with my other hand. He watches my face the whole time, eyes dark and hungry.

"You're looking at my face," I say.

"Because your face is where you are, baby." He leans in and presses his forehead to mine. "I'm nervous too. I don't want to get this wrong."

"You won't."

He kisses me again, hotter this time, mouth moving from my lips to my jaw to the hollow of my throat. His hands find the hem of the T-shirt and pause.

"Yes," I say before he can ask.

The shirt comes off. Cold air hits my skin for half a second before his warmth replaces it, his bare chest against mine, and the contact rips a sound out of me I don't recognize.

"Christ," he breathes. "Look at you. So fucking perfect."

He carries me to the bed and lays me down, then he follows, his weight settling over me on his forearms. The size of him is everywhere. His shoulders block the firelight. His body is a shelter I'm choosing.

He doesn't go slow anymore.

His mouth is on my throat, my collarbone, and then lower. His hands map every inch of me like he's been starving for it. When he finds a spot that makes me gasp he stays there, working it until I'm arching under him and gripping his shoulders.

"That's it," he murmurs against my skin. "Let me hear you. Don't hold anything back from me."

He works his way down my body with a focus that borders on worship, except the words coming out of his mouth are anything but soft.