Page 34 of Shark’s Edge

Chapter Seven

Abbi

For a second, I wondered why I was still breathing. Or standing upright. Or conscious, for that matter.

I urgently worked air in and out of my lungs. A mix of fire and ice that claimed my legs—as well as the throbbing currents at their crux. My head felt like a marble tossed in a steel bowl. My ears clanged. My eyesight was foggy. My equilibrium swam.

And I instantly wanted more.

How could I not have known? How could I have roamed this planet for twenty-two years and not realized this was what lips were meant to feel like? That a heart was supposed to feel like it was about to explode from my chest? That colors were supposed to be this vivid, scents were supposed to be this mouthwatering, and one man alone was supposed to be the center of my need just seconds after he’d moved away from me?

Away being relative. Thank God.

He hadn’t gone far. I hoped it was because he was lost in the same how-am-I-still-breathing mire as I was.

I gave in to the craving to confirm it. I raised a hand to where his chest was surging like a violent sea. But there was nothing liquid about the texture beneath my touch.

“Oh,” I croaked, touching the defined muscles beneath his T-shirt. I let my hands drift across his pecs, appreciating the firmness as his torso heaved with each breath. Air sawing in and out like waves on the shore . . . a steady, strong cadence . . . a pulse reflected back through the ocean-blue eyes that bored into me while I explored.

“Oh,” I repeated again, sounding more like a moan of appreciation the second time, though.

“Fuck.” Sebastian’s husk jolted through my whole body. “Fuck,” he said again, lowering his forehead to mine and then rolling side to side where we touched, intensifying our heated connection.

As if his action was my unspoken permission, I slid my free hand around his nape. Holy crap, he even had muscles back there. I prodded and squeezed, hoping to elicit another addicting F-word from his firm lips.

“Abbigail.” Not quite what I was going for but equally perfect. The man’s dark baritone was instant fire at my core. “Abbi,” he whispered.

Oh, yes. Perfect.

Especially if he planned on finishing it by kissing me again.

Oh, how I needed him to kiss me again.

Dammit. Please kiss me again . . .

“Hmm?” All right, so signals got lost between the seductress in my head and the naïf on my lips. Not that Sebastian noticed, based on the hard length pushing through his nylon shorts and my flimsy skirt. How I savored the feel his need. Of his . . . his erection.

As I forced myself to consciously think it, I gulped hard.

So did Sebastian.

Right before he trailed his lips along my hairline, rasping as he did, “Oh . . . Abbigail. What the hell are you doing to me?”

“Well, nothing involving poison.” Though I tried to laugh it out, the effect was more of a pathetic croak. “Which was why you all but dragged me back here by my hair, right?”

His determined growl vibrated through both of us. “If I drag you anywhere by your hair, girl, you’ll beg me for it first.”

And just like that, I was even more bewildered. Thank God he somehow had me pinned to the back wall of the snack shack, nearly holding me off the ground with the weight of his body. “Well, that sounds . . . splendid.”

Not that this wasn’t. Holy crap, our flirting was a lot more fun than I remembered it being with others in the past—especially as Sebastian reacted by grinding in until my thighs were fully parted for him. And then laved my neck and earlobe with heated licks and bites.

“Ms. Gibson,” he finally asserted in a sexy murmur, “I don’t do splendid.”

“Hmmm.” My heartbeat galloped as I did my best to sound coy. “What do you do?”

He pushed a low growl into the curve between my neck and shoulder. “Well, I can promise a few more S-words will likely be involved.”

“Like sensual?” I smiled, letting those three carnal syllables swirl down through me. “And slide . . . and satiny . . . and screw?”