Page 89 of Worth the Fall
“Did you get hurt today?” he asks, and I cringe at my overreaction, but that’s my ugly, and I don’t want him knowing my ugly.
I’ve escaped him seeing them this far and now I scramble to figure out how to recover and take cues from what he asked. “No, not today. The nylon on the rig rubs me right there for some reason, so I have a few scars from always getting scratched. I’m so used to it that I forget it’s even there until someone mentions it.”
He stares, gauging whether to believe me or not. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to . . .”
“No, I overreacted. It’s okay.” I lean in and do what I’ve been thinking about ever since we left his parents’ house—I press my lips to his.
Grant reacts immediately. Hunger and the mint he had in the car are on his tongue. His hands run up and down my arms as he takes a step closer, bringing us chest to chest since I’m still one step up from him.
We sink into the kiss. There is no rush, just a sense that we are feeling each other out to see where we go from here.
A part of me doesn’t want to know that answer.
I just want to enjoy the moment.
Live in the now.
Forget the complications that being with Grant Malone could cause in my life.
“Are we going to do this?” he murmurs against my lips.
A long, slow, mesmerizing kiss that leaves me weak in the knees when weakness isn’t a thing I allow.
“Do what?”
A nip of my bottom lip.
“Do this. You. Me. Friends.”
A hand runs languorously up and down my spine before landing on my ass and pulling me tighter against him.
“Friends don’t do this.”
His chuckle is muted against my lips.
“You and I have never been anything close to normal, Em.”
A lick of his tongue against mine makes me press into him when he leans back.
“You’re too sexy, and I’m too horny to walk away tonight without sleeping with you . . .” I murmur playfully. And truthfully.
“You’re goddamn right . . . so is that a yes?”
“Yes,” I grunt as his hand on my ass slides inside the waistband of my shorts.
The thumb on his other hand brushes the underside of my breast. A tease. A taunt. A promise of what’s to come.
“But there are rules,” I say before he goes to kiss me again, and I earn a chuckle as he rests his forehead against mine.
“I thought we already covered them?”
“We did, but—ahhh.”
His teeth tug on my earlobe and cause an electric current to shock through my system.
“You were saying?” His breath is warm against my skin as he asks.
“Before was a one-night thing,” I say, but his lips on my neck are making it hard to string thoughts let alone coherent sentences together. “And now we’re agreeing to more.”
