Page 9 of Preacher

She made a soft sound against my mouth and grabbed the front of my cut, pulling me closer before I could decide I’d made the biggest mistake of my life. That was all it took. I backed her against the edge of the desk and kissed her harder, and she opened for me immediately, tongue sliding against mine as every clean reason I’d ever had for keeping her in the right place in my head burned down at once.

Her fingers moved into my hair. Mine slid from her neck to her waist, fitting around her like I’d already learned the shape of her. Then she shifted against me, and my cock went hard enough to make thinking impossible.

I forced myself to break the kiss, and Holly’s breathing was rough when she asked, “Why did you stop?”

Because another thirty seconds and I was going to put Rowan Curtis’s daughter on his freight-office desk and fuck her. Because eighteen years didn’t feel like enough distance from the girl she’d once been when I could still remember her father sitting in that chair. And because if I crossed this line, I already knew I wasn’t going to cross it halfway.

I rested my forehead against hers and forced my hands to stay at her waist. “You’re coming home with me, that’s all.”

Her mouth curved slightly as she looked up at me. “That wasn’t an answer.”

“It’s the only one you’re getting right now.”

She looked at me for a long second, flushed and entirely too tempting, then smiled. “Fine.”

I had the distinct feeling I’d just made my life a hell of a lot more complicated, and I was taking her home anyway.

CHAPTER 3

HOLLY

Iwoke to the smell of coffee and the unfamiliar weight of a heavy blanket tangled around my legs. For a few seconds I had no idea where I was, then I saw the the spare gun belt and battered boots near the door, and the night before came rushing back.

The warehouse, the men going through Dad’s records and Preacher putting one of them through a workbench were bad enough. Less helpfully, my brain supplied the memory of his mouth on mine and the way he’d stopped when neither of us wanted him to. He’d put me in his bedroom and slept elsewhere, leaving me alone with far too much time to think about it.

I got dressed, ran my fingers through my hair and followed the smell of coffee down the hallway. Preacher stood at the kitchen counter in jeans and a black T-shirt, one hand wrapped around a mug while the other held his phone to his ear. His cut lay over a chair beside a holstered pistol, and his keys sat next to a half-open box of ammunition. Domestic, apparently, meant something different in Preacher’s house.

“No. Keep digging. I want whoever sits behind it, not just the name on the paperwork.” He looked over when I entered, and his gaze stayed on me a fraction too long before he finished the call. “Call me when you’ve got something.”

“Morning.”

“Coffee’s fresh.”

I poured myself a mug and leaned against the opposite counter. “Gage find anything?”

“The vehicle had stolen plates. Deacon is working the buyer.”

“I called the Sheriff by the way. He’s meeting me at the freight yard.”

Preacher nodded and I knew from that tiny movement exactly what he thought about it before replying.

“As I said, your property, your call. Doesn’t mean I’m waiting on him to do anything useful.”

There was something almost refreshing about the complete lack of apology. Salvation had never been crawling with law enforcement, but when I was growing up there had at least been deputies around. Those men were gone now, leaving Warren White to cover an entire town with little more than a badge and one aging cruiser.

“You and White still hate each other?”

“Never hated him. But he’d arrest me tomorrow if he could make enough stick.”

“And you’d make his life difficult whether he arrested you or not.”

That earned me the faintest hint of a smile. “Of course.”

I smiled into my coffee, but when I looked up again, Preacher’s attention had dropped to my mouth. Neither of us needed to mention the warehouse kiss to know it was still there.

At eighteen, I’d had a ridiculous crush on a thirty-six-year-old biker who belonged entirely to my father’s world. Nine years later, the difference between us hadn’t disappeared, but I wasn’t eighteen anymore, and the way Preacher looked at me made it very clear that he knew it too.

His gaze moved away first. “We should go.”