Page 9 of Surrendering To The Forbidden Mountain Man

"Reid." My name on her mouth. Quiet. Not a question.

One step. My boot slides forward on the tile. Her back meets the counter edge. My thumb traces along her cheekbone, and her lips part, and my forehead drops to hers.

Her hands come up to my chest. Flat. Not pushing. Pressing. Fingers spreading across the flannel over my heartbeat, which she can feel hammering because my body has abandoned any pretense of control.

"We can't do this." The words scrape out of me.

"Why?" Her breath against my chin.

"Because you're Ben's sister. Because you're thirty and I'm forty-four. Because I knew you when you were⁠—"

"If you say in diapers, I swear to God, Reid."

A sound escapes me. Not quite a laugh. Too rough, too broken. My other hand finds her waist, and her body is warm and soft under my palm, the curve of her hip fitting against my hand as though the shape was built for it.

"Your brother is my best friend."

"Ben already knows." Her fingers curl into my flannel. "He's known for years. He practically pushed us together at dinner. He alphabetized those spices himself before you got there because he knew you'd reorganize them and it would give him an excuse to leave the room."

"What?"

"Ben's a lot of things. Subtle isn't one of them." Her eyes open fully. Blue. Clear. Certain. "He wants you to be happy, Reid. And he knows I've been in love with you since before I knew what the word meant."

The words hit my bloodstream. In love with you. Not a crush, not an attraction, not a leftover childhood fixation she's romanticized. In love. Present tense.

"Mira." Her name is gravel in my mouth.

"If you're going to tell me all the reasons this is wrong, I've heard them. I made the same list when I was twenty-two, and twenty-five, and twenty-eight when I called you at two in the morning and you stayed on the line for forty-five minutes without saying a word." Her voice drops. "You remember that call."

"I remember."

"Did you think about hanging up?"

"No."

"Did you want to say something?"

My jaw is tight. My hand on her face, thumb still on her cheekbone. "Yes."

"What?"

I close my eyes. "Come home."

The kitchen is silent except for the kettle starting to hiss on the stove.

"You wanted me to come home," she says. "Six years ago."

"I wanted you to come home every day you were gone. I had no right to want that, and I wanted it anyway, and every time Ben mentioned your name I'd go run five miles to burn off the fact that I was in love with a woman I had no business thinking about."

The words are out. All of them. Twenty years of discipline, and Mira Cross in a tank top in a kitchen on a Wednesday night just dismantled it with a question.

Her fingers tighten in my shirt. She rises on her toes. Her mouth is right there, and she's closing the distance, and my hand slides from her cheek to the back of her neck, and I stop fighting.

The kiss lands soft. Her mouth against mine, tentative for one heartbeat, testing. Then my hand tightens in her hair and I tilt her head back and the kiss goes deep. Her lips part and my tongue finds hers and she makes a sound, a small broken gasp that goes straight through my chest and settles low in my gut.

She tastes like mint tea. Her body arches against mine, soft curves pressing into my chest, and my arm wraps around her waist and pulls her flush against me because half-measures stopped being an option the moment my mouth touched hers.

This isn't a first kiss. This is every kiss I didn't give her for fourteen years, compressed into one. My mouth moves against hers, demanding, thorough, and she gives back as good as she gets. Her hand slides up the back of my neck, nails scraping into my hair, and a growl rolls up from my chest that doesn't sound like any noise I've made in my adult life.