She sighed.
And this time, he did, he inhaled her, brushed his lips across hers, and he fell into the bliss of her kiss.“God, you’re makin’ a liar out of me.” She whimpered the words as he pressed her against the door of his truck, kissing her with the madness she evoked.
Disorienting.
Dissolving him into something he’d never before been.
He nuzzled down the side of her face, breathing her in as he went, and kissed along the delicate column of her throat.
Her head rocked back, and her fingers fisted in his hair.
“And what kind of lies are you telling me? Because I don’t think I’ve ever felt anything so real in all my life.”
Darkness rained down from the heavens where they were behind his parents’ house where he was staying the next two nights while Carolina George was passing through town. He’d pulled his truck around the back and parked in front of the stables and his father’s workshop.
Where it was secluded.
Private.
Quiet.
Where it was just the pants of their breaths and the thunder of their hearts.
They’d talked for hours outside the bar and then had ended up there, neither of them ready to let go.
Gripped by the connection that stretched tight between them. Strangers who’d known each other all along.
A slash of moonlight filtered through the deep, dense sky, and bugs trilled in the trees that whooshed in the slight breeze.
It did nothing to quell the flames that consumed.
Her fingers dragged down the back of his neck, girl eliciting tremors of lust that rocked through his body. “This. You and me. Here, together. I told you I wasn’t goin’ home with you. My sister is never gonna let me live this down.”
“Uh…didn’t she go home with our drummer?” he murmured, his face buried in the flesh of her chest that he devoured.
“Well, she’s usually a whole lot more adventurous than me.”
A smirk pulled to his mouth as he kissed back up her throat and made a path in the direction of that delirium-inducing mouth.
“I disagree,” he rumbled.
“You’d be wrong,” she whispered back.
He was sure he’d never felt so drunk.
Entranced.
Mesmerized.
“You want me to take you home?” he grumbled.
Violet moaned as he nipped at her lip. “I should, but I don’t. Not even a little bit.”
“Good. Might die if you did.” It was a chuckle of amusement when he said it, and she was giggling as he pulled her from his truck, swung her around, and hoisted her into his arms.
On a tiny squeal, she wrapped her legs around his waist and her arms around his neck. “Where are you takin’ me?”
“Where I can show you how fuckin’ beautiful you are.”
He stared up at her as he carried her toward the stables.
Awed.
Sure he’d never felt quite like this.
A soft smile graced her mouth, her lips plump and moistened from his kiss, those eyes doing those crazy things that hit him like a punch to the chest.
Like every time this girl looked at him it cracked something open in the middle of him. Making room for something he’d never anticipated.
Moonlight poured around her head and cast her in a milky glow.
Girl a light in the middle of the night.
Colors and hope blossoming to life.
A moonflower.
“You are the most stunning thing I’ve ever seen.”
Even in the dark, he could see the bloom of color flush her chest and climb to her cheeks, and she chewed at her bottom lip. “You don’t need to feed me lines, Richard.”
He angled around so he could slide open the door to the stable, still holding her, refusing to set her down. A light was on in the far back, barely illuminating the space. He slipped through the opening he’d made and carried her to the tack room off to the right.
“I do, Violet. I think you might be every line I’ve ever written. Interwoven in every song. There before I even knew you existed.”
Hope.
Fear.
Grief.
Lust.
Passion.
Love.
Questioning life and where it was going to take you. Hoping on a forever no one knew for certain they’d be given.
The unforgettable moment you realized you’d stumbled on to what you’d been looking for.
“You can’t go around sayin’ things like that to me.” Her voice was a rasp, and he let her slip down his body but didn’t let her get far. He hooked an arm around her waist and tucked her close, letting his thumb trace along the striking angle of her jaw.
She gazed up at him.
The girl looked like a fairy.
Blown of delicate, intricate glass.
Fiction.
The magic he’d been missing.
“I can if it’s true.”
She shivered, and her expression flashed, and she set her fingers across his lips. “Stop talking right now unless this actually means somethin’ to you.”
He cupped her face, their movements getting lost in a slow sway. “It wouldn’t matter if I stopped talking, Violet. My body would show you what I’m feeling, anyway.”