I can’t look at his hands without wondering what they feel like. Can’t look Caleb in the eye without speculating over his mouth, his kiss… Fiery and passionate? Soft and gentle? Hard and unyielding?
This isn’t simple attraction, I suddenly realize. It’s not a crush or a random thought. This is pure and intoxicating. Raw chemistry.
My lungs suddenly stall in my chest as Caleb lifts a hand toward my face. I’m sure it’s not my imagination now; we are each leaning toward the other. His fingers brush aside the wet strands of my hair. They hover close to my cheek.
I realize instantly that I’m an idiot.
This sensation has always been there. This attraction. If it hadn’t, I wouldn’t be able to recall exactly what his hands had felt like on my legs last night, or the strength he had shown when lifting me onto his shoulder. I wouldn’t be able to remember in perfect detail the spark of desire I had seen in his stare when he’d caught me in my underwear last night. A spark I had convinced myself had been imagined. I wouldn’t know the precise layout of his hands, the way the bones fit together, or how they wrap around the steering wheel when he drives.
This attraction has been laying the kindling for its own flame since the moment we’d met. Within twenty-four hours, it had built a bonfire’s worth of fuel within me and only needs an ember—a spark of heat—to see it lit.
And then Caleb had sauntered into the kitchen in only a towel.
The first brush of his fingers over my cheekbone is like an electric shock. White-hot for a moment and then tingling over my skin in ribbons of sensation. My mouth goes dry. My throat thickens. I try to swallow…
The pink tip of Caleb’s tongue wets the corner of his mouth. I can see the thrumming of his pulse in the hollow of his neck. My fingers seem to beat in the same rhythm as if I’m touching him already, feeling that heartbeat through his skin. My palm prickles with delicious heat as I imagine my hand drifting from that hollow, down to his chest. There, I would feel the heat of his body, the strength of his muscles.
I know exactly what he looks like beneath that shirt. The image of his naked torso is emblazoned in my memory. The wide pads of his pecs, the ridges of his belly. He would be hard. Firm beneath my hand and just a little bit rough, where the sprinkling of hair interrupted the silkiness of his skin. A little rough, and a little eroded by life. In only twenty-four hours, I’ve learned what Caleb is: a powerful survivor.
He’d be a powerful lover too, whispers a voice in my head.
Caleb is too large, and too finely worked into a shape of dense muscle and unyielding power, to be lacking in bed. His arms would be hard around his lover, his body would be raw and solid enough to bruise. His stamina would go for days…
Caleb’s pulse isn’t the only one that’s racing now. Mine is thumping hard against my breast, sparking an echo between my thighs. Tremors are running down my back and that coiling sensation that every woman learns to recognize is tightening in my core.
Dammit, he’s barely touched me, yet!
Caleb’s hand hasn’t moved any further. He only brushes the tips of his fingers over my cheek, like he’s testing something. Like he wants to know if I feel as he imagined.
All it takes is that feather-soft brush of skin and I’m ready to melt at his feet.
Dear God, what’ll happen to me if he actually kisses me?
He’s close enough now that I can see the tiny break in the line of his upper lip; a scar or something from childhood, perhaps? I can count the dark lashes framing his eyes. He smells of lamb and mint. Of the frosty tang of the forest and the musk of his shampoo.
His thumb brushes the fleshy center of my lip and I sigh the soft call of a lover; the gentle mew of a woman overcome with sensation.
I can’t hold it in any longer.
I cross the line of physical connection with the only person in a hundred-mile radius with a spare bedroom. It’s disastrous. It is completely stupid and irresponsible.
But I can’t help but reach for him.
Biggest mistake of all.
Because as soon as I do, I break some kind of spell. Caleb moves back and his hand falls. His entire demeanor changes. The magnetism no longer draws us together. He’s now a block of detached ice. As if a switch in him has been flicked from ‘on’ to ‘off’.
Between one heartbeat and the next, I’m wondering if I imagined the entire thing.
“We should work out the terms,” he says.
I’m still a little lost in the haze of passion. His voice is a temptation all its own. Impossibly deep and so rough, it’s almost hard to make out his words.
“Terms?” I blink.
“For the house.”
A chill rushes into the open space now between us. The walls of the room fall back into place, no longer bearing down upon us, and the ravaging heat of attraction leaves my body. I rub at my arms as I try to bring my confused hormones back under control.