CHAPTER SEVEN
He had to stop.
This was wrong.
Hewas wrong.
This wasKelsey, Mav’s daughter, and Dex was wrong.
She wasn’t a sweetbutt. She wasn’t a quick fuck. She was Kelsey.
He had to stop.
But she felt so good. He’d thought of her, fantasized about her, for a long time, and now his mouth was on hers, and she wanted it. Her hands had grabbed wads of his sweater. Her tongue moved with his. Her breath caressed his cheek in fervent bursts.
And then she moaned.
He couldn’t stop.
Holding her head wasn’t enough. Dropping his hands without breaking their kiss, Dex wound his arms around her, drew her even closer. She let go of his shirt and snaked her arms up, over his shoulders, around his neck. Another sweet, innocent whimper left her mouth and filled his. She eventastedsweet. God, she was perfect.
Her hands slipped down, around his neck. She cupped his face and ended the kiss. When he would have pulled away and stood straight, she held him in place and opened her eyes.
They were a beautiful shade of blue. Like spring sky. Rays of silver made starbursts around her pupils. A spray of faint freckles crossed her nose and cheekbones. He’d never noticed them before.
The kiss over, Dex felt reason crawling back into his head.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t’ve done that.”
Still holding his head, she smiled. “Why? I kissed you first.”
Putting his hands over hers, he took them from his face and lowered them. When he tried to let go, she held on. “Whydid you kiss me?”
“I wanted to.”
“That’s it?”
“Does there need to be more?”
“You don’t know me, Kelsey. What I am.”
“I just told you that I do. I see you, Seth. I like you.”
“Then you need to call me Dex.” She was trying to pretend he was a good man, but he wasn’t, and she needed to remember that.
“That’s the name you prefer? Really?”
It wasn’t a matter of preference. It was the name that fit. “Yeah.”
“Okay. If I call you Dex, will you kiss me again?”
He wanted to kiss her again. He wanted so much more than that. But it was wrong.
Not only was he up to his eyeballs in blood he’d spilled, not only was she a club daughter, the daughter of a notoriously protective father who happened to be somewhere in this house right now, but Dex had a rule he’d never broken.
He hadn’t had a serious relationship with a woman since his first tour in combat. He intended never to have a serious relationship with a woman again in his life.
There was darkness in him, a shadow over everything he was. He knew precisely how much violence he was capable of, and it was a great deal. He was an expert at inflicting pain, and at ending life. He’d never hurt a civilian woman—unless there’d been collateral casualties he didn’t know about when he was deployed, which was extremely possible—he’d certainly never hurt a woman he’d been intimate with, but he didn’t trust himself.