Neither did I. ‘I am far from oblivious of you, Nick,’ I said as I applied the dressing with inconveniently shaking hands. ‘When I look at you now, I get dizzy. When you look at me, I get hot. I keep having visions of kissing you. I keep seeing you naked. You have no idea of the things I’ve imagined this last week. Touching you like this is not enough. I want to touch you everywhere. But that would be inappropriate seeing as how you’re all patched up and we’re done.’
‘It would not be inappropriate at all,’ he said, his voice so low, so ragged it sent shivers down my spine. ‘And you know something else?’
‘What?’
‘We are far from done.’
CHAPTER EIGHT
NICKWASUPand on his feet before I’d had time to catch my breath, and for a moment, as he spun round to face me, all I could think was that his chest—broad, tanned, muscled, lightly dusted with hair—was far more magnificent than anything I’d been able to envisage.
‘You want me,’ he practically growled, his entire frame radiating heat and tension as he took a slow deliberate step towards me.
I lifted my gaze to his and stood my ground, my heart thundering, every cell of my body alive and quivering with anticipation. ‘And you want me,’ I replied since denial at this juncture seemed thoroughly pointless.
‘So what are we going to do about it?’
It wasn’t a question that required an answer, and I knew that he knew that I knew that. The next move was obvious and I ached for it so badly it bordered on agony, but he’d just been injured and it gave me pause for thought. ‘I ought to say, nothing.’
His blazing eyes narrowed minutely and his jaw clenched. ‘Nothing?’
‘You’re hurt.’
‘You’ve patched me up.’
‘You asked me to be gentle with you.’
‘I’ve changed my mind.’
The intensity with which he was looking at me rocked the floor beneath my feet and obliterated my reservation. The fire in his eyes...it was like standing in a blast furnace. I’d wondered what I’d find if he ever lowered his guard, and now I knew. Focus. Intent. Desire, hotter and wilder than I could ever have imagined. All, unbelievably, aimed squarely at me.
‘So what doyouthink we should do about it?’ I asked, my nerves fizzing, my voice so throaty it was almost unrecognisable.
‘What we should have done a decade ago.’
‘And that is?’
His dark glittering gaze dropped to my mouth and my breath caught while my pulse raced. ‘This.’
He took one final step towards me, reached out to pull me into his arms and slammed his mouth down on mine.
The kiss detonated a bundle of need inside me that then rushed through my body like fire. I whipped one arm up to his uninjured shoulder and around his neck and the other around his waist, finally touching him as I’d longed to, and it was electrifying.
Every inch of me was pressed up against every inch of him. He was strength and silk, power and heat, and I was drowning in sensation, in a kiss that was blowing my mind.
He tangled his fingers in my hair and angled my head, deepening the kiss with a skill and intent that made me moan. Heat poured through me as I kissed him back with equal hunger. He surrounded me. Enveloped me. He was all I could see and feel. My senses were swimming. The thick length of his erection, which pressed hard into my abdomen, triggered a persistent throbbing ache deep inside me.
I groaned as he wrenched his mouth from mine and set it to my neck. I instinctively dropped my head back to give him better access, a move he immediately took advantage of by taking his time to explore every inch of it before lingering on my pulse.
He slipped that hand that wasn’t in my hair beneath the hem of my top, planting it at the base of my spine and pulling me tighter against him and I felt it like a brand. I ran my hands over his back, his chest, tracing rock-hard muscles with trembling fingers, thrills rippling through me, and all I could think, with my one remaining functional brain cell, was that this was Nick.Nick.Who I’d known for a total of eighteen years yet hadn’t known at all.
How I’d once thought him cold and aloof was beyond comprehension. We were generating enough heat to fire a power station, more electricity than the national grid. This man wasn’t staid and disapproving. This man was a volcano of heat and desire and for some unfathomable reason he wantedme.
In the midst of the storm raging inside me, I dimly heard a crack of lightning followed by a rumble of thunder and he broke away. With flattering urgency he backed me up against the console table and swept aside the snacks, the water bottles and the torches as if he didn’t have a wounded shoulder or a thought in his head other than this.
Breathing so hard my lungs actually hurt, I pushed my leggings and pants down and off. Nick grappled with his belt and sodden jeans while I yanked my sweatshirt over my head, and then his mouth was on mine again and his hands were on the backs of my thighs. He lifted me up as if I weighed nothing and set me on the table. I parted my knees and he was instantly there, right where I was hot and aching and needed him desperately.
His hand cupped my heavy swollen breast and he rubbed a thumb over my nipple, which sent a sizzling shower of sparks shooting through me, but we’d had over a decade of foreplay. We had the rest of the storm to ‘sit out’ and take our time. Right now there was a mountain of pent-up lust to assuage, and I was going to explode if I didn’t have him in the next thirty seconds.