Honey Pie (Cupcake Club) - By Donna Kauffman Page 0,39

said when the emotions matter, it clouds your ability to . . . go there. Is wanting the same as mattering?” He moved in so close that a single deep breath would have caused his chest to brush against hers. He put his hands on either side of the truck. “Wanting so badly . . .” he murmured, slowly lowering his head. “Just to taste. To know. To find out.”

She made a sound half gasp, and half... moan. But she didn’t move. And she didn’t try to stop him.

“You’re thinking about tasting, too, aren’t you? Knowing? Finding out?” His breath was a warm caress across her lips. “Let’s find out if we can keep all your thoughts on what I make you feel . . . and not what I make that crazy mind of yours want to know.” He brushed his lips across hers in a tease of a kiss. “If putting my mouth on you goes well, then we’ll worry about my hands.”

She should be in full panic mode, shoving him away, kneeing him if necessary. She had no idea what in the world had come over him. She wasn’t the type of woman to inspire a man like him to want . . . well, to simply want.

He brushed his lips along the side of her jaw, then her temple, and what she should do got all tangled up with what she wanted to do. And what she wanted him to do. All thought fled entirely when he leaned in and kissed the throbbing pulse on the side of her neck. She sighed, and her eyes started to flutter shut again.

“Oh no, sugar. You keep those eyes on me.”

She blinked them open and looked into his gray eyes, so steady, so true. He wanted her, desired her, she had no doubt of that and no longer questioned why. The way he captured her gaze with such certainty held her every bit as tightly as if he’d pulled her into his arms.

That smile was back, and her gaze drifted, just for a moment, to his mouth. She did wonder. She did want to know . . . how he tasted . . . and what it would feel like to have him, with all his controlled certainty, take her. Any part of her. All parts of her. She wanted to know so much she ached with it.

His lips teased the sensitive skin just below her ear. “It goes without saying”—he whispered intimately—“if at any time, you want to put more than your mouth on me, sugar . . . well then, please do.”

Then his mouth was on hers.

And any chance she had to flee or fight was gone.

Chapter 7

He’d gone and lost his mind. There was no other explanation. Even without the crazy, she was hardly his type. And yet he’d never felt so compelled to kiss anyone in his life. Maybe she’d done some kind of mind trick on him while she’d been inside his head, inside his past . . . except he was fairly certain she didn’t want to want this any more than he did.

But want it she did. Her eyes were a veritable green sea of want. Her soft sigh when he brushed his lips over hers, and that little moan deep in her throat when he finally took her mouth confirmed it. As did the hammering of his heart . . . and every rigid inch of his body.

He’d planned to take her, hard, fast, and deep with an onslaught of new, current information, obliterating any chance of her going back inside his head or his past and making certain to overwhelm any chance for her mind to trip away to something—or someone—else. He’d wanted to prove to himself that this reaction he was having to her was a bizarre fluke, that it came out of the moment back in the garage. And especially that there was nothing to what he was feeling. This would confirm it, decisively, so there would be no more questions.

Yet, the instant he took her mouth, tasted those lips, felt the warmth and softness of them, and the utter sweetness of them . . . he also felt the fine trembling in them. And he gentled the kiss immediately.

He’d wanted her to feel helpless against the sudden onset of insanity as he did . . . but her raw edge of vulnerability had him pulling back, urging her to respond, rather than simply demanding it. He wanted