chest as she nearly shouted, “You are too much for me.”
She realized what she’d admitted as his eyes flashed with understanding and his mouth widened into an infuriating grin. Releasing a raw sound of utter frustration and more than a hint of embarrassment, she spun around, intending to walk out of there as quickly as her tired legs could move.
“Oh, no you don’t,” Hale replied as he snaked an arm around her middle, drawing her back against him.
Her senses were instantly consumed by him—the solid warmth of his muscles, the smell of his skin, earthy and masculine, and his heavy voice in her ear and in her blood. It was exactly what she’d been trying to escape. Sparks tingled along her sensitized nerves and another wave of heat flooded her intimate flesh.
All of it magnified by a hundred.
Spinning in place before he could react, she tucked her foot behind his calf while shoving hard into his midsection. If he hadn’t already been a bit off-balance in his lunge to grab her, the desperate move never would have worked. As it was, it worked too well, instantly sending him toward the floor.
The only problem was that he still had a hold of her.
He landed on his back with a hard oomph while Katherine ended up sprawled atop him. As soon as he caught his breath, he started laughing.
“You’re unbelievable,” Katherine muttered as she tried to push herself away from him to rise back to her feet. Her attempts only caused him to tighten his arm around her back as he brought his other hand to the back of her thigh, probably to guide her shifting knee away from his groin. Though she realized his intention was nothing more than self-preservation, it didn’t stop the way his warm, heavy palm resting close to the curve of her rear had her insides twisting in an alarming way.
Lifting his head from the floor, he met her wide-eyed gaze with an appreciative smile. “Well done.”
She immediately closed her eyes and tried harder to break his hold.
“Hold on,” he muttered before he lifted his hand to palm the back of head at the same time that he rolled them both over. In the span of a breath, she found herself laid out beneath his heavy male body.
Every thought left her in a rush.
She went painfully still.
Hale loomed over her, larger than life. He was propped up on his elbows, with one of his hands beneath her head and the other tucked into the small of her back. Though his shoulders were lifted, his hard belly was flush to hers and one of his thighs pressed between her legs. His hair had loosened from its queue and fell in tousled flaxen waves around his face—his handsome, harsh-angled face. The green of his eyes was more intense than she’d ever seen, and his mouth was shaped into that infuriatingly wicked, self-satisfied grin.
“Better?” he asked in a thick murmur.
She nearly groaned her annoyance, but she couldn’t get the sound past the swirl of sensation welling inside her. All she could do was force her breath to continue in and out as desire infused every inch of her.
Because it was better. Immensely so. As though her body was finally getting exactly what it had been straining toward over the last quarter hour.
Him. Hard, strong, heavy against the most sensitive parts of her.
On instinct she sought more of the delicious feel of him. Her hands had gripped at his upper arms when he’d rolled her to her back, and now, she curled her fingers around the bulging muscles of his triceps, testing their hardness. A soft arching of her spine brought her beasts into brief contact with the hard planes of his chest. A subtle shift of her legs and a tilt of her hips allowed the weight of his thigh to settle more intimately to her core.
His harsh groan rumbled in her ear.
Though he held his body rigid, his head lung low beside hers. Veins stood out in the thick length of his neck, and the muscles that ran out to his shoulders were bunched with tension.
She was well aware of how shameless she was behaving, but she’d just spent the last hour fighting him and her reaction to him. She was exhausted. And right now, all she wanted to do was give herself over to the feelings coursing through her.
If he’d said anything then—if he’d laughed or given her a knowing smirk—she might have found the will somewhere inside