Pride and Papercuts (The Austens #5) - Staci Hart Page 0,79

of you. The shape of your lips. The sound of your laughter. The sight of you flaming in anger like a struck match. How many times have I almost told you? How many nights have I lain awake, thinking of how you would taste?” I searched her face. She said nothing. “If you can tell me you’ve never wished for me the way I’ve wished for you, I won’t kiss you.”

“And if I don’t?”

I slid my hand into her hair, not needing to otherwise move—she leaned into me, our bodies flush. “Then God help us both.”

It was only a moment, a long, stretched-out moment as our noses inched closer, her eyes on my lips before clicking to mine. A word flashed behind them before her lids closed in a fluttering of raven wings—yes.

And lightning struck.

Our lips met in a shock of heat and light, leaving licking flames everywhere it touched. My awareness shrank to the heat of her defiant mouth, her lips somehow both soft and hard with demand. It wasn’t a kiss—it was too consuming to be only a kiss. It was a breathing of souls, a meeting of bodies, a tangle of tongues and a seam of mouths. We were hands tasting hot skin, my palm on her long neck, my fingertips tracing that obstinate jaw, her galloping heartbeat so close to mine, it matched her wild pace. She tasted like open skies and seas that went on forever.

And I couldn’t find it in me to let her go.

I gathered her up, setting her on the desktop, learning the shape of her body without sight. Her hands fumbled with my tie, my buttons, a haphazard flurry of motions, none of which could be completed before being distracted by something else.

But it was where our lips were joined that I found salvation.

She was wholeness, rightness. The shape of her fit into the shape of me, filling a space I only recognized as an absence of light. A place once filled with dark matter—unable to be seen, unaffected by force, a void only discovered because of how it affected everything around it. But for that moment, with Laney in my arms, her light blasted the darkness, chasing the shadows into every corner until they were vanquished.

This was the thing I’d feared, the redemption I’d craved. Because now that I knew her power, I would be a slave to her. And I’d be shackled willingly.

There was no future in this space. There was no past. There was no logic, no rules and no obstacles, only what we wanted now, without repercussion. I slipped into the stream of my desire for her, gave in to the feeling without considering consequence. The leash, my tether, was gone, the beast in me running free.

Running to her.

We were hands against feverish skin, frantic and seeking that which we longed for, that which we needed, outrunning the hunt of reality. We were racing hearts, racing lips, racing fingertips uncovering flesh by inches. The hitch of her skirt over her hip. The slide of her hands into the gaping V of my slacks. The primal feel of her bare hip in my palm, of the unyielding length of me in hers.

At the shock of her touch, reality awoke.

The past crept in. The future followed. And the truth of our circumstance made itself known.

There’s no way to keep her without losing it all.

But I can’t lose her either.

The thought sobered me, broke the kiss, bringing me upright so I could see her face. And we stared at each other breathlessly as my thoughts snapped into place.

“I …” was all I could manage.

She smiled with swollen lips. “Me too.”

I shook my head infinitesimally. “We should decide what to do.”

Her smile twisted into something wicked. “I can think of a great many things to do.”

I laughed before taking a moment to kiss her again, this time with enough restraint to keep from creating a vacuum of space and self. When I leaned back again, I smiled down at her, a plan unfurling. In fact, it was the only plan at our disposal, the only way to get what we wanted.

Each other.

“There are bigger things to decide. Like what we are going to do about this. Because we are doing this. We’re going to do a lot of this.”

“But do we have to decide now?”

“I think we should. And then I think you should come home with me.”

She sighed, relaxing her legs, which had been hooked around me. We parted, took