Holding his Hostage - Amy Gamet Page 0,22

me why I stayed with him. You weren’t even there.”

“I should have been.”

She was breathing heavily, her bottom lip trembling. They stared at each other in the dim light, a cold breeze blowing softly between them. So much time, so many mistakes. But there was heat in his stare, and desire swirled to life in her belly. It was as if, by admitting the truth to him and to herself, she’d knocked down the barrier she’d been fortifying against him.

Sloan.

She ached with a visceral need for this man and was struck by how different her desire for him had become over time. She was a grown woman now. Experience, heartache, and loneliness had left their marks. She understood passion in a way she hadn’t back then. She longed to feel the weight of him between her hips, holding her down. To taste the salt on his gleaming skin, to smell his spicy scent as he took control of her body.

He closed the distance between them, his hand slowly moving to grip the swell of her hip, and her breath hitched as blood rushed to her most sensitive places.

She wanted him to kiss her, but he didn’t move, those damn eyes fixed on hers. She knew instinctively what he needed, and she lifted her hand to his chest, the puffy nylon of his jacket separating her from what she really wanted to touch. Slowly, she slid her fingers to his warm neck, lightly trailing her nails up and into the softness of his hair.

His head came down and he kissed her, his mouth at once familiar and new, the taste of him exactly as she’d remembered. She pressed her chest against his as his arms came around her, holding her tightly in place as she opened her mouth to his.

I came back for you, Buckley.

Words couldn’t change the past, but they could soothe the wound left in its wake. All these years she’d thought he didn’t love her; now she was in his arms. She fitted herself more tightly against him, desire and need demanding more.

A growl came from deep in his chest, a primal sound she recognized from their youth, and her breath came fast and hard. He trailed kisses down the column of her neck and nuzzled her ear, a sensation she hadn’t felt since the last time they’d made love so long before.

She wanted all of this man, and she wanted him now. Her conscience nagged at her to think of the children, and she could have wept for the loss of freedom that came with motherhood in that instant.

Kisses would have to do.

She unzipped his coat and slipped her hands inside, the heat of his body on her hands like slipping beneath the covers of a lover’s bed. He did the same, their jackets open to each other and the sensitive flesh of her nipples raking over the hardness of his chest through their clothes.

He turned them around, a tree pressing into her back as he continued his assault on her good judgment. One hand slipped beneath her shirt to cup her breast through her bra, and she lifted her leg around him.

“Jesus, Jo,” he ground out against her, his hardness pressing into her heat. She reveled in the feel of him, the hem of her coat up high and the bark of the tree digging into her back.

“Mom?”

They jumped apart. Lucas stood some fifteen feet away, his brows crumpled together and an accusing stare shooting from his mother to Sloan and back again.

13

Every bone in Sloan’s body told him to talk to the boy, but Joanne had asked him to keep his distance, so he lay in his makeshift bed listening to Lucas toss and turn long after the others were asleep.

She’d spoken privately to Lucas right when they returned, but from the forlorn glances the boy kept throwing in Sloan’s direction, the talk had done little to ease his pain. It had to be hard to see his mom kissing Sloan so soon after his father’s death, even if they were separated. David was barely cold in the ground, and it occurred to Sloan he might be a bastard for doing what he’d done.

That didn’t make him sorry for kissing her, Lucas’s feelings and sheer bastard-hood aside. Hell, he’d wanted to do a lot more than kiss her, his body remembering every nuance of hers and longing to see if making love to her was as good as he remembered. If her kids hadn’t been