Incipient A Dark Paranormal Romance - Bianca Scardoni Page 0,28
to be cooperating.
Trace stared at me for a moment and then his hands came up to my hips, gripping them as he walked me the rest of the way and then pulled me down onto his lap so that my legs were straddling him on either side.
Warmth immediately pooled low in my center as I took in the heated look in his eyes. It was all I could do to suffocate the moan that wanted to rip out of me when he tightened his grip on my hips and then dragged me against his thighs, pressing me down against his hardness as he brought our mouths within an inch of each other.
With his gaze tethered to mine, he drove his fingers into my hair and then cupped the back of my head, drawing my mouth closer to his as my body thrummed in his arms.
Everything in my mind turned to fuzz as I watched him slowly wet his lips, the gesture causing his dimples to deepen and my breath to hasten. My chest was rising and falling with anticipation; my palms splayed against his chest, fingernails digging into the warmth of his skin. Every cell in my body was vibrating for this—for him.
Who the hell had I been kidding? This wasn’t just ten measly seconds. It could never be that. Not with Trace. With Trace, this kiss would be everything.
Including the beginning of the end.
Wincing at the sudden rush of panic, I pushed back against his chest and tried to climb off his lap, but he quickly reached for my waist and held me there against him.
“What’s wrong?” he asked hoarsely, his hands sending lulling currents of heat throughout my body as if sensing my distress and knowing precisely what was needed to calm me.
“This was a bad idea,” I said, shaking my head as I tried to avoid his eyes—eyes that were glassy with desire and want.
I knew that look well, and it was dangerous. Dangerous because there was a very real and visceral part of me that wanted to ease that need, to fulfill his desire and my own, and frankly, I wasn’t sure I would be able to stop myself if I ever let it start.
“Why is it a bad idea?” he asked, his voice low and gravelly as he squeezed my hips to reclaim my attention.
Heat ricocheted through my body as my gaze dropped down to his plush lips and those godforsaken dimples. It was taking every ounce of effort on my part not to drop my head and kiss him.
“Because…we’re friends,” I said lamely, unable to come up with a better excuse.
“We both know we’re more than that.” His hand came up to my face, slow and restrained, as though waiting for some kind of protest from me, and when none came, he gently brushed his fingers against the apple of my cheeks.
I sucked in a breath of air and held it as his thumb grazed over my lips—gingerly, as if weary of all the lines and boundaries I'd set up between the two of us, but wanting so badly to blow a hole right through them.
But they were lines I'd set up for a reason.
A good reason I needed to remember.
Pushing his hand away, I wrenched myself off his lap and stumbled back from him as though he’d scorched me. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said as coldly as I could muster, grabbing my shirt from the floor and cradling it to my chest. “It was just a game, Trace, and you won. Be happy.”
He looked over at me in disbelief and I did my best not to shrink away from his stare.
“Just a game, huh?” he repeated as he stood up from the chair and crossed the small space to me, his jaw muscle ticking furiously as he stared down at me. “You sure that’s all it was, Jemma? Because that didn’t feel like a game to me,” he said pointing back to the chair we’d been sitting in. Grinding in. Same difference.
My body swayed toward him like a pendulum that only knew one destination—it’s home. His eyes flared as though he could sense the pull and feel all the things I was trying to keep buried.
In that moment, I realized how dangerous it was being like this with Trace—being this intimate and close to him. The walls I’d built around my heart were slowly and spectacularly beginning to waver, to tremble under the pressure of all the emotions that