Vicodin when there was kissing?
“Don’t do it again.”
Cole nodded. “I won’t.” Even if it killed him, he wouldn’t. There was no chance of this being a thing. That wouldn’t necessarily bother him when kissing a woman. He’d kissed a lot of women where being a thing wasn’t on either party’s agenda. But he already knew this woman was different. He could still hear that little oh whispering in his blood.
So, absolutely no kissing allowed.
“I’ve got to get back to work,” she announced before draining her beer in a couple of long swallows and standing. Cole stayed where he was wondering, if someone handed him a rewind device right now, if he’d go back and undo that moment.
Not kiss Jane.
He wasn’t entirely sure he would. Hell, he’d apologized only moments ago, and he wasn’t entirely sure he was sorry. She started down the stairs, and Cole frowned. The red sitting room was behind them. “Where are you going?”
“Just grabbing the kitchen stuff off the grass.”
“I can get it.”
She looked over her shoulder at him. “I’m up, and it’s dark out there.” Her gaze swept over his hip and rested briefly on his cane propped on the steps beside him before she returned her gaze to his face. She shrugged. “I don’t mind.”
A sudden spike of irritation at both his limitations and her judgment of them had him growling. He could pick up some damn things off the grass. “I said leave it.”
“I don’t m—”
“I’ll get it.” He had a limp. He wasn’t blind.
She looked like she was going to argue but stopped herself at the last second. “Fine.”
Turning around, she headed up the stairs to the house. Her foot paused on the second-to-last step, and she opened her mouth as she glanced down at him. Cole had a bad feeling she was about to tell him to be careful, but his face must’ve looked even more darkly forbidding than it felt, and her mouth closed as she continued on her way, giving him a wide berth.
“See you in the morning,” she said instead.
And then she was gone, leaving nothing but the lingering scent of her in the night air and the taste of her on his tongue.
Morning? Yeah, right.
Cole had no doubt he’d be seeing her before then, because, for damn sure, Jane Spencer and that kiss and the little oh and the way she’d followed his retreat—chased his mouth for more—were going to star in his dreams tonight.
…
Jane worked until ten, when she could barely keep her eyes open any longer.
Up until now, she’d have just pushed through, but the prospect of having all day tomorrow to work on the floor was a tantalizing one, and she called it quits. Hell, she was so tired she didn’t even have a shower, just stripped down to her underwear, pulled on her tank top, and collapsed on the bed to the sound of Finn’s snoring. Then proceeded to lay awake for the next two hours thinking about Cole. Thinking about his offer to mind Finn. Thinking about his determination to prove he was capable.
Thinking about…that kiss.
She squeezed her eyes shut as it played in her mind over and over again. As the way she’d chased his lips, clinging to them even as he’d tried to withdraw, played over and over in her head. God…what had she been thinking?
Of course, the answer to that was she hadn’t been thinking. She’d only been feeling. A lot. Everywhere. The first thing had been shock. The kiss had come out of the blue, and she’d been too stunned to move or react. To push him away or to pull back. She’d just…frozen as the warm, male aroma of him had filled her nostrils and brushed against her skin.
Her nipples had gone hard. She remembered that. Remembered the tight pucker of them and how they’d scraped against the fabric of her bra in the most wonderful friction. It had felt…delicious. And then her synapses had started to function as sensation spread farther and farther, like ripples in a pond, and a heady rush of pure sexual delight swamped her body.
It had been a long time since she’d been kissed. There had been no time or inclination since Tad had walked away. A single mother building her own business had more pressing things to prioritize. And honestly? She hadn’t missed it.
Not kissing or sex or intimacy. Not even male company. Someone to wake her at five in the morning with an urgent swelling problem, someone to deliberately leer