jump up and down, not believing what I’m seeing. It’s all coming together. “Kyson!” I fling my arms around him. He grunts as our chests flatten against one another and I hug him tight. He wraps his arms around me and squeezes, dipping his face where my neck and shoulder meet.
“Damn, brown eyes, if I’d known I’d get this reaction I would’ve added some more surprises to the job sooner.” He chuckles and holds me tighter. He inhales deeply, the scruff of his chin abrading along my sensitive skin, making me sigh in his arms. “Mmm, you smell like cherries. Anyone ever tell you that?”
My entire body instantly goes completely still.
Yeah, one person has told me that. Only one.
I escape his arms quickly and fluff my hair back into place with shaking fingers. “Uh, I’m sorry. That wasn’t exactly professional of me.”
He hooks his thumbs into pockets. “Professional? Yeah, nothing about that hug said professional, brown eyes, but I don’t look gift horses in the mouth. Now we’ve been dancing around an attraction between the two of us since I started on the job. Except I see that attraction changes the minute your, um—what did he call it—old friend comes to help out. You two seeing each other?”
I’m pretty certain my eyes bulge out of my head. “Cam? No. We, uh, dated a long time ago.” Not that I wouldn’t take a wild ride on that train a second time. It’s just not in the cards.
He’s getting married. Married, Suda. M-A-R-R-I-E-D.
In seconds I have my emotions back in check, and I focus on Kyson.
“High school sweethearts?” he surmises accurately.
“You can say that. Didn’t end well, but we’re, uh, friends now.” I roll the word friends around in my mouth and find it tastes like dirt.
“Friends?” Kyson chuckles, and his gaze scans me from top to toe. “The man is not blind. And he doesn’t want to be friends. He wants to get in there again. Question is...are you going to let him?”
A wave of intense frustration swallows my entire body in a fiery heat. I tip my head back and groan. “Why me, God? Why me?”
He laughs hard this time.
I cross my arms over my chest and glare at him. “You don’t know anything about Cam and me. We’re just friends.”
Blech. There’s that word again. Tastes even nastier the second time I say it.
“Friends don’t look at one another as though they want to get in each other’s pants.”
I open my mouth and close it again, remembering the one night I truly got into Cam’s pants. It was heavenly. And ten years ago. Everything has changed.
“He’s engaged,” I supply flippantly.
“So?” Kyson shrugs.
“To be married. To a woman who looks like a beauty queen.” I might have sneered when I said that last part even though it’s the truth. Regardless of whatever work Brittney has definitely had done, she’s every man’s wet dream.
“Maybe he doesn’t want plastic pretty when he can have tall, dark, and scalding hot in his bed.”
I shake my head and tunnel my fingers through my long hair. “This is insane. One moment you and I are flirting, the next, you’re telling me that someone else wants me? I don’t get it. What does it matter to you?”
He takes a few steps forward and stands so close to me that I can feel the heat from his body. He cups my jaw and lifts my face toward his. “Just want to know the score, brown eyes. I don’t play in another man’s sandbox. You feel me?” He smiles but cups my head in his hand, his blue gaze intense. The smell of wood and earth hits my senses, and I place my hands on his waist, gripping the fabric of his T-shirt.
“Yeah.” My voice sounds breathy and needy even to my ears.
He grins. “No, you don’t. But you’re gonna.” And that’s when he presses his lips to mine.
The kiss is slow at first. Easy. Just a gentle touch of lips to lips. Until he wraps an arm around me, bringing our bodies flush against one another, tilts my head to the side, and opens his mouth over mine.
When his tongue slides along my bottom lip, I open to him. He tastes of the citrus-flavored gum I know he chews obsessively and burning-hot male goodness. I hum in the back of my throat and wrap my arms around his neck, bringing us even closer, but the kiss still lacks that intensity of a first kiss with someone you’re wild