Growing and Kissing (43 page)

I waited.

“...but yeah. Maybe it’s time.”

I nodded and pressed my cheek to his chest again. “Then go do it. Take a weekend, take a week. We’ll be here when you get back.”

“
Hmm,”
he said, the vibration buzzing through me. “I’ll think about it.” Then a big hand landed on my ass. “Right now, though, I want—” he muttered pure filth into my ear until I flushed and squirmed. And then he kissed me.

Kayley glanced over and rolled her eyes. “I’m going inside to watch a movie,” she said. But she was smiling.

As she disappeared into the house, Sean rolled us over so that he was on top. I giggled, loving the feeling of the soft grass under my head, and looked up at him, grinning.

Then I saw the look in his eyes.
“Here?”
I asked incredulously. Sure, we were partially hidden by the long grass, but...what if someone saw?
We should be sensible. We should go inside.

Sean gazed down at me and those cobalt-blue eyes blaze, half-closed in lust. I felt the dark heat start to build inside.. and, suddenly, I was closing my eyes and parting my lips for his kiss. I moaned as his lips met mine.

I was back to being a good girl. But I could still be bad when I wanted to.

<<<>>>

Thank you for reading! If you enjoyed
Growing and Kissing,
please consider
leaving a review
.

Each of my
Kissing
books is a standalone featuring a new couple. You can read them in the order I wrote them (
Lying and Kissing, Punching and Kissing, Texas Kissing, Kissing My Killer, Growing and Kissing)
or skip around.

The story of Sean’s brother Aedan, the bad boy Irish boxer, is told in
Punching and Kissing
. I’ve included the first three chapters FREE - just turn the page.

Yes, more O’Harra brothers will appear in future books :)

The story of how Arianna, a CIA spy on her first assignment, falls for Luka, the Russian mobster she’s meant to betray, is told in
Lying and Kissing
.

The story of how Lily, a forger on the run, meets a cowboy who stops her dead in her tracks is told in
Texas Kissing
.

Or discover what happens when a Russian hitman looks into the eyes of his female target…and finds he can’t pull the trigger. That’s
Kissing My Killer
.

Would you like a free steamy novella about a ballerina who falls for a badass biker with a penchant for BDSM? It’s called
Losing My Balance
and I wrote it especially (and exclusively) for my newsletter readers -
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Preview of Punching and Kissing (Out Now)

Sylvie

I didn’t belong there.

The crowd was a baying, howling mass of wild eyes and open mouths, leaning far over the concrete balcony to gawp. The heat of a hundred frenzied bodies pressed in on me from all sides until I could barely catch my breath.

I had to get out of there but I needed to stay. I owed it to Alec.

I stumbled through the crowd, making my way around the edge of the huge, circular room. I kept my gaze fixed on the graffiti, on the rusted pipes...anything to avoid looking at what was going on below us.

There was a cry of pain and I glanced down before I could stop myself. One man had the other on the floor, fists pummeling his face. There was only one rule: it went on until someone couldn’t get up.

Welcome to The Pit.

I looked away, disgusted, and tried to move faster. Elbowing or pushing isn’t in my nature and I was the lone woman in a roomful of hyped-up, drunk men. So I muttered apologies and sneaked through gaps. Luckily, they barely noticed me—not the rich guys who’d come there for an edgy walk on the wild side, not the local guys who were one bad bet away from disaster. Everyone was going nuts, jumping and yelling and punching the air.

No, wait. Not everyone.

I stopped in my tracks as I saw him. He stood like a rock in an ocean, a full head taller than the people around him and moving not even an inch as they ebbed and swelled against him. His broad back was like a cliff and his shoulders seemed twice as wide as mine. He was in a sleeveless top, arms folded across his chest, and the heavy swells of his shoulders and biceps led down to thickly corded forearms.
Big,
and ripped, as well. But it wasn’t his size or his muscles that made me stop, nor even the way he stood so still.

His hood was raised, throwing his face into shadow. Who wore a hood, in this heat?

I moved forward and lost sight of him for a moment. When I saw him again, I was closer. I was looking up into that shadowed face, now. I could just catch glimpses: a jaw dusted with dark stubble, a full lower lip pressed into a tight line. He was watching, but he hadn’t lost himself like the others. Maybe he was sickened by what was happening downstairs. Maybe, like me, he didn’t belong in this place.

I passed behind him, willing myself not to look. I made it three feet beyond him before the urge got too much and I glanced back over my shoulder. At first, I could see only shadows under the hood but then—

As one of the cheap fluorescent tubes flickered, I caught a glimpse of eyes: savagely blue and brutally hard. Starkly beautiful, they saw every weakness and gave no mercy.

I tore my eyes away, panting like I’d just missed a speeding truck. I’d been wrong. He wasn’t immune to this place at all—he was already lost. And if I didn’t belong here; he could have been born here.

I tried to move faster through the crowd. A drink. I needed a drink. I headed for the guy I’d seen on the far side of the room, the one who sold sodas out of a cooler at six dollars a time. He knew his market—six dollars was nothing to the guys who came here, the ones who bet thousands of dollars and then drove home in their Lexuses, speed-dialing their wives to apologize for working late. To me, six dollars was a day’s food. But I was going to pass out if I didn’t drink something.

I bought a Dr. Pepper and ran the cool metal can over my forehead, closing my eyes, letting the chill soak into me and calm me, pushing away the remembered fear from when I’d glimpsed that guy’s expression.

Fear and...something else.

The eyes had been gorgeous—coldly beautiful beyond anything I’d ever seen. And that jaw, those lips, that body—the expression had sent ice down my spine but, when it reached my groin, it had turned into something else entirely. Cold had become hot. Fear had become—

I closed my eyes for a second and took a deep breath.
Stupid.
Sure, from the glimpses I’d seen, the guy might just be hot as hell under that hood. But that expression...he was like the distilled essence of this place.

Stay. The fuck. Away.

I popped the top and drank. The cold soda foamed down my throat like liquid sex. A calming chill soaked through me and I felt my heart gradually slowing down.

I drained the whole can before I looked up and saw him. The hooded man. Closer, this time, no more than ten feet away.

And staring right at me.

The momentary cool from the soda boiled away in an instant. A wave of heat shot through me, rippling upward from my groin. I wasn’t ready for how deeply sexual his gaze was, how it connected with me right where I lived.

I told myself,
of course he’s not looking at you.
I’m not much to look at. My brother’s the eye-catching one, all blond hair and muscle, like my dad. I take after my mom—small and slender, with boobs like half-oranges.

I wrenched my eyes from him and stared fixedly into the distance, waiting for him to look away.

But I could still feel his gaze on the side of my face, never wavering for a second.

Aedan

There were about a million reasons I shouldn’t be there: it was too damn hot; I had to be up early for work the next morning; I didn’t want to give
him
the satisfaction of seeing me at one of his fights.

But there was something that mattered more than any of that. That itch, that deep-down itch that can’t be scratched any other way but feeling your fists connect. The rush you get as you duck and weave, hands up, taking the punishment and then returning it tenfold.

I don’t do that anymore. But the itch is still there. Watching it is the next best thing.

By rights, indulging myself like that should have brought something bad down on me. A lightning bolt from above, maybe. But someone saw fit to send me a whole different kind of divine intervention.

She was the only woman in the place, but she would have stood out if she’d been in some uptown club filled with supermodels. Long, black hair, maybe even darker than mine, so dark it was almost blue-black. A slender, lithe body that made me want to take the flat of my hand and run it all the way down from her neck to the curve of her calf, like stroking a cat. She was wearing a bubblegum-pink
Curious Weasels
t-shirt and it molded to the soft swells of her breasts in a way that made my breath catch.

No.
Not her. I wasn’t going to torture myself with a girl like that. Too beautiful. Too pure. I didn’t deserve someone like that. Oh, sure, I could grab her wrist and pin her with my Irish eyes and tell her she was coming home with me,
now
. Maybe she’d see what was underneath the hood and freak out, but maybe she’d be okay with it. Then we could go back to my apartment. My body between those sweet thighs, driving up into her, those cute little tits filling my hands—

Jesus, would that really be so bad?

Yeah, it would. In the morning, she’d realize I wasn’t some fantasy bad boy; I was just
bad.
Not an exciting walk on the wild side but a full-on savage, only good for two things. She’d look down at my big, calloused hands as they roved over her naked breasts and start to think about what else they’d done—how much pain and damage I’d dealt. She’d panic and make excuses and run back to her safe little life, wherever the hell that was, and it’d be over. Or, worse, she’d hang around just long enough for me to fuck up her life. I wasn’t going to risk that. No matter how perfect her tits were.