Marco: Unfortunately.
She was there.
She was fucking there.
And despite his words, I couldn’t relax. Not until I saw her with my own two eyes.
I floored it the whole way back until the tires squealed into a spot at Bubba’s apartment. I practically flew up the stairs, the hinges in serious jeopardy as I ripped the door open. My eyes scanned the party frantically.
With Smith’s arm around her shoulders, Reese was tucked into one end of the blue couch, cheeks red and head tipped back as she drank from a plastic cup. I froze in the entryway, chest heaving from my sprint across the parking lot, absorbing every detail. Her shirt wasn’t wrinkled, but traces of mud edged her shoes and a few shallow scratches marred those long, bare legs of hers. And was that the start of a bruise on her shin? I had a brief flash of Garrett, those dark bruises that began blooming on his pale skin before we knew it was leukemia. Then I pushed the thought aside roughly. She was fine. I hadn’t failed her like I’d failed him. She was right here in front of me, laughing her ass off without a care in the world.
And those conflicting emotions rushed through me again, battling each other for dominance. I wanted to rip her from the couch, crush her to me and devour her lips, feel the heat of her against my body to prove she was real and here and okay. At the same time, I wanted to strangle her for the wild goose chase I’d been on half the night and demand to know what the fuck was wrong with her phone.
She lowered her hand, the movement loose, and when she placed her cup on the beat-up wooden coffee table in front of her, not a drop spilled.
I exhaled. Good, she wasn’t tipsy yet, despite the NAD juice. Because, dammit, before the night was over, I planned on claiming her and I wanted her to fucking remember every moment of it.
Time to peacock.
But before I could take a step, a hand clasped my shoulder. “Where’s the beer?” Marco raised his eyebrows in confusion.
Fuck. The beer. “They were out.”
“Of beer?”
“Yup. Weird, right?” I shrugged. “I guess with school starting back, everyone’s having one last party.”
“There was no beer,” he repeated, disbelief twisting his face. “At all?”
“Sorry, man.” I moved farther into the room, shaking off his hand and advancing in her direction.
She hadn’t seen me yet. Her head was turned the other way, toward Van, who usually never said a word, but was waving his hands around and making explosion sound effects as he told her some story. Damn, the things that smile of hers could do to a guy. The look on his face was slightly awed, as if he couldn’t believe her attention was centered on him.
It won’t be for long.
When I was two yards away from her, she sat up straight and whipped those coffee-brown eyes of hers to me so fast, her hair slapped Van in the face. The smug smile that lit her face saved her.
I was going to kiss that smirk right off her lips.
As I passed the couch, I captured her hand and pulled her free of Smith’s arm, tugging her along behind me. She stumbled a bit, but I just tightened my grip to keep her from falling.
I didn’t stop until we were in the bathroom with the door locked. Didn’t glance around to see if people were watching us and whispering, drawing their own conclusions. I was singularly focused on Reese.
On those perfect lips of hers stained red from the cheap alcoholic punch.
“Laird,” she whispered.
I allowed myself a handful of seconds to savor the sound of her saying my name, wishing we were anywhere but Bubba’s bathroom. Then I hardened my voice. “Give me your phone.”
“My phone? Why?”
“It’s broken, isn’t it? I assume that’s the only reason you have for not using it like I told you to.”
“No. You said I needed to call you if I didn’t reach campus before dark,” she countered indignantly, her hands behind her back where her phone was likely still tucked in her shorts.
I took a deep breath. “And when it had been dark for over an hour, and you still weren’t here, why didn’t you fucking use it then?”
She dipped her chin, but I immediately curled a finger under it to raise it back up. Her eyes slid to the side, and her voice was sheepish. “We were back on campus by then. We were at Antonio’s, eating pizza.”
Closing my eyes, I counted out several four-beat measures in my head. She was eating pizza.
“You said to call if we hadn’t found our way back by then.” The words were mumbled and only faintly apologetic. “And… we were back. We just weren’t here.”
“So I used half a tank of gas driving all over Rodner, Alabama looking for you while you were busy eating pizza with Smith.” I leaned down until our noses were only inches apart. “Is that right?”
Her hand came up to circle my wrist where I still held her chin, and her hot breath fanned my palm. “You were looking for me?”
I backed her up against the locked door and used my other hand to free her phone from the tiny piece of denim she called shorts. “Did you even check it?”
“No.” She shivered beneath my glare, but stood tall. “It was against the rules. And I didn’t need it. I told you I had this.”
“If you had this, you would’ve been here before dark.” A quick glance at the screen after I hit the button confirmed that it was powered off. I put the useless piece of technology on the counter next to us.
“The rules just said be here before midnight. And I was.”
“Jesus, fuck.” I pressed my forehead to hers and closed my eyes. “Yes. I was worried, okay? And I came looking for you because the thought of you out there somewhere, needing me, while I stood around here hoping you weren’t lost was unacceptable.”
“I wasn’t lost.”
“But I was, Reese.” I opened my eyes and searched her face. “I didn’t know where you were, so I was.”
She bit her lip, her teeth denting that full lower curve, and I used my thumb to free it, to trace the mouth that had haunted my dreams for the last few days. She whispered my name again, and I crowded my hips against hers, letting her feel every inch of the effect she had on me. God, the sound of her voice saying my name. Made me want to puff out my chest and fall to my knees at the same time.
And nothing, absolutely nothing, made me harder.
Her eyes drifted shut, and when her chin tilted up, offering me her mouth, I’d reached my breaking point. I cupped her face with both hands, my fingers fanning out across her cheekbones before curving around the back of her neck.
With a growl torn from the back of my throat, I lowered my mouth to hers, finally tasting her the way I’d wanted to since that first day.
Reese
He devoured me.
Being eaten alive had never felt so good.
His lips. His hands. His heat. My entire being was overwhelmed by him finally, finally touching me.
The kiss started hard, desperate, the inevitable conclusion to the tension that had been building between us for two weeks. With my eyes closed and my breasts flattened against the wall of his chest, I gave into it, surrendered to the moment. My mouth clung to his as he tilted my head to the side, changing the angle to deepen the contact.
His hands moved over me restlessly, hungrily, skimming down my back on the way to my ass, then back up my sides to frame my face, his fingers leaving a trail of heat behind on every inch of skin he claimed for himself. I pulled at his shirt while he pushed me against the solidness of the door. My heart tripped over itself in its race to keep up. Muffled sounds came from both of us, vibrating in our throats but not escaping our lips because we hadn’t even parted for a breath yet.
Who needed fucking air when Laird Bronson was kissing them? Not me.
His lips were somehow firm and soft at the same time as he slanted them over me again and again. It was like being called up to the major league from the minors. Nothing in my past compared. I shivered from the intensity of it, from the innate authority of his mouth as he consumed me. Like I was made to bend to him, as inevitable as the moon ceding to the sun.
I lifted on my tiptoes to get closer, one of my hands snaking up to tangle in his dark hair. The strands were barely long enough at the top to grip, and when I gave them a tug, he rolled his hips against me, showing me just how much he liked it. I moaned and felt an answering wetness gather at the juncture of my thighs.