Perfect Kiss (18 page)

“The thing I am the most grateful for is that you saw me. Really saw me. You saw that I was hurt and needed a friend. You saw that I needed someone to talk to. You saw that I was a fighter. You saw that I am stubborn.” She laughed as she wiped the few tears that had slipped down her cheek. “And I am. I am stubborn. I just forgot that I was. Since I got here, every time I’ve looked into your eyes, I’ve seen…”

“What?” His breath was shallow. “What do you see?”

“I see myself through your eyes. I see the woman you see. I see
me
.” Shelby shrugged, not knowing what else to say. “So, thank you.”

“You don’t need to thank me.” Levi’s gravelly voice vibrated through her like she was sitting in one of those massage chairs at Sharper Image.

Absentmindedly, she licked her lips. The innocent gesture was borne either out of nerves or arousal. Either way, she noticed that, as her tongue slid along the seam of her mouth, Levi’s eyes grew hungry with need.

Good news: She’d said all of the things she’d wanted to say.

Bad news: She really didn’t think that Levi understood the significance of all he’d done for her, all he’d given her. If she were a gambler, she would have put money on the fact that he had no idea the part he’d played in her finding herself again. Shelby wasn’t even sure he truly believed she was herself again.

Solution: In elementary school, Shelby’s favorite activity had been show-and-tell. Since she’d already
told
him what she was feeling without the desired result, it looked like it was time to
show
him.

Moving around the bar, she was surprised when her nerves dissipated. Her palms were dry, and although her heart was racing, it was from delicious anticipation, not fear-driven anxiety. It made for a nice change.

Levi turned towards her as she stepped up to his tall, muscular frame. His deep-brown eyes were lined with wariness as he watched her every move. Instead of rising up on her tiptoes and pressing her lips to his, she waited, wanting to draw this palpable moment out a little bit longer.

The night they’d met, they’d kissed, and it had rocked her world. More than that, it was like a rocket that had blasted off and launched her into another solar system.

Her mouth watered as she remembered the way, with one kiss, Levi had not only mastered her mouth, but all of her senses. The way he’d tasted, smelled, felt… all conspired to turn her on with hurricane force power. Even the low moan that had rumbled from his chest had served as an audible aphrodisiac.

Her entire body pricked with palpable lust, not just the memory of the kiss they’d once shared, but also the awareness that Levi’s body was less than an inch from hers. If she was being honest, she wanted more than just a kiss. She wanted to touch him; she wanted him to touch her.

Either Levi had the hidden talent of mind reading, which would actually explain a lot, or she wasn’t doing a great job of hiding her deepest desires.

“Shelby,” he said, her name falling from his lips as a warning.

His gaze looked tortured. There was no doubt in her mind that he wanted her just as badly as she wanted him. He was just worried about her.

She grinned. She couldn’t help it. He was so damn sweet.

His “warning” had the opposite effect of what she thought he had intended. Instead of making her take a step back, she moved closer to him. Not being able to prolong the inevitable any longer, Shelby rose up on the tips of her toes like a ballerina in relevé, wrapped her arms around Levi’s neck, and finally pressed her lips to his. He didn’t move. He was as stiff as the stone statue she believed should be carved from his Adonis-like form. She might as well have been kissing Elsa in
Frozen
.

Even without his active participation, she had to admit that she was enjoying the chaste kiss. Levi’s soft but firm lips perfectly matched with hers. It felt like they had been made to be together. Waves of desire crashed over her from the smallest of smooches, and on its own accord, her body closed the tiny gap that had separated them. Once their bodies were in full contact, she melted against his muscular form as she moved her head back and forth, ever so lightly brushing her lips across his.

After the second swipe, Levi’s chest was rapidly rising and falling. Before she knew it, his large hands were on her waist. In one swift movement, he spun her so that her back was up against the bar, his large frame pinning her in place. Taking total control of the kiss, he cupped her face with his hands and then tilted her head, giving him complete access to her mouth. His tongue pushed through her lips, and she opened for him, surrendering completely to the heady sensation.

She wasn’t thinking. Wasn’t worrying. Wasn’t planning. All she was doing was feeling. That was all she was capable of doing.

Levi captured her mouth with a hungry urgency. As his tongue explored the recesses of her mouth, his lips pressed in perfect suction against her own. She met him lick for lick, each pass of his tongue fueling the inferno of passion that was raging inside her.

Desperate need, like she’d never felt before, flooded her. As amazing as this kiss was, she needed more. She needed to feel his skin against hers. She needed his hands on her body. But just as she was reaching between them to pull his shirt up so she could feel the heat of his skin, he broke their kiss and moved away.

When he took a small step back, his hands fell from her face. Confused as to what was going on, Shelby’s eyes followed his movements. His strong arms dropped to either side of her and he gripped the bar, trapping her waist between his forearms. He still surrounded her, but no parts of their bodies were touching.

Looking up, she saw that the tortured look in his cocoa gaze had escalated to sheer agony.

“What’s wrong?” She cupped his face, the rough hairs of his five-o’clock shadow tickling her palm.

Leaning against her touch, Levi breathed heavily, his voice strained as he said, “You should go.”

“I don’t want to—”

“Shelby, you’ve been through a lot. This isn’t what you need. You need a friend.” The finality in his tone surprised her.

She could see that he was
really
serious. He was wrong, but serious. Being with Levi was exactly what she needed. It didn’t have to be tonight, but it was definitely going to happen.

Still, even though she’d only really gotten to know Levi over the last few weeks, she had grown to realize that, once he made his mind up about something, it was not negotiable. He was stubborn as a mule. And yes, in this case, it took one to know one.

Trying to lighten the mood, she shrugged, lifting her hands, her palms facing up as she asked, “What about friends with benefits?”

Unlike his warning tone, her question did have the desired effect. Levi chuckled, shaking his head back and forth, as he pushed off the bar top and moved past her, opening the door to the utilities closet.

Working together, they
quickly
finished the closing duties. Apparently, sexual frustration was like a turbo boost for productivity. After they were done with what had now become their routine, Levi walked Shelby to the cabin and said goodnight at the door before heading back to his apartment.

As soon as she was inside and the door was shut, Shelby leaned back against it and closed her eyes. Then she squeezed her legs together, trying to alleviate some of the pressure that had built up there. It didn’t help. Sighing, she dropped her head back and determined right then and there that, if she had anything to do with it, their nightly routine was going to be infused with some new, more adult activities. She was all about foreplay, but considering it had taken them a year and a half to go from foreplay to no-play and then back to foreplay, she figured it was past time to get to the all-play.

Chapter 16

‡

S
weat dripped down Levi’s back as he ran the upright sander over the flooring in one of the upstairs guest bedrooms. His eyes were blurry, so he was having a difficult time seeing what he was doing. His impaired vision was a result of the combination of getting no sleep—again!—last night and the condensation in the safety goggles he was wearing.

Concentrating on the task at hand was proving to be nearly impossible, so he decided to take five. After clicking the sander off, Levi propped it up against the wall and pulled his protective eyewear off. Pulling a handkerchief from his back pocket, he stepped up to the wide-open, large picture window, and let nature’s air conditioning breeze over him as he wiped his face.

Once he’d blinked a few times, his vision cleared and he gazed down over the pine trees that lined the back of the property. He took in a deep, cleansing breath and tried to clear his mind. It wasn’t just the heat and sweat that were making it difficult to work. The main roadblock to getting things done was the girl he could hear singing downstairs. If this were the cabin in
Snow White
, Shelby’s dwarf name would definitely be Singy. She didn’t whistle while she worked—she sang. Not on key, and not well, but other than her laugh, it was the sweetest sound he’d ever heard.

Letting out an audible breath, Levi reached up and dug his fingers into the hard knot that had formed at the bottom of his neck. He’d gotten a crick in it a few days ago, when he’d been tiling the shower stall in the upstairs bathroom, and he still hadn’t been able to work it out. All the tossing and turning he was doing during his sleepless nights sure as hell wasn’t helping either. The only thing that
had
helped was the healing kiss he and Singy had shared last night. He hadn’t thought about his stiff neck once during that; he’d been too consumed by another
stiff
part of his body.

He’d thought he was going to explode—literally—when she’d moved around the side of the bar and stopped in front of him. After Shelby had opened up to him, confirming what Levi had already suspected, he’d been filled with so much rage. He’d barely been able to contain it. He’d figured he’d have to chop some wood, run ten miles, and go a few rounds in the ring just to take the edge off the scalding anger that was boiling inside him.

That, however, had turned out not to be the case.

When Shelby had shifted the mood faster than a silver-bullet train, every ounce of fury that had been burning in him evaporated instantly. It had been replaced with a volcanic eruption of white-hot, carnal lust, exploding and then spreading through him like molten, animalistic lava. It had been by far the most powerful thing that he’d ever felt in all of his almost thirty-six years.

So when he’d sensed that Shelby was planning on kissing him, he’d tried to let her know that it wasn’t a good idea. All he’d managed to get out was her name in a strained tone, but he’d tried. After, he’d seen the twinkle in her eye that told him that she was not going to heed his cautionary version of the name game.

Just seeing the gleam in her eye had caused his already painfully erect dick to jump for joy in his pants. It wasn’t that he hadn’t wanted to kiss her. Hell, he’d wanted that more than he’d wanted just about anything. But he’d been worried about being able to control himself. The way he’d felt was so foreign that letting anything physical happen between them was the definition of dangerous.

He had a few options available to him. One, leave. Just walk away and hope she got the hint. The problem with that was Shelby didn’t strike him as the kind of girl who would take that lying down. Not the
real
Shelby.

Two, try something other than saying her name in a firm tone to stop—or, at least, derail—the high-speed lust train she was the conductor of, which was headed straight to passion station. The issue he was concerned about there was that he would hurt her feelings when she was obviously very vulnerable.

Three, try his hardest not to engage and just let her kiss him. He’d kissed more women than he could count, including Shelby. All he had to do was be a passive participant and things would not get out of hand.

Hindsight being twenty-twenty, he now knew that option two would have definitely been the way to go. Instead, he’d decided to take his luck with
número tres
, and it had failed miserably. Three had not been his lucky number. He’d barely walked away with a battle win, and he’d definitely lost the war.

The first sensation of her lips touching his had tested every ounce of willpower he possessed, and to his credit he’d remained strong, making him the victor of that battle. The tactical—and ultimately fatal—error he’d made was not retreating when he had the upper hand. Because once Shelby had pressed the soft curves of her body to his and began sensually rubbing her lips along his mouth, it had been game over. He was a goner. There were no defenses in his self-control arsenal to battle against that kind of sensory overload attack.

In the blink of an eye, he’d had her up against the bar and was two seconds away from stripping her and worshipping every inch of the body that had been driving him insane for the past month. Actually, the past eighteen months. Thankfully, before things got even more out of hand, he heard her whimper. His body registered it as pleasure, but his mind stopped him on the outside chance that it could have come from a place of fear. Levi knew that he didn’t scare Shelby, but after what she’d been through, the situation definitely could. The mere possibility, no matter how unrealistic, that she’d been afraid was still enough for him to pull away.

Once he saw the need in her eyes, he knew that fear had not been the motivator of her soft cry. But, since even the
possibility
had crossed his mind, he knew that nothing could happen between them.

Now, he was feeling like the biggest asshole in the world for having let things get to the place they had. Levi felt like he’d taken advantage of the vulnerable place she was in. Not intentionally, but that wasn’t the point. Even though she’d joked around with him about being friends with benefits,
he
knew she deserved more than that, even if
she
was oblivious to the fact.