CHAPTER FOUR
HAYLEY WAS PRETTY sure she was hallucinating.
Because there was no way her stern boss was standing there, his large, work-worn hand stretched toward her, his dark eyes glittering with an intensity she could only guess at the meaning of, having just asked her to dance. Except, no matter how many times she blinked, he was still standing there. And the words were still echoing in her head.
“There’s no music.”
He took his cell phone out of his pocket, opened an app and set the phone on the table, a slow country song filling the air. “There,” he said. “Music accomplished. Now, dance with me.”
“I thought men asked for a dance, I didn’t think they demanded one.”
“Some men, maybe. But not me. But remember, I don’t give a damn about appearances.”
“I think I might admire that about you.”
“You should,” he said, his tone grave.
She felt... Well, she felt breathless and fluttery, and she didn’t know what to do. But if she said no, then he would know just how inexperienced she was. He would know she was making a giant internal deal about his hand touching hers, about the possibility of being held against his body. That she felt strange, unnerving sensations skittering over her skin when she looked at him. She was afraid he could see her too clearly.
Isn’t this what you wanted? To reach out? To take a chance?
It was. So she did.
She took his hand. She was still acclimating to his heat, to being touched by him, skin to skin, when she found herself pressed flush against his chest, his hand enveloping hers. He wrapped his arm around her waist, his palm hot on her lower back.
She shivered. She didn’t know why. Because she wasn’t cold. No. She was hot. And so was he. Hot and hard, so much harder than she had imagined another person could be.
She had never, ever been this close to a man before. Had never felt a man’s skin against hers. His hand was rough, from all that hard work. What might it feel like if he touched her skin elsewhere? If he pushed his other hand beneath her shirt and slid his fingertips against her lower back?
That thought sent a sharp pang straight to her stomach, unfurling something inside her, making her blood run faster.
She stared straight at his shoulder, at an innocuous spot on his flannel shirt. Because she couldn’t bring herself to raise her eyes and look at that hard, lean face, at the raw beauty she had never fully appreciated before.
He would probably be offended to be characterized as beautiful. But he was. In the same way that a mountain was beautiful. Tall, strong and unmoving.
She gingerly curled her fingers around his shoulder, while he took the lead, his hold on her firm and sure as he established a rhythm she could follow.
The grace in his steps surprised her. Caused her to meet his gaze. She both regretted it and relished it at the same time. Because it was a shame to stare at flannel when she could be looking into those dark eyes, but they also made her feel...absolutely and completely undone.
“Where did you learn to dance?” she asked, her voice sounding as breathless as she had feared it might.
But she was curious about this man who had grown up in such harsh circumstances, who had clearly devoted most of his life to hard work with no frills, who had learned to do this.
“A woman,” he said, a small smile tugging at the edges of his lips.
She was shocked by the sudden, sour turn in her stomach. It was deeply unpleasant, and she didn’t know what to do to make it stop. Imagining what other woman he might have learned this from, how he might have held her...
It hurt. In the strangest way.
“Was she...somebody special to you? Did you love her?”
His smile widened. “No. I’ve never loved anybody. Not anybody besides my sister. But I sure as hell wanted something from that woman, and she wanted to dance.”
It took Hayley a while to figure out the meaning behind those words. “Oh,” she said, “she wanted to dance and you wanted...” That feeling in her stomach intensified, but along with it came a strange sort of heat. Because he was holding her now, dancing with her. She wanted to dance. Did that mean that he...?
“Don’t look at me like that, Hayley. This,” he said, tightening his hold on her and dipping her slightly, his face moving closer to hers, “is just a dance.”
She was a tangle of unidentified feelings—knots in her stomach, an ache between her thighs—and she didn’t want to figure out what any of it meant.
“Good,” she said, wishing she could have infused some conviction into that word.
The music slowed, the bass got heavier. And he matched the song effortlessly, his hips moving firmly against hers with every deep pulse of the beat.
This time, she couldn’t ignore the lyrics. About two people and the fire they created together. She wouldn’t have fully understood what that meant even a few minutes ago, but in Jonathan’s arms, with the heat that burned from his body, fire was what she felt.
Like her nerve endings had been set ablaze, like a spark had been stoked low inside her. If he moved in just the wrong way—or just the right way—the flames in him would catch hold of that spark in her and they would combust.
She let her eyes flutter closed, gave herself over to the moment, to the song, to the feel of him, the scent of him. She was dancing. And she liked it a lot more than she had anticipated and in a way she hadn’t imagined she could.
She had pictured laughing, lightness, with people all around, like at the bar she had never been to before. But this was something else. A deep intimacy that grew from somewhere inside her chest and intensified as the music seemed to draw them more tightly together.
She drew in a breath, letting her eyes open and look up at him. And then she froze.
He was staring at her, the glitter in his dark eyes almost predatory. She didn’t know why that word came to mind. Didn’t even know what it might mean in this context. When a man looked at you like he was a wildcat and you were a potential meal.
Then her eyes dipped down to his mouth. Her own lips tingled in response and she was suddenly aware of how dry they were. She slid her tongue over them, completely self-conscious about the action even as she did it, yet unable to stop.
She was satisfied when that predatory light in his eyes turned sharper. More intense.
She didn’t know what she was doing. But she found herself moving closer to him. She didn’t know why. She just knew she had to. With the same bone-deep impulse that came with the need to draw breath, she had to lean in closer to Jonathan Bear. She couldn’t fight it; she didn’t want to. And until her lips touched his, she didn’t even know what she was moving toward.
But when their mouths met, it all became blindingly clear.
She had thought about these feelings in terms of fire, but this sensation was something bigger, something infinitely more destructive. This was an explosion. One she felt all the way down to her toes; one that hit every place in between.
She was shaking. Trembling like a leaf in the wind. Or maybe even like a tree in a storm.
He was the storm.
His hold changed. He let go of her hand, withdrew his arm from around her waist, pressed both palms against her cheeks as he took the kiss deeper, harder.
It was like drowning. Like dying. Only she didn’t want to fight it. Didn’t want to turn away. She couldn’t have, even if she’d tried. Because his grip was like iron, his body like a rock wall. They weren’t moving in time with the music anymore. No. This was a different rhythm entirely. He propelled her backward, until her shoulder blades met with the dining room wall, his hard body pressed against hers.
He was hard. Everywhere. Hard chest, hard stomach, hard thighs. And that insistent hardness pressing against her hip.
She gasped when she realized what that was. And he consumed her shocked sound, taking advantage of her parted lips to slide his tongue between them.
She released her hold on him, her hands floating up without a place to land, and she curled her fingers into fists. She surrendered herself to the kiss, to him. His hold was tight enough to keep her anchored to the earth, to keep her anchored to him.
She let him have control. Let him take the lead. She didn’t know how to dance, and she didn’t know how to do this. But he did.
So she let him show her. This was on her list, too, though she hadn’t been brave enough to say it, even to herself. To know passion. To experience her first kiss.
She wanted it to go on and on. She never wanted it to end. If she could just be like this, those hot hands cupping her face, that insistent mouth devouring hers, she was pretty sure she could skip the Eiffel Tower.
She felt him everywhere, not just his kiss, not just his touch. Her breasts felt heavy. They ached. In any other circumstances, she might be horrified by that. But she didn’t possess the capacity to be horrified, not right now. Not when everything else felt so good. She wasn’t ashamed; she wasn’t embarrassed—not of the heavy feeling in her breasts, not of the honeyed, slick feeling between her thighs.
This just made sense.
Right now, what she felt was the only thing that made sense. It was the only thing she wanted.
Kissing Jonathan Bear was a necessity.
He growled, flexing his hips toward hers, making it so she couldn’t ignore his arousal. And the evidence of his desire carved out a hollow feeling inside her. Made her shake, made her feel like her knees had dissolved into nothing and that without his powerful hold she would crumple onto the floor.
She still wasn’t touching him. Her hands were still away from his body, trembling. But she didn’t want to do anything to break the moment. Didn’t want to make a sound, didn’t want to make the wrong move. She didn’t want to turn him off or scare him away. Didn’t want to do anything to telegraph her innocence. Because it would probably freak him out.
Right, Hayley, like he totally believes you’re a sex kitten who’s kissed a hundred men.
She didn’t know what to do with her hands, let alone her lips, her tongue. She was receiving, not giving. But she had a feeling if she did anything else she would look like an idiot.
Suddenly, he released his hold on her, moving away from her so quickly she might have thought she’d hurt him.
She was dazed, still leaning against the wall. If she hadn’t been, she would have collapsed. Her hands were still in the air, clenched into fists, and her breath came in short, harsh bursts. So did his, if the sharp rise and fall of his chest was anything to go by.
“That was a mistake,” he said, his voice hard. His words were everything she had feared they might be.
“No, it wasn’t,” she said, her lips feeling numb, and a little bit full, making it difficult for her to talk. Or maybe the real difficulty came from feeling like her head was filled with bees, buzzing all around and scrambling her thoughts.
“Yes,” he said, his voice harder, “it was.”
“No,” she insisted. “It was a great kiss. A really, really good kiss. I didn’t want it to end.”
Immediately, she regretted saying that. Because it had been way too revealing. She supposed it was incredibly gauche to tell the guy you’d just kissed that you could have kissed him forever. She tried to imagine how Grant, the youth pastor, might have reacted to that. He would have told her she needed to go to an extra Bible study. Or that she needed to marry him first.
He certainly wouldn’t have looked at her the way Jonathan was. Like he wanted to eat her whole, but was barely restraining himself from doing just that. “That’s exactly the problem,” he returned, the words like iron, “because I did want it to end. But in a much different way than it did.”
“I don’t understand.” Her face was hot, and she was humiliated now. So she didn’t see why she shouldn’t go whole hog. Let him know she was fully outside her comfort zone and she wasn’t keeping up with all his implications. She needed stated facts, not innuendo.
“I didn’t want to keep kissing you forever. I wanted to pull your top off, shove your skirt up and bury myself inside of you. Is that descriptive enough for you?”
It was. And he had succeeded in shocking her. She wasn’t stupid. She knew he was hard, and she knew what that meant. But even given that fact, she hadn’t really imagined he wanted... Not with her.
And this was just her first kiss. She wasn’t ready for more. Wasn’t ready for another step away from the person she had been taught to be.
What about the person you want to be?
She looked at her boss, who was also the most beautiful man she had ever seen. That hadn’t been her immediate thought when she’d met him, but she had settled into it as the truth. As certain as the fact the sky was blue and the pine trees that dotted the mountains were deep forest green.
So maybe... Even though it was shocking. Even though it would be a big step, and undoubtedly a big mistake... Maybe she did want it.
“You better go,” he said, his voice rough.
“Maybe I don’t—”
“You do,” he said. “Trust me. And I want you to.”
She was confused. Because he had just said he wanted her, and now he was saying he wanted her to go. She didn’t understand men. She didn’t understand this. She wanted to cry. But a lick of pride slid its way up her spine, keeping her straight, keeping her tears from falling.
Pride she hadn’t known she possessed. But then, she hadn’t realized she possessed the level of passion that had just exploded between them, either. So it was a day for new discoveries.
“That’s fine. I just wanted to have some fun. I can go have it with someone else.”
She turned on her heel and walked out of the dining room, out the front door and down the porch steps as quickly as possible. It was dark now, trees like inky bottle brushes rising around her, framing the midnight-blue sky dotted with stars. It was beautiful, but she didn’t care. Not right now. She felt...hurt. Emotionally. Physically. The unsatisfied ache between her thighs intensified with the pain growing in her heart.
It was awful. All of it.
It made her want to run. Run back to her parents’ house. Run back to the church office.
Being good had always been safe.
She had been so certain she wanted to escape safety. Only a few moments earlier she’d needed that escape, felt it might be her salvation. Except she could see now that it was ruin. Utter and complete ruin.
With shaking hands, she pushed the button that undid the locks on her car door and got inside, jamming the key into the ignition and starting it up, a tear sliding down her cheek as she started to back out of the driveway.
She refused to let this ruin her, or this job, or this step she was taking on her own.
She was finding independence, learning new things.
As she turned onto the two-lane highway that would take her back home, she clung to that truth. To the fact that, even though her first kiss had ended somewhat disastrously, it had still shown her something about herself.
It had shown her exactly why it was a good thing she hadn’t gotten married to that youthful crush of hers. It would have been dishonest, and not fair to him or to her.
She drove on autopilot, eventually pulling into her driveway and stumbling inside her apartment, lying down on her bed without changing out of her work clothes.
Was she a fallen woman? To want Jonathan like she had. A man she wasn’t in love with, a man she wasn’t planning to marry.
Had that passion always been there? Or was it created by Jonathan? This feeling. This need.
She bit back a sob and forced a smile. She’d had her first kiss. And she wouldn’t dwell on what it might mean. Or on the fact that he had sent her away. Or on the fact that—for a moment at least—she had been consumed with the desire for more.
She’d had her first kiss. At twenty-four. And that felt like a change deep inside her body.
Hayley Thompson had a new apartment, a new job, and she had been kissed.
So maybe it wasn’t safe. But she had decided she wanted something more than safety, hadn’t she?
She would focus on the victories and simply ignore the rest.
No matter that this victory made her body burn in a way that kept her up for the rest of the night.