Claire
I’m frozen.
Locked in place.
Pinned between a hard body and a hard door and…
Jackson Hunter is kissing me.
Me.
His fingers flex on my cheek and I look up into deep chocolate pools as he ends the kiss. He doesn’t move away, though, leaves our mouths close enough that our lips brush with every breath.
“Your eyes are like Willy Wonka,” I blurt.
Confusion then amusement in those pools I want to jump into and devour, drink and drink and drink until I can’t take in any more.
His thumb brushes beneath my bottom lashes but he doesn’t back up, just speaks as I had, our mouths tangling with each new word formed. “Your eyes are like dark chocolate. I want to spread it on your naked body and lick it off inch by luscious inch.”
I shiver, blurt again, “You kissed me.”
“I did.” He bends a little. “You didn’t kiss me back.”
I hadn’t, I realize. I just stood here, pressed to the door by all of his lean strength, and…didn’t do anything except spew weird awkwardness about fucking Willy Wonka.
My cheeks burn, and I know they’ve got to be bright red, but before I can say something—anything—to make this whole thing less cringey and intense, Jackson keeps talking.
“Is it because I overstepped?” he asks softly. “Or because you don’t know how?”
My lungs inflate in a rapid rush that has me choking on my own spit. “I—” I cough, bending at the middle, nearly braining myself on his hard shoulder. “I—”
“Easy,” he murmurs softly, returning his hand to my cheek, slipping his other behind me and settling it between my shoulder blades, drawing me against his body. He smooths his palm slowly up and down my back. “Easy now, kitty cat.”
I’m dying of embarrassment inside.
But his touch, the soft words and steady stroking settle me in a way that I’m never felt before.
Like my body knows it can finally take a breath, can finally ease some of the heavy load off my shoulders.
Can just be.
And for a moment, I do just that—stand in the circle of his arms, inhaling the scent of him, feeling the strength of him.
Then…
I remember myself.
What I admitted. What I’m doing now.
I jerk back so fast that I whack my head against the door.
“Ow,” I groan, rubbing the aching spot—
At least until my hand is brushed away. “I told you easy, sweetheart,” he chastises quietly, gently massaging the spot. “You’re going to hurt yourself.”
“You told me a lot of things,” I mutter. “But I—”
“I’m an asshole,” he says baldly. “And I was fucking scared when you found what you found—”
“I—”
“You wouldn’t use it against me.” Gentle fingers sifting through my hair. “I know that now. I just…I’m not a good person, kitty cat.”
I think he’s wrong.
I know it. Just like I know he’s a good person—yeah, he’s cranky and tries to keep people at a distance and technically did something really bad, but he did it for the right reasons.
And I know something about keeping people at a distance.
I just…don’t want to do that, not now, not here, not—
When I feel more alive in this stolen moment with Jackson than I ever had before.
“It wasn’t too much,” I tell him, turning the conversation away from what had made him so angry with me months ago, what had made me feel so freaking guilty for pursuing information that wasn’t any of my business. I was nosy and I was protective of the team and…I was wrong. But I don’t want to think about that, think about the circumstances that wrote that pain into the lines of his face, that left such a mark. I want him to…
Focus on me, I guess.
“I was surprised,” I say, my cheeks flaring again, but I push on. “And I didn’t think you liked me—and I guess…”
“What?” he asks gently.
Hide? Shrink into the embarrassment?
Or just…be honest and truthful and myself?
I already know the answer.
“I certainly didn’t think you could like me like this.”
A random stranger turned and bolted upon sight of me.
A hot bachelor hockey player with his choice of women?
Why would he pick me?
“And,” I whisper. “I…don’t know what I’m doing. I—kissing and dating and—” My courage fails me, and I tear my gaze from his.
He’s silent for a long moment, but when he does speak, his words take my breath away. “So…we practice.”
I gulp. “Wh-what?”
His smile…good God, it makes my knees weak. “We practice, kitty cat.” He leans in, brushes his lips over my forehead. The tip of my nose. Each cheek. “We practice until you’re confident.” A kiss to the hinge of my jaw. “We practice until you don’t want to practice anymore.”
“Pr-practice k-kissing?” I sputter. “W-with y-you?”
His smile is…
Well, it’s something I know that will revisit me in my dreams.
Maybe that’s why I blurt again, “I know how to make myself come.”
His brows shoot up to his hairline, but his smile doesn’t fade. Instead, it transforms…
Into something wicked.
“You do, kitty cat?” He drops his head until our lips are almost aligned again, until I can feel the damp heat of his words against my mouth. “You’ll show me how you do that.”
Not a question.
A statement.
And…I shiver. Because I know that if he asks me to show him, I will.
Something I know he recognizes because that wicked smile stays in place as he says, “Good, kitty cat. Now, stop overthinking it and just follow my lead.”
I open my mouth to ask what lead? but I don’t get the chance.
Because then his lips are on mine again.
The shock of sensation is real and intense and makes my knees shaky. Jackson is kissing me. Jackson. Is kissing. Me. It’s too much to process and that’s not even bringing into account what I should be doing with my hands or my body or—
God.
My lips.
I’m supposed to be doing stuff with my lips, with my tongue. All the really hot kissing in movies and in books involves tongue—
Jackson lifts his head. “Kitty cat.”
I blink. “Y-yeah?”
“Close your eyes.”
God, I’m supposed to be doing stuff with my eyes too—namely not leaving them wide open as I stare at him incomprehensibly.
“Claire.”
I swallow hard, search for an escape. Because, fuck, this is too embarrassing. What I’ve revealed, what I’ve done. It’s too fucking much. I need the floor to open and swallow me up…or to find another way the hell out of this room. Thankfully, the fact that he’s wearing his hockey gear—most of it, anyway—gives me that escape.
“You need to get ready for the game.” I lift my head, check the time on my watch, feel my heart skip a beat or twenty. “It’s fifty minutes before game time,” I squeak. “You need your sandwich and—”
His hand settles on my jaw again, and he tilts my head up, forcing my gaze back to his.
He doesn’t say anything, just studies me for a long moment.
Then he leans in again and even as I start to worry about what the hell I should be doing with my eyes, my hands, my body and lips and tongue, he bypasses my mouth.
Up. Up.
Above my lips. By my nose. Skipping my cheeks.
And…
Leans close, so close that my eyes close by instinct.
He presses a kiss to each lid.
I exhale, feel my body start to soften.
And then he’s running his hand up my side, making me shiver, making me melt against him. His mouth drags down my cheek, along my jaw, back behind my ear. “Shh, sweetheart,” he murmurs when a flick of his tongue has me squeaking and jumping against him. That sleek dart of damp heat comes again, and though I still jump, I relax faster, my hands settling on his chest without thinking, my nails digging in when he sucks lightly on sensitive spot near the hinge of my jaw.
He grunts.
“Oh,” I say, my eyes flying open, realizing I’m scratching him, that I’m hurting him. Shit. I start to pull back.
He clamps a hand over mine. “Don’t,” he orders softly. “I like it.”
“I—”
He nips at my bottom lip, making me squeak again. “Close your eyes.”
I should protest the command, should stop this.
But instead, I just keep my hands where they are and…I allow my lids to drift closed.
His lips press to each of them in turn again, and then he kisses the bridge of my nose, the corner of my mouth, my bottom lip.
I exhale sharply.
“That’s it,” he murmurs. “Keep it open for me.”
And then his mouth is settling over mine, gently, slowly, our lips fused together, soft and open and—
He slips his tongue through the gap and brushes it along mine.
I gasp, lips parting further, which seems to be exactly what he wants because he makes a sound of approval, leans more heavily against me, and strokes his tongue a little more firmly, a little deeper, a little—
My moan slips up my throat, dances across my tongue, and…
Something incredible happens.
He groans, the sound vibrating through me, sending shock waves of pleasure through my breasts, my belly, arrowing down between my thighs. That’s great—feels fucking great—but it’s not the wonderful part. Nope. That happens when he kisses me more deeply…
And when I stop thinking so hard about it.
My lips move without my direction, matching his rhythm, my tongue coming out to tangle with his.
The kiss…
Is incredible.
My body reacts like it’s meant to kiss this man, like I was put on this planet to be in this room, to feel him, to touch him, to experience this stolen moment with him.
Jackson pulls back, his eyes hot, his lips a little swollen. “Fucking perfect,” he murmurs, resting his forehead against mine.
My nerves are on fire. My head is spinning. I’m half-convinced if he lets me go that I’ll collapse into a puddle of goo.
The only thing that makes me feel better is that Jackson is as out of breath as I am.
“You good?” he asks.
Good? I feel like I’m floating…or that I need to go back to the hotel room and get my vibrator so I can ease this ache between my legs.
“You’re good,” he says, mouth curving, thumb brushing along my jaw, pressing down lightly on my bottom lip so he can lean in to taste me again.
And this time, I don’t feel awkward or embarrassed. I’m not worried about my hands or eyes. I just…
Kiss Jackson Hunter.
Until my head feels like it’s spinning.
Until I forget that it’s almost forty-two minutes before game time.
Until—
Knock. Knock. Knock!
This pause in time and space, this secret moment…
Is broken.
“Fuck,” he mutters, pulling back and resting his forehead against mine. “We need to go.”
“Yes.”
But neither of us move for a long moment.
At least until I lift a hand to my mouth. “My lips are tingling.”
He grins then sobers, eyes gentling. “Like I said…perfect.”
My heart skips a beat.
“Do I need to come in there?” Smitty booms through the door.
Jackson groans, his head dropping back. But then he straightens and meets my eyes, his smile rueful now.
“I’ll see you after the game?”