Book 2: Texas Wolf Brothers
His intense blue eyes searched hers. What he was looking for and if he found it remained a mystery.
“I’ve missed you, Cat,” he whispered, and he reached out and brushed his knuckles lightly along her cheekbone.
She shivered at the touch, and everything in her body leaned toward him. Panic surged through her.
“You’re misremembering.” Her voice shook. “We drove each other crazy.”
In lust.
“And you felt stifled.” She forced the last word out, her diction precise to hide the hurt.
“Ahhh, Kitty Cat,” he twisted one finger through one corkscrew curl and touched her hair to his lip, “I was young and dumb and impossibly arrogant.”
If he expected her to disagree, they’d stand here forever.
High noon.
Their weapons, words. And their shared past.
But didn’t she want to be better than that? Not be mired in the past and bitterness and hurt? Take a different path?
“But we were always good together. Better together, Cat, than apart.”
She sucked in a breath, held it, and then searched his expression, guarding her heart as protective as Golam.
“Were,” she said softly.
“You sure about that?” His mouth kicked up at one corner and his dimple flashed, and one dark brow rose in challenge.
“Absolutely.”
“Prove it,” he whispered.
But he might as well have hurled the challenge across an open field, and Catalina, who’d never been able to stamp on the brakes until after she hurtled over the edge, grinned back, feeling cocky and dangerous and mad.
Hell, yeah, she’d prove to him that she was so over him.
She stood on tiptoes, looped one arm around his neck so she could palm the back of his head and kissed him.
For a moment, August stiffened and sucked in a startled breath.
Got you!
It was not easy to ever get the drop on August Wolf, but Cat had always enjoyed their verbal games and challenges—because they’d always led to bed and hot, oh-so-smokin’ hot sex. But she didn’t want that now. Time to pull away and to not let him think that pulse she could feel fluttering in her neck had anything to do with him.
But then his lips moved and hardened against hers, and he leaned into her so she could feel the hard muscles of his chest, his erection and his thighs, and she caught fire as surely as she would have had he doused her with whiskey and lit a match.
“Cat,” he groaned against her lips as she arched further into him. She gasped. This had not been part of her plan. Not. At. All. His tongue slipped between her lips and slid sensuously against the inside of her bottom lip. He anchored her to him, his fingers of his left hand digging hard into her hip, and she sighed as he took further advantage and deepened the kiss.
Catalina struggled for sanity—to pull back before she was consumed.
What was wrong with her? Why was she playing with fire? She knew what would happen if she let August close emotionally or physically. She’d fall for him again. She’d get hurt again.
Done with him.
Maybe if she repeated it enough her body would get on board, but it just kept ignoring the warning her brain screeched even as body melted against his, nerve endings sparking, shorting, sizzling. She was seconds from hurling herself over the edge into the flames.
“Cat, damn,” he murmured against her mouth, and the vibration against her lips quivered all the way to her sex.
She’d promised herself never to go down this road, but just for a second, she wanted to burn, to feel alive, to feel wanted.
It had been so damn long.
She’d had a few short—very short—term relationships but nothing close to the intense passion August had always evoked.
And with August, it was so much more than physical love.
He’d consumed her.
And she’d loved it.
So, just one last kiss and then she’d let reality knock her back on her ass for good this time.
“Baby,” he breathed, and for a moment the years apart didn’t exist. They hadn’t suffered an unimaginable loss. He hadn’t asked her for extensive advice about launching a vineyard and then hired another crew to run it.
She pushed away. Struggled to catch her breath.
“We still got it,” he smirked, resting his forehead against hers and breathing raggedly in time with her.