We were laughing and sweaty from the climb and our skin was touching and then all of a sudden we were kissing. His mouth hot over mine, our hands going crazy. He was licking and kissing and biting my lips and neck and ear. My fingers were roaming all over his chest and shoulders and hair. I tugged hard at his shirt as he firmly grasped my face. His tongue spiked out, forced its way past my lips, and he tasted me fully.

This was more than hungry and demanding. This kiss was different. This kiss was Nate giving it to me—giving me his all. I didn’t even know a kiss could be like this. So deep and all-encompassing that I could feel it beyond the quiver of my stomach and the ache of my thighs, all the way down to the soles of my shoes.

He groaned and then spun me around so that my back was flush against the railing. I was so blinded by passion, I’d almost forgotten I was up so high. He slipped my camera off of his neck in one smooth motion and gently laid it on the ground, before his hips thrust against mine pinning me in place.

“Fuck, Jessie,” he said, sliding his fingers up my ribcage. “Do you even know how incredibly sexy you are?”

My hands clung to his waist and I tugged myself more firmly against him. “I could ask you the same question.”

His breaths were heavy and harsh as he stared into my eyes, his fingers lightly grazing my breasts, his thumbs gliding over my nipples.

When I heard the chirp of a bird in a treetop, I looked over his shoulder and realized how secluded we were up here—cut off from the rest of the world—and damn, that fueled me even more.

“No one can see us, right?” I asked, just in case I was wrong about the sheriff patrols being suspended or something.

“No one,” he whispered.

We stood gazing at each other, both thinking the same thing, but neither one making the first move.

I trailed my fingers down his chest to his stomach and then gripped him through his jeans. “I want you to fuck me, Nate.”

He inhaled sharply through his nose. “Ah hell, Jessie.”

A war was waging behind his eyes. He was fighting himself hard again. There was pure and reckless need pulsing from his fingertips, throbbing through his skin, and I knew he wanted release.

We hadn’t gone all the way last night and suddenly I felt guilty for wanting him so damn much, pushing him too hard.

“It’s okay, Nate,” I whispered, pulling back from him. “If you don’t want to.”

He groaned. “Goddamn, I want to . . . so bad. I just don’t understand why you do.”

My eyes snapped up to his. “Why wouldn’t I?”

“You were my safe zone, my safe girl,” he mumbled. “I didn’t think you’d even be attracted to me and then you go and . . .”

His safe girl? I shook my head trying to clear my thoughts. “And what?”

“And make me feel like you did last night . . . all hot and fucking out of my mind.”

He grabbed my face, yanked me forward and kissed me thoroughly, zapping the air straight from my lungs. Damn, I loved the way he kissed me. The way he gave me the one thing he claimed to have held back from others. But I wanted more.

I broke away, gasping for air. “For the record, I was completely out-of-my-mind hot for you, too.”

His fingers were mapping patterns on my thighs as he flattened me against the cool steel. We were up high with the entire city laid out before us, and damn if my brain wasn’t misfiring signals.

But I wanted to be honest and lay it all out there, even if it ended up hurting in the end.

“I know you’re struggling with something, and I think I know what it is,” I said, looking into his eyes. “But I’ve never had that before—the way it was with you last night. And I can’t help wanting to feel it again, wanting you to give it to me again. All of it.”

Chapter Eighteen

Nate

What in the hell was this girl doing to me?

She was basically asking me to fly free, to be completely uninhibited.

Could I do that with her, this one time?

Jessie and me were on this abandoned bridge with nobody around. No one to hear us or judge us. Only her—to judge me later.

My hard-on was pulsing against my zipper. I wanted so desperately to let it all out that my toes and fingers and brain were becoming numb.

“Turn around,” I growled. The look of surprise in her eyes made me pause. Until it changed over to lust. When she spun slowly and gripped the railing, I drew in a harsh breath. Her ass lifted in the air and her skirt was riding up her thighs as she waited on me to make the next move.

I sucked on the back of her neck as my fingers found her breasts. She moaned and rocked against me. My hands slid beneath her shirt, skimming up her bare stomach to her bra. Her gorgeous breasts were encased in lace and I needed to feel them again, how full and lush they’d been in my hands.

I pushed up her bra to let them loose and then grasped onto her nipples while she arched her back. “Oh God, Nate.”

“You like that?”

“Yes,” she said. “Harder.”

What the hell was she saying?

“Still promise to tell me if it’s too much? You’ll tell me to stop?” I asked.

She nodded instantaneously. “Yes.”

I pinched and rolled her hard buds and she cried out, spurring me on.

She attempted to reach for me, her hands grabbing behind her and I grunted, “Keep your hands on the railing.”

She immediately complied and the idea that this amazingly strong girl was allowing me to be in control made my dick ten times stiffer.