Now and Then Read Online Free Page A

well wish and a smile.
    Yeah, she was ready for it.
    Only then instead of asking her for anything, Ford—the guy who’d gotten her permission to hold her hand the first time—reached for her, pulling her into a kiss he
took
with the kind of world-rocking finesse she’d never known before. Not even with
him.
    She should have stopped him, stepped out of his hold and apologized for giving him the wrong idea, but any gentle put-off she’d had in mind was lost to the decadent sensation of his fingers sliding beneath her hair,
wrapping in it
as he pulled her closer.
    Her thoughts scrambled, muscle memory took over, and suddenly she was going to her toes, tipping back for more of a kiss that had most definitely matured with age. For the slow, sinking press of his lips against hers.
    Ford licked at the corner of her mouth and she opened to him, gasping around the smooth stroke of his tongue and then meeting him with her own. Melting into the staggering height of him and wanting—God, wanting to hold on to this feeling she hadn’t had in so long for just a while longer.
    Another firm thrust into her mouth and her fingers balled into the front of Ford’s jacket, clinging tight. He groaned, deepening the kiss until she was drowning in it. Until the need for air was as insignificant as her rationale for keeping Ford at arm’s length. All that mattered was
more.
    Her hands in his hair, inside his jacket, running over his jeans.
    His arms holding her so tight against him, his breath hot at her ear with his deep rumbled warning, “Brynn, don’t count on me stopping this.” His teeth caught her lobe, sending chills skating over her superheated skin. “I’m not the nice guy I was ten years ago.”
    She pulled back, meeting his dark gaze.
    What a liar. If he wasn’t, he wouldn’t have warned her at all. “I think you are.”
    Which meant she really, really,
really
had to stop.
    —
    Ford shook his head. Brynn was so wrong. If he were even close to the “nice guy” he’d been the last time they were together, he would have backed off the second he saw that look in her eyes—the one promising she was about to stake him to the ground in the friend zone. If he was lucky.
    Or maybe he would have stopped after that first kiss, backed off long enough to let her decide if she wanted to take it further. But no, he’d ignored all those conflicted signals because he’d meant what he said in the bar. No way was he letting her get away that easy.
    He wanted her. And despite all the indecision shadowing her eyes, she wanted him, too. Bad enough to score an R rating on the kiss it took all his “nice guy” reserves to keep from sliding straight into X right there next to the red telephone booth out front of the Pint Pub. And even before that, he’d seen it in her smile and eyes and the way she worried that gorgeous bottom lip between her teeth.
    His arms tightened around her, pulling all those soft places he wanted so badly into closer contact. Still not close enough.
    “Ford,” she sighed, sounding regretful and needy all at once, her hands clutching at his shoulders and—yeah, that wasn’t pushing happening. “This isn’t a good idea. I’m not—”
    A nice guy wouldn’t burrow his face into her neck, intentionally rubbing the light scrape of his stubble against the spot it had taken less than five minutes to rediscover as Brynn’s weakness. A nice guy wouldn’t revel in the gasp that cut off whatever protest she’d been working up to, or exploit that weakness even further by teasing it with his lips, his tongue. His teeth.
    “Definitely not,” he agreed. “We could get arrested for the things I’m thinking about doing to you right now.”
    Another needy sound, and her head fell back that much more.
    Invitation accepted. Gladly.
    “Ford, I shouldn’t—”
    “I know. You shouldn’t let me hear you make those little breathless sounds.” He burrowed deeper, opening his mouth over that handy little stretch of skin