I Want to Hold Your Hand by Marie Force Read Free Book Online

could do that would be wrong. Not with me anyway.”
    She rolled her bottom lip between her teeth in a move that made him even harder as she studied his face. “Nothing?”
    “Not one thing.” His heart slowed to a crawl as he waited to see what she would do. When her eyes shifted subtly to his mouth, he stopped breathing altogether. Then she leaned forward and laid her lips on his, just that, nothing more, but it packed a more powerful punch than full-on sex with any other woman ever had.
    “Help me, Nolan,” she said as new tears spilled from her eyes. “I don’t remember how to do this.”
    With his hands on her face, he used his thumbs to brush away her tears. “You’re doing just fine. Way better than fine.” He guided her toward him, taking pains to move slowly when his inclination was to devour. Her lips gliding over his was the closest thing to heaven he’d ever known.
    He kept his hands on her face, letting her know he wouldn’t ask for anything more than whatever she was willing to give.
    Without breaking the kiss, she relaxed against him, her mouth opening over his in blatant invitation. It took every bit of willpower he could muster to wait for her to make the next move. The last thing he wanted was to scare her off by taking more than she had to give. Right when he was certain she’d gone as far as she was going to, he felt her tongue slide over his bottom lip. He couldn’t contain the groan that rumbled through him.
    She pulled back and studied his face. “Was that okay?”
    “Hannah . . . Christ, you have no idea what you do to me.” His heart was beating so hard he wondered if it might implode inside his chest.
    “What do I do to you?”
    “What don’t you do? You walk into the room, and I want you. You speak, and I want you. You cry and I want to cry, too, because you’re hurting. I can’t bear to see you cry.”
    “I’m sorry. I just—”
    He stopped whatever she was going to say by kissing her again. “Don’t ever apologize to me for the way you feel.”
    She did that thing with her bottom lip and her teeth again, and he wanted to beg for mercy. “Why me, Nolan?”
    “I don’t know,” he said with a small laugh. “I’ve asked myself that over and over again. I’ve felt so guilty . . . Caleb was my friend, you know? One of the best friends I ever had, and to be thinking the way I do about his wife . . .”
    “What do you think about his wife?”
    “So many things I’d never dare to share for fear of you running away from me screaming.”
    She smiled at that, and the small movement of her lips lit up her entire face. “You underestimate me.”
    “I’d never be so foolish as to do that.”
    She focused on his mouth again. “I like kissing you.”
    “That works out well, because I love kissing you.”
    “Caleb wouldn’t want you to feel guilty for caring about me.”
    “You don’t think so? I have these visions of him gutting me with that big hunting knife of his.”
    “Stop it,” she said, laughing.
    Nolan much preferred her laughter to the tears.
    “He loved you.”
    “He would’ve gutted me if I’d so much as looked at you.”
    “Maybe . . . But you didn’t feel this way then.” She ventured a glance at his eyes. “Did you?”
    Nolan shook his head. “Not until a couple of years after.”
    “What changed?”
    “I don’t know exactly. I remember it was during one of the Sultans weekends here, and you were running around taking care of us the way you always do, and I thought how amazing you were to still put up with us.”
    “Those weekends make me feel connected to him, as odd as that might sound. It was comforting to do what we always did, even if it was difficult, too.”
    “It’s always so strange to not see him in the middle of everything. When I think of him, and I do every day, I picture him as the sun and the rest of us his planets, circling around him and whatever adventure he’d dreamed up.”
    “That’s a very apt—and