Strength & Courage (The Night Horde SoCal Book 1) by Susan Fanetti Read Free Book Online Page B

him kiss her. Obviously, she was having a bad-choice-apalooza here in the predawn hours of this Friday. Running out half-naked with a gun, letting this guy into her house at all, now letting his mouth descend and cover hers. Oh—and getting drunk at her boss’s house. Pretty much where the fall into insanity had started, she thought.
     
    But his lips were warm and firm, and his scruff of beard was just long enough not to be bristly. It was soft and felt amazing. It was mostly grey, though. He was mostly grey overall, his salt-and-pepper hair more salt than pepper. She wondered how old he was. It didn’t matter. He was tall and broad-shouldered and had the most piercing blue eyes. And his lips. Soooo nice.
     
    While her head shouted at her to stop this foolishness at once, her body sighed and relaxed against his chest—oh, muscles. He was wearing a hoodie, so she hadn’t been able to tell what kind of body he had. It was good. His chest was hard as a rock.
     
    And that wasn’t the only hard thing. When she relaxed, he grunted into her mouth, and his hand—big and hot and rough—gripped her waist, pulling her even more tightly to him. His erection pressed against her belly and her hip.
     
    She should seriously stop this. It had been hours now since she’d had a drink; she’d pretty much lost the tequila excuse and would have to own any stupidity from this point forward.
     
    He was a stranger. A stranger who’d scared her, not long before. Well, no, not exactly a stranger. She knew his name. Darren Musinski. That was a nice, normal name. And even his nickname—Muse—wasn’t bad. Not scary. Thoughtful. And it hadn’t been him scaring her, had it? No. He’d been holding the scary guy back. Keeping her safe. Even when she’d had a gun on him, he’d been calm.
     
    His mouth moved from hers and dropped to her neck, nipping a light trail down and over her shoulder, then back in across her collarbone. Oh. Oh, God, she loved that.
     
    He stopped and brought his head back up to look at her. He was smiling, just one corner of his mouth turned up. “Sidonie. Does anybody call you Sid?” His voice was deeper, rougher than it had been, and his eyes were a darker shade of blue.
     
    She tried to remember how to make words. “Um, yeah. Almost everybody. Not my parents, but everybody else.”
     
    His smile ticked up another notch. “Okay, Sid. We should fix your hand. Then, if you don’t mind, I think I want to get you naked and under me.”
     
    At his gruff words, her pussy spasmed, and she felt her juices release. But this was so stupid. World-class idiocy. Words. She needed to make more words. “I…we…but…”
     
    “You got a man?”
     
    She shook her head. Nope. No man. Not for months.
     
    He pushed his hand under the waistband of her pajama bottoms, into her panties, between her legs, and his smile became a grin. His fingers slid smoothly between her folds, and she gasped and fought the urge to sway back and close her eyes, to just give in to him and how good his callused hand felt against her bare, wet, swollen flesh.
     
    “Ah, Sid. I can help with that. And you can help me.” He kissed her again, his tongue pushing into her mouth at the same time that his fingers pushed into her, and she stopped trying to decide anything. She gave in—to him and to herself.
     
    He must have felt it happen, because he groaned harshly, and then everything changed. He grabbed her bottoms and pulled them off her hips, pajamas and underwear at the same time. Then he lifted her and set her on her kitchen counter, stepping between her legs and gripping her so that he could slam their hips together. His jeans felt rough between her bare thighs, against her bare pussy. She tore away from his mouth and took a great, gasping breath.
     
    “’Less you say stop, I’m not gonna.”
     
    Stupid it might be, but she didn’t want him to stop, so she hooked her legs around him. Chuckling at that, he opened his jeans and