We have a winner
If you didn’t win but still wanna read it, it will be out in less than two months. 🙂
**Note…excerpt is from my editing copy-may contain typos
Rattling. Metal rattling and clinking. Courtesy dictated that she leave and she looked around once more for Noah, but he wasn’t in there.
“Come on, Micah…”
He slipped free of her hand and darted forward.
“Micah Dean Ewing,” she snapped, starting forward. As she brushed by the desk, her purse bumped against a stack of folders and she swore, catching them as they started to topple over.
She righted them just as Micah opened the door to the back of the office. That rattling and clinking got louder.
She also heard a sound she hadn’t heard earlier…grunting.
Micah’s eyes popped wide, rounding in his young face as a grin crooked his lips. “Wow…” he mouthed, lifting a hand to point.
“Micah,” she whispered, reaching to pull him away. But as she did, she couldn’t help but look.
Wow, indeed.
Damn her lack of control anyway.
The rattling and clinking came from a chain…one that was connected to a punching bag and that punching bag was being pummeled, very proficiently, it seemed, by Noah. Noah, who had stripped down to a pair of running shorts and now he wore just the shorts and a pair of boxing gloves.
Sweat gleamed along his black, arms, and shoulders. Muscles flexed under smooth skin and that fine sheen of sweat just served to draw the eye even more. She wanted to drop everything she was doing and just cross the floor, rest her hands on his arms, stroke them down and then lean in, kiss the sculpted muscle…
Trinity stood there staring and the familiar burn of hunger punched through her, vicious and power, turning her blood to fire and her knees to water. Oh. Oh, my… I like. I like so very much…
Son of a bitch, this was getting out of control. If it was anybody else, she’d probably just bite the bullet and ask him out, see what happened.
But how did you go about telling a preacher that you were dying of lust? She was going to burn in hell for this. There had to be some sort of law or commandment or something against lusting over preachers, right? She was certain of it.
He was just so very, very pretty to look at…
Swallowing, she tried to tear her eyes but after a few failed attempts, she decided, What the hell. I’m already on the path to damnation anyway. I might as well have a nice memory to take with me…Memories they way muscles rippled and flexed. She’d wondered how he’d look under those faded T-shirts, the worn jeans. And oh, man…he shifted a little and she caught sight of his chest. He had chest hair. A light dusting of it, just enough to feel so good. Trinity felt her fixation teeter on the edge of obsession, ready to topple over. How would it feel to curl her fingers in the light scattering of it, to have it rubbing over her breasts as he moved over her—
“Noah! That is awesome!”
Blood rushed to her face and she cut those thoughts off, humiliated. She looked down at the towheaded, devious little angel standing next to her. How could somebody who looked so sweet be so good at embarrassing her?
The clinking stopped.
Breathing shallowly, she lifted her gaze and found herself staring into the dark, deep blue of Noah Benningfield’s eyes. Normally, she avoided looking into his eyes for very long—they were too penetrating and she had the most disturbing image that he could see straight through her, see all the shadows she was trying to put behind her, the regrets and doubts, the anger. Everything. She felt stripped bare around him and it didn’t help that he’d been there holding her as she felt apart.
But if she didn’t look in his eyes, she was going to look at other body parts. That chest, heavily layered with muscle and that tempting line of hair, his flat belly, the way his shorts rode low on his hipbones and the gleam of sweat on his skin.
She wanted to go over and lean it, press her lips to his chest and licked away one of those beads that was rolling down his pectorals.
Lust, the low, insistent tug of it, clenched in her belly and she had to bite the inside of her cheek to keep from groaning. Heat flooded her face and she looked down, busied herself with the strap of her purse as she waited for the worst of it to pass. Too many years had passed since she’d actually wanted a man. Why did she have to find this one so damned attractive?
“Hi there,” he said, his breaths coming a little heavy.
Reflexively, she looked up just in time to see him flash a smile at her. It was an absent sort of smile, and then he shifted his attention to Micah. “You out running wild on the town there, kid?”
“Mom wants your job.”
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Secrets & Shadows Book 1Â