Love Next Door (Lakeside #1) by Helena Hunting

I find the hem of his shirt and ease a palm underneath, hoping he’ll get the hint and do some exploring of his own. It doesn’t take long for him to take the bait, and his warm palm slides up my back, pulling my shirt up, causing me to shiver as the cool air hits my skin.

I roll my hips again, and he jerks. And all of a sudden, a massive crack echoes through the cabin. For a moment I think it’s the storm. At least until we both go crashing to the cabin floor, the chair a splintered, broken mass underneath us.

I push up on my arms, my wet hair hanging in my face and brushing Van’s cheek as I meet his shocked gaze. I grimace when I notice the bead of blood welling on his top lip.

“You okay?” His voice is full of gravel, his erection still making itself known between my thighs.

“I’m fine.” I swipe at the blood and hold my finger up. “I nicked you, though.”

“Totally worth it.” His tongue sweeps along the cut, and he curls his hand around the back of my neck, pulling me back in for another kiss. This one is as long and heated as the first, despite the fact that Van is lying on a filthy cabin floor with a broken chair underneath him.

Eventually I pull back, both of us breathing hard. “I think the rain has slowed enough that we could go back to your place. If you want.” I bite my lip, aware that by putting this option on the table, I’m opening myself up to a whole host of potential problems. But the flip side is exploring the incredible chemistry we seem to have, and I’m not sure the downside outweighs the potential for some awesome sex with a really hot, surprisingly down-to-earth guy.

Van glances around the cabin. I can see the moment he comes to the same conclusion I have—that this place is disgusting. There’s no way I want to have sex in this nasty old hunting cabin and risk the spider- and bug-bite mementos.

“Yeah. Yes. Absolutely. My place is way better than this.”





CHAPTER 14

KISSES AND CHEMISTRY

Van

Dillion pushes to her feet and holds out her hand to help me up. We both stand there for a second, staring at the destroyed chair, before we turn to each other and glue our mouths back together.

Dillion is nothing and everything like I expected her to be.

She’s a mix of bold and intense and soft and sexy.

And she sure as hell knows how to kiss, so I’m going to go ahead and guess that this chemistry we happen to share will be even more amazing once we get our clothes off.

After a few minutes of dancing tongues—or it could be longer than that; I lose track of time—she puts her hands on my shoulders and pulls back. We’re both panting. She covers my mouth with her palm. “Let’s put a pin in this until we get back to your place, yeah?”

“Yeah.” The word is muffled by her hand.

She nabs her phone from the table and leads me back out into the forest. It’s still raining, but it’s slowed considerably. The path isn’t wide enough for us to navigate side by side, so I follow behind, the light on her phone bobbing unsteadily with her hurried steps. We’re almost jogging we’re moving so quickly.

Eventually the path widens, and I fall into step beside her. We reach the turnaround where her truck is parked.

“Are you good to drive?” I ask. “I only had one beer, and that was a while ago.”

She hesitates for a moment, teeth sinking into her bottom lip, before she passes me her keys. “I’m not sure what the vodka-cran ratio was, and one beer seems less potent than what I was drinking.”

Dillion gives me directions back to the cottage. I park at her place, and she glances at the house, its windows darkened. We bypass the trailer and cut through the path between our lots, breaking into a run as the rain picks up again just before we reach the covered porch.

I fiddle with the lock, struggling to get it to open.

Dillion elbows me out of the way. “It’s tricky sometimes, especially when it’s damp.” She gets it to turn, and we finally tumble into the cottage, blissfully warm and dry and so much cleaner than the hunting cabin, despite the amount of clutter. I still haven’t tackled the inside, partly because I don’t want to disrupt the memories, and also because it’s a daunting task that feels like it will take an eternity. And I want to get the garage build underway. Cleaning it out has taken a lot longer than I expected.

Dillion glances around, eyes sliding across the open space, catching on trinkets, almost as though she’s cataloging all the things inside, accounting for them like a checklist. It occurs to me that she’s spent an incredible amount of time here. Far more than my few weeks a year plus holidays could ever account for.

A violent shiver rips through her, and she wraps her arms around herself, teeth chattering twice before her jaw flexes and she clamps them together.

“Hot shower?” I offer.

Her gaze swings to me, and she catches one side of her bottom lip between her teeth, the skin turning white briefly as it slides through on her nod.

“Alone or together?” I ask.

At the same time she says, “You’re coming with me.”

We both grin, and then we’re heading for the bathroom. I turn on the shower, testing the water to make sure it’s not scalding. I tried to adjust the pressure, but now it vacillates between jet stream and periodic trickle. We turn and step into each other’s personal space. Our mouths connect, and this time it’s not quite so frantic or intense. A slower build, the knowledge that we’re moving toward more, the anticipation of pleasure causing us to take our time.