Free Sweeter Than Sin by Shiloh Walker

around, his eyes unerringly seeking her out in the shadows. She couldn’t see his face clearly, not in the velvety darkness, but she could feel that gaze raking over her.
    Her heart lunged up into her throat as he came back, not running this time but moving awful damn fast. She tensed, ready to jerk away, as he stopped just a breath away.
    His chest was heaving, moving in ragged, uneven bursts, but she had a feeling like it had nothing to do with his run. Her belly clenched, almost painfully, as a rush of need tore through her. Insane. Absolutely insane. Not here. Not with this man. Nothing could happen here—
    He lifted a hand.
    A gasp locked itself inside her throat, her eyes cutting to his hand.
    There was a time when she’d loved to be touched. She’d bounced into her dad’s workshop to wrap her arms around him while he worked, had climbed into his lap even when she was too old to do it. She’d hugged her teachers, hugged her friends, hugged strangers because they said something kind. Adam, how she’d fling herself at him whenever she saw him, happy just to see him, wrap her arms around him until he hugged her back, even if it was just to get her to leave him alone.
    And Noah … she’d loved to touch Noah.
    But in the past twenty years, she’d learned that a touch wasn’t always a kindness. Sometimes a touch was a cruelty. Sometimes a punishment was as simple as taking a touch away . That had been her own self-inflicted punishment … stripping herself away from the comforts she’d once taken for granted.
    Twenty years of that changed a person, and she was no longer the girl she’d been, was not the woman she might have become.
    But as Adam lifted a hand and pulled her glasses off, she held still.
    “Son of a bitch,” he said, his voice flat.
    Unwelcoming.
    Then he shoved the glasses back at her.
    “Welcome home, Lana. Thanks for letting me know you were still alive.”
    *   *   *
    The confusion on her face pricked at his consciousness.
    The sleeping bag on the ground grated at him.
    And he wanted to grab her and pull her against him and rub his face against her neck, bury his hands in her hair and do everything he’d never been able to do.
    So much for hoping he’d outgrow it.
    Relief, need, confusion and anger, they all combined to form a superstorm inside him, and he didn’t know if he wanted to laugh or scream, cry and rage. One thing he did want, and wanted bad, was to grab her and strip her naked. The floor of the gazebo would work. She was slender, her body sleek with slight curves, and he had no business pounding her into the unforgiving wooden floor. That was okay, though. He could be on the bottom and she could take him instead.
    His dick was hard as a pike and he wanted nothing more than to do just that. Touch. Take.
    Finally.
    Not in dreams and not in fantasies.
    But for real .
    Maybe then he’d believe what he saw in front him—he could believe she was real, that she was alive, that he wasn’t hallucinating or dreaming.
    It wasn’t exactly the socially acceptable thing, though, and she wasn’t looking at him like she’d welcome that approach, either, so he lashed everything down and got it under control. Or he tried. Putting a few feet between them, he tried to think. Gaze locked on the night-dark river, he let himself actually think it.
    Lana was here.
    She was here .
    Alive.
    Lana was alive .
    He sucked in a desperate breath and waited until he knew he could speak in a normal voice. Then he turned to look at her. His foot caught on the sleeping bag, the material rustling.
    That just jacked up his anger and some of it spilled out in a snarl. “Why are you sleeping out here?”
    “I don’t have much of any place else to sleep,” she said, lifting a brow. She tucked her hands into her back pockets and looked around. “It’s not as bad as some might think. Weather is decent. It’s quiet. I’ll be up before dawn so nobody can complain.”
    Fury punched a hot fist through