Free Bringing Delaney Home (Cates Brothers #1) by Lee Kilraine

the warmth was shocking to her chilled, stiff fingers. The stroke of his strong fingers had her white knuckling even more. His thumbs caressed her inner wrist, a slow-motion touch over her pulse. Once. Twice. Her eyelids fluttered shut, and she was unable to handle any other sensation beyond his touch.
    Yeah, it was pretty impossible to deny the chemistry between them when her pulse raced like she’d injected a double-espresso Americano. Shutting her eyes had been a mistake, as her senses hyper-focused on his touch alone. She opened them again for her own protection, but that was a fail too.
    Her gaze traced the muscles in his hands and forearms as they slid and tightened with each caress. Each stroke of his index fingers into the soft dips between her fingers sent electricity swirling deep in her abdomen before zinging up through her breasts and then on to scramble her thoughts. Like a mad hummingbird darting and fluttering up through her.
    Such a delicious torture when his strong chest and wide shoulders moved even closer, surrounding her. His heat, a sinful temptation against her back. The hard muscles of his thighs like cut granite pressed against hers. Everything about him warm and firm, besieging her body to yield while he rocked her already unstable world.
    “Did you tuck your weapon into the front of your pants?”
    “No,” he choked out.
    “I was afraid of that.”
    His head dipped down next to hers. Her knees buckled when his tongue stroked along her neck, only to lock tight when he nibbled on her earlobe softly with his teeth. His deep voice rumbled in her ear and against her back. “What would happen if you let go and trusted me?”
    Let go? Holding on tight had been the only way she’d managed. For as long as she could remember, her life had been constantly spinning out of control. She’d pulled Greer up close behind her and held on tight as she navigated through the minefield of her dysfunctional world. With parents like hers, the first thing she’d learned was never to trust anyone. Letting go wasn’t an option. The last nine months of her life had her holding on even tighter.
    “Do you know what I wanted to do with you in the back seat of my car? I wanted to strip you out of your tank top and bra and worship your breasts in the moonlight. I wanted to strip us both and stay in that private shadow of the back seat, like we were the only two people in the world. I wanted to touch you so bad. Everywhere. I wanted to make you moan, and whimper, and pant. I wanted to make you lose your breath and then take you so high you’d scream with the descent. I wanted to be inside you. Deep. I wanted to hear you groan my name when you came and sigh like you’d seen heaven. And I wanted to kiss your sweet lips forever and never stop.”
    Her heart skipped and stuttered. Could life be this cruel? Maybe . . . maybe if Quinn had said yes in the back seat of that car, if she’d had parents who loved her, if the explosion had never happened, if she wasn’t missing a chunk of her past . . . maybe then, in some alternate universe full of rainbows and unicorns, she could say yes to this beautiful, seemingly perfect man. But he wasn’t perfect, because he had no self-preservation instinct. Otherwise, he would know to run, not walk, in the opposite direction she was heading. Crazy fool man. Hadn’t he already admitted she was a walking, talking trouble magnet?
    But standing wrapped in his strong arms, with his whiskey-dark voice whispering temptations she knew she couldn’t afford to want, felt so darn good. She took a breath and tried to capture this moment in her mind. She filed it away to pull out and savor like a guilty pleasure she hadn’t earned and didn’t deserve.
    “Don’t you feel it too?” Quinn’s warm hands cupped her shoulders, and he spun her around in his arms, pulling her in tight against his sinewy body. He lifted her face up to his with one hand while the other stroked through her hair to cup