Free Melt For Me (Against All Odds Book 3) by Elisabeth Naughton Page B

was the one who’d kissed him crazy. “No, it’s right. Something’s finally right after nine years. Don’t you dare run away from it.”
    She lifted her head and looked up at him. And in the low light, her brown eyes shimmered and sparkled the way he remembered from so long ago.
    “I’m not,” she whispered. “I just…” She swallowed hard and looked down at the edge of his collar. “You were right. I have been hiding here in Holly. But not because of what happened to Kyle. I know that wasn’t my fault. It was just really bad luck. I only stayed here in the first place because it was safe. Because…after that concert, after I thought you’d forgotten all about me, I had to get away from anything that reminded me of you.”
    “And a Christmas-themed village in the middle of nowhere was the one place you thought I’d never visit.”
    Her gaze slowly lifted to his. “Yeah,” she whispered. “We never spent Christmas together. I don’t even know if you like the holidays.”
    “I never did. Until now.”
    Her eyes went all soft and dreamy, just the way he’d fantasized for so many years. “Oh, Tate.”
    He tightened his arms around her. “I miss you, Ella. More than you kno—”
    She pressed her lips to his once more, cutting off his words. Her reaction filled his heart with so much heat and joy and life, it spilled into his chest until he felt as if his lungs might just burst.
    He slid his hands down over her sweet ass, pulled her in closer, then cupped and lifted her right off the floor. She pulled back enough to gasp and wrapped her arms around his shoulders.
    “Point me in the direction of your bedroom,” he managed.
    “Oh. Um…I don’t have one.”
    His brows drew together as he looked down at her. “You don’t have a bedroom?”
    “I sleep on the couch.”
    His gaze drifted past her and over the room, and he realized then that it was sparsely decorated. Her desk was positioned in front of a window. A doorway opened to a room that seemed to be filled with boxes. The small U-shaped kitchen, similar to the one upstairs in his loft, occupied the space to his left. The only other furniture in the room was an old dresser pushed up against the wall and a threadbare couch opposite a stone fireplace. where embers from a fire she’d started a while ago glowing red in the dim light. “Why?”
    She shrugged. “Because it’s just me and I don’t need a lot of room. And because I don’t sleep all that much.”
    “Why not?”
    Her fingertips grazed the edge of his collar, and her gaze followed. “Because late at night is when I think about you.”
    Something inside him combusted. Just burst with the need to touch her and kiss her and consume her. His mouth found hers, and she opened at the first touch, drew his tongue into her warmth and wetness with a throaty groan, and tightened her legs around his hips.
    “Tate…” Her hands slid down his face, over his shoulders, and across his back while he tipped his head, while he kissed her deeper. Her fingers clenched in his shirt, then cool air swept over his lower back, the middle of his spine, and finally his shoulder blades.
    She pulled back from his mouth, breathless and the sexiest thing he’d ever seen, and tugged at the back of his shirt. “I want this off.”
    He took one step and dropped her butt on the edge of the rectangular desk, then reached back and pulled the shirt over his head. Excitement and heat and lust filled her eyes as she stared at his bare chest. He dropped his shirt on the floor and leaned down, but she eased away and twisted around before he could kiss her again.
    “Wait.” Her hands swept over the surface of the desk, knocking pens, paper, her cell phone, and a small lamp to the floor with a crash. She shifted back to face him with flushed and gorgeous cheeks. “Okay, now.”
    One side of his mouth turned up. “I think you just broke that lamp.”
    “I don’t care.” She reached for his shoulders, pulling him down