Free Snowbound with the Biker (Holiday Encounters Book 2) by Amy Lamont Page B

two seconds when I drop dead of embarrassment.”
    His shoulders shook harder and now he couldn’t hold back the laughter. “Katie, look at me. Please.”
    That did the trick. I snatched my head off his shoulder so I could gawk up at him. “Did you just say please?”
    He chuckled and nodded. “But don’t expect me to admit to it in front of witnesses.”
    Huh, Hunter Lawson had a sense of humor. That was sort of a new idea to me. I’d heard him crack jokes with Logan over the years, but I’d never seen him like this with a grin on his lips and amusement dancing in his dark eyes.
    As I watched, though, the humor slid away. His smile slipped from his face and his eyes turned a deep dark chocolate. The intensity of his look pinned me to my spot. “The first time I noticed you as more than Logan’s little sister, I think you were about fourteen. Too young for me, but still. It hit me like a ton of bricks. Logan and I were in his car about to leave for school. You came running out of the house to catch him to give him a book he forgot. You were wearing black shorts and a little pink tank top and your legs looked like they went on for days. If your brother knew the thoughts going through my head, he would have pulled over and beat the piss out of me.”
    “But-but, you never…I mean—” I shook my head, at a complete loss.
    He tightened his hold, giving me a quick squeeze. “After that, I never looked at you without thinking about how long your legs were, how sweet you were to everyone, and the thousand reasons I needed to stay away from you.”
    “Why did you have to stay away from me?” I whispered.
    “To start with, you were my best friend’s little sister and I was too old for you. I didn’t let myself think too much beyond that. And it wasn’t long after that, you started giving me the silent treatment.”
    “Around the time I was fifteen?”
    He nodded.
    Once again I dropped my head forward to hide my face in his chest.
    “Hey.” He curved his hands over my shoulders and tried to pull me back, but stopped when I resisted. “What happened when you were fifteen?”
    I stood there, hiding, for a long minute. Before I moved back, I inhaled deeply, pulling him, his scent and warmth, into me. But I figured I’d revealed plenty. What’s one more embarrassing, mortifying, humiliating detail?
    “When I was fifteen, I started to have dreams about you.”
    His head tilted to the side. “You dreamed of me?”
    “Yes.” God. Was he going to make me go into detail and spell it out for him? “ Dreams .”
    He stared at me, his expression blank and I could see when my words started to sink in. He blinked, once and then again. Then a slow grin spread across his face. “You mean you started having X-rated dreams about me?”
    Of course he’d have to spit it out there like that. I rolled my eyes.
    “Give me a break. I was only fifteen. They were more like PG-13. Maybe R-rated. But they were bad enough.” And I wasn’t about to tell him that the dreams hadn’t stopped then. Or about the fact that the ones I’d had more recently were much naughtier than the ones I had back then. “After I had one, I couldn’t be in the same room with you. I figured you’d be able to tell or something. I couldn’t even talk to you anymore.”
    I brought my hands down and pushed against his chest, attempting to put a little space between us. I needed breathing room. Maybe I needed to quit this honesty stuff and go back to being the goody two-shoes who kept her mouth shut.
    But he wouldn’t let me go.
    “Hunter, what’s going on here?”
    “I don’t know.” His face changed from tender and amused to something else entirely. “Maybe I’m wondering what would have happened if you admitted all this a long time ago.”
    His eyes got darker, more intense, and his jaw tightened. He held me even closer to his body, and I was suddenly very aware of every hard, well-defined inch of him.
    My body responded by shooting ripples