Against All Odds

Chapter 10

STELLA

I didn't stop him, but every part of me thrummed at the prospect of being in the same vicinity as him... alone.

I headed to the bar which was situated towards the back of the house in one of the entertainment areas. I wound through the lounge and past the kitchen, down a few steps to the right and through a short passage before I entered that room, and the entire way I felt his palpable gaze prickling the skin on the back of my neck.

When I opened the freezer on the other side of the high, marble-topped counter, I felt him close behind me. So close the heat of his body permeated the bare skin of my back. An involuntary shudder ran up my spine and for a moment I forgot entirely what I had opened the fridge for.

"Here, let me." His voice was soft, its cadence rippling over the ridges of my ear where his lips lingered close to, and he shifted forward slightly.

His hand splayed against my waist, a gesture meant to coax me to one side, but he was so close I couldn't move unless it was into the door of the fridge. The feel of his hand made a charged current rip through my stomach, and I froze, immobile and breathless.

Killian leaned beyond me, brushing against my arm and shoulder as he collected five bottles and set them clinking on the countertop, before his hand slipped further around my waist, pulling me away from the fridge so that he could shut it. When it was, he didn't move, lingering over me tangibly in silence, only the sound of his deep, even breathing meeting my ears as it ruffled the strands of hair curling around my temple, my ear, and the nape of my neck.

We should return to the others... After all, how long did it take to gather five beers from the bar? They'd become suspicious, and then I'd have to deal with Mia's insinuating looks. But for some reason I couldn't move, his hand against my flesh like a burning thing, mooring me in place. It took every molecule in my body to resist leaning back into his.

The thought had barely crossed my mind when I felt his fingers shift, sliding over the curve of my hip until he found the waist of the denim shorts I had pulled on earlier. His fingertips dipped the slightest amount under the band, lingering there, hesitating, and I swayed into him instinctually.

It felt heady being surrounded by him, his chest and abdomen a solid, heated wall against my back. And between us...

My throat constricted, the urge to grind my ass against the rigid bar of his cock grazing against it almost undoing me.

"Killian," I whispered, an ache in my voice, "what are you doing?"

I sensed his head dip forward, the barest of contact made when his chin skimmed the hair above my temple. "I... I don't know," he murmured, deeply sonorous, edged with a husk that was indicative of how he was affected.

I don't know where I managed to rally the resistance from, perhaps it was his inability to find reason to whatever was transpiring between us, but I slid away from him and turned to the counter, grabbing two of the beers he'd placed atop it. "You can't do that and not have an answer," I said hoarsely, unable to meet his gaze.

I waited two seconds for him to respond and when nothing was forthcoming, I began to leave.

"Stels." The compelling urging of his voice... it was a sound I was helpless against, and I paused on the tiled steps leading out of the room, turning to him. Every part of that man made me undone, unravel from the deepest caverns of my soul. A lock of dark hair curled against his brow, his eyes impenetrably dark as he considered me with a hard look. The muscles in his arms bunched as he dug his hands into the pockets of his shorts, and he was looking at me as if he wanted to tear apart the deepest, darkest secrets of my soul and become intimate with each and every one of them. "I can't give you an answer to that because there isn't one," he told me after a pause. A line formed between his brows. "All I know is that I haven't been able to stop thinking about you since I saw you again, and even before that there weren't many days that passed when you weren't on my mind. You... do something to me- you always have. And I'll be a fucking liar if I didn't say that touching you again felt like everything in my life had aligned perfectly in just that moment."