Kissing Serena now was the same as it had always been, Darien thought. Like trying to capture wildfire.
She made a soft sound, her lips parting beneath his. He caught her face between his hands, angling her head. Plundering. Inhaling. Savoring.
The wildfire spread as easy as a flame through dry grass when he felt her small, slender fingers touch his jaw. Tentative at first. Then more surely as she pushed them through his hair, cradling his head.
His own hands drifted down her back, up her sides, feeling the uneven breath Darien lifting her rib cage and her heart pounding in her breasts that so perfectly fit his palms. Even through the ribbed knit he could feel the peaks tightening under the thumbs he brushed over her.
She moaned, her back arching, and he reached for the hem of her sweater.
One thinking part of his brain cursed the counter separating them.
And then Serena was twisting her head away from his. "No. No, Darien, we can't."
He went still. Slowly withdrawing his damnable hands from her and planted them flat on the counter.
His head bowed and he hauled in a long breath. "I'm sorry," he muttered. "I shouldn't have done that."
But he wasn't sorry. He'd never been sorry for wanting her. Maybe that was his own damned luck. Or his own personal hell. Wanting the woman who wanted Diamond, his half-brother.
Serena's knees were water. She could barely breathe for the way her heart thundered in her chest. She didn't know what to say. What to do.
Everything inside her urged her to hurry around to Darien's side of the counter and pull his head down to hers, regardless of the fact that they were standing right there in front of God and Country and whatever Weaver retiree decided to come into the lobby.
Only he was sorry he'd kissed her.
He hadn't changed his mind about anything.
"I think you'd better go," she whispered.
He shoved back his hair, his depthless blue eyes watching her for a long moment. Then he nodded abruptly. "Tell Mattie I'll call her before bedtime," he said.
Then he walked out the door, leaving the little bell jingling after him.
Serena's vision blurred. She stood there until the sound of the bell had long faded. Until finally, feeling an ache in her soul, she went through the back room to the small restroom in the very rear.
And there, she lost the meager lunch she'd managed to consume.
After, she rinsed her mouth and splashed water over her face and looked at her pale reflection in the small mirror over the sink.
What on earth was she going to do?
She was no longer an 18-year-old girl with no resources whatsoever. And yet, once again, she'd found herself pregnant by a man who no longer wanted her…