When You Are Mine (The Bennetts, #1)

by Kennedy Ryan

His breath caught up in his throat at her beauty, illuminated by the kindness and compassion he knew lay beneath that gorgeous face.

Kerris watched him catalog every detail about her, his eyes surveying each limb and curve.

She had stopped believing in the lightning strike of desire. She had assumed that if this beautiful man with his lean, muscled body and sensually curved lips couldn’t stoke a fire inside of her, no one could.

And she’d believed that. Until tonight.

Perhaps what she felt for Cam was all she was capable of. It felt good. It could be enough.

He had known since high school that he could have Sofie whenever he wanted her. Problem was, he just didn’t see her that way. She was beautiful, with a cover-worthy body, but there wasn’t enough beyond the shiny packaging to hold his attention.

Kerris laughed like everyone else, not begrudging them their fair and square victory, but a knot of briars rolled around in her stomach at the sight of Sofie and Walsh together. They both looked so perfect. And she had no right to this feeling, whatever they were to each other.

She had to be imagining that Walsh felt the same intimate pull that she had. Sofie was Walsh’s reality. And Kerris’s reality was walking toward her with a smile, proffering an elephant ear.

At the brief contact, liquid fire rushed down her nerve endings. His kiss was a feather and a flame, raising goose bumps and heating her skin. Something blossomed in her chest, unfurling and straining toward him. She pressed closer, defenseless against sensations she’d never experienced with anyone before. One of Walsh’s strong hands left her waist, reaching for her chin to bring her face closer. The velvet of his tongue traced the still-drying tears on her cheeks before returning to her mouth, now clamped closed against the temptation of his.

Sanity was a fugitive on the run from reason.

Sanity made a belated reappearance.

“It’s an accident when cars collide.” The remnants of desire hoarsened Walsh’s voice. “When lips collide it’s a kiss. That wasn’t an accident, and we need to talk about it.”

The office overlooked the crowded New York landscape. Seeing the breadth of the city made his father proud of the patch of urban jungle he’d subdued with the machete of his relentless ambition.

“You don’t think I loved your mother?” “I think you broke my mother’s heart.” Walsh snapped the words before firming his mouth and smoothing the scowl from his face. “I think you cheated on her. Guess that was just part

of grabbing your dick and figuring it out.”

Your past haunts you, but it hasn’t twisted you, it hasn’t ruined you. If anything, it’s made you a stronger person. That’s a miracle. You’re the miracle, baby.”

And he knew that it had been Kerris’s first choice, not the lily she’d carried in her bouquet. She’d discarded the choice of her heart, allowed herself to be persuaded by other forces, other factors, other priorities. Just like she’d ruthlessly trampled on the possibilities brewing between them since the first time they’d laid eyes on each other.

“Could you have asked me?” His shoulders slumped under the futility of this discussion. “Could you have checked before you took the irreversible step of marrying my best friend?”

“Kerris, the way my son looks at you is like—” Kristeene started, briefly hesitating. “It’s like a starved man. It’s like he can’t bring himself to look at anything else in the room.”