Forehead to forehead, nose to nose, breath to breath, neither of us moved, not for a long moment stacked with thudding heartbeats. And then she kissed me, and there was no choice to be made.
A roll of my hips, a grinding wave, her lips on mine, her hands on my face. I pulled her thigh until my arm cradled her shin, her knee at my shoulder, opening her up to give me room. And I took that space, filled it up. Everything about her was an exploration, her body, her mind, the enigma of her demanding. Commanding. I didn’t want to lose the feeling, the sheer devotion and understanding of her rareness. I wanted to appreciate her with the wholeness I felt, the reckless game we played muted in that moment. There was only her and me and the exotic feeling of discovery.
With every thrust, my awareness shrank, receding like the shoreline before a hurricane. But with the whisper of my name and the pulse of her drawing me deeper, there was no holding on. Only abandon as the storm surged, and I was lost without a care, swept away and erased for a long, weightless moment.
We came down on the wave, bodies and lips and hands slowing but not stopping. Just slipping into a languid, lazy kiss that required the sum of us to complete. And we obliged.
It was me who broke the kiss, leaning back to look down at her. To admire the flush in her cheeks and neck, the shine of her swollen lips. I held her jaw, thumbed the bottom swell, my own lips tingling at the phantom sensation of connection.
Those lips smiled idly as her arms circled my neck, fingers twiddling my hair. “That was maybe the stickiest fuck of my life.”
“Then you haven’t been living.”
The sweetest laugh slipped out of her, quiet and adoring. “I’m filthy.”
“I like you filthy. Although …” I leaned back farther, inspecting her dramatically. “You know, I think I cleaned you up pretty good. Oh, wait,” I said, angling for her neck. “Missed a spot.”
She giggled, neck arching to cradle my face as I took a moment to taste her neck once more.
When I leaned back again, my eyes traced her face as my hand smoothed her stiff hair, and she sighed happily, the sound hitting me deep in my chest.
“You did it again,” she said.
“Did what?”
“Made me forget every bad thing in my life.”
“I told you that’s my specialty,” I said with a sideways smile and a bottomless longing.
“You did. I just didn’t expect you to be so good at it.”
“I don’t do anything halfway, Lila.”
“No, you sure don’t,” she said softly. “Neither do I.”
Suddenly the moment was too much, too real. And so, I kissed her, held her face in my hands and washed it away. We didn’t need to speak it. I didn’t need to know anything beyond that this was good and right, and that the girl beneath me was broken and unready for more than this. And that combination was dangerous as dynamite.
When I backed away, she mewled, her hands trailing my arms as they moved away like she didn’t want to let me go.
“Come on,” I said, snagging her hand to pull her up. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”
“If I have to.” She pouted, but when I scooped her into my arms, she squeaked, grabbing me around the neck, hanging on like I didn’t have her on lock.
“You have to,” I insisted as I carried her to the bathroom. “Because I’m about to fuck you in that fancy bed, on those fancy sheets, and nobody wants to sleep on cake.”
She chuckled, settling her head into the crook of my neck. I pressed a kiss to her forehead, savoring the moment, not wanting to let her go.
I didn’t want to let her go. One day soon, I’d have to.
For the first time in my life, I wished I was something else. Something more. Ambitious and successful and rich. Powerful. I wished I was the kind of man Lila wouldn’t just fuck.
I wished I was the kind of man she’d keep.
15
An Arrangement
KASH
The door to the greenhouse opened, and I glanced up, looking for Lila.
At the sight of my father, my skipping heart tripped and ate it.
“Don’t look so disappointed,” Dad said with the tilted smile he’d passed down to all the Bennet men.
“I’m not disappointed,” I lied, steering my cart of seedlings to the fresh bed we’d turned over.
A noise of dissent was the maximum of his argument. “What time is Lila supposed to be here?”
I paused, a tray of plants in hand, my eyes narrowing on him as he approached. “Who told you? It was Luke, wasn’t it?”
“Nobody told me, son. I have two eyes, a couple ears, and something between them, you know. Doesn’t take much more.”
With a frown, I knelt at the bed and kept my eyes on my hands as they got to work.
“How serious is it?” he asked.
“It’s not.”
When I noted his stillness, I glanced up at him. His face said he knew better.
“It’s not,” I insisted. “We have an … arrangement.”
“You see each other an awful lot for whatever this is to be just an arrangement.” There was no accusation—he stated it as if he were noting the color of marigolds.
And he wasn’t wrong.
I’d spent the better part of two weeks pretending like Lila and I had some sort of handle on the rules. Nights apart almost immediately dissolved into hours spent texting. Then sexting. By the beginning of the week, they’d disappeared completely.
And then, there were the dates.
But they weren’t dates, not technically. Was Chinese takeout a dinner date? Not by my standards. But sitting across the bed from Lila, her hair piled on top of her head, wearing nothing but my Hoeing Ain’t Easy T-shirt with duck sauce on her chin felt like a date. When I wiped the sauce off and she leaned over her takeout container to kiss me, it felt like a date.
And last night, the last rule went straight out the window.
I’d spent the night with Lila.
We’d woken up in a tangle, her body curled into mine, my arms around her like a vise. To see her in the morning light, sleepy and smiling and so goddamn lovely did nothing to convince me this was casual.
It was anything but casual.
And I didn’t know just what to do about that.
“Your mother knows,” Dad said. When my face shot up, he clarified, “Well, she suspects. You haven’t been in before midnight in weeks. And last night, you didn’t come home. You can’t imagine she wouldn’t have noticed.”
“I’m a grown man. I can sleep where I’d like without having to tell my mother.”
“Which is why she hasn’t said anything. To you, at least. Seems to be all she wants to talk about to me. I reckon she knows I know and is fishing. Haven’t told her you’ve been sneaking off with Lila or she’d have already orchestrated a formal dinner to rope you both into.”
Sticky discomfort rose within me. “It’s not serious. Certainly not serious enough for Mom to get involved.”
“Try telling her that.”
I snorted a laugh.
“You’ll have to tell her at some point. If this keeps on, I mean. She’s driving herself crazy trying to figure out who you’re seeing and is convinced it’s Verdant.”