“Psh, please. That was the most fun people-watching I’ve had in ages.”
“The rich and ridiculous are entertaining, if not a nightmare to work for. Did you see Ariana Grande trying to climb onto the aerial setup?”
“When she was on Shawn Mendes’s shoulders, trying to reach one of the girls? I don’t know if she was sober enough to realize she was short by at least fifteen feet.”
She laughed. “No, when she climbed up on the catwalk. It took three security guards to get her down.”
“Thank God she didn’t fall. What about when Katy Perry came out in that pineapple costume?”
“Her hat was a paper umbrella! I don’t even know why she did it, but watching her dance in it the rest of the night was the highlight of the whole ordeal.”
“Better than having to clean up Gwyneth Paltrow’s sick?” I asked.
She groaned, still laughing. “I have never seen so much vomit come out of a single human being in my life.”
“Ninety percent kale, ten percent gin.”
Another groan, this one coupled with a swat to my chest. “I mean, it was awfully green.”
I shuddered. “File under Things I’d Never Like to See. I totally had a thing for her when I was a kid.”
She twisted in my arms to give me a look. “You. A fan of Gwyneth Paltrow movies.”
“I’ll have you know, I have a very diverse movie repertoire.”
Her look intensified.
“I have an older sister, you know,” I admitted, which only eased the look by a hair. “And we take turns distracting my mother by watching period dramas with her. Emma is one of her favorites.”
“Distracting her from what?”
“Oh, you know. Sneaking out. Sneaking people in.” I paused. “Actually, that’s pretty much it.”
“Emma, huh?”
“And Shakespeare in Love. But Sliding Doors is my favorite.”
“That’s not a historical.”
“No, but it is a great movie. That Scottish dork ending up with Gwyneth Paltrow gave me hope that I had a shot.”
“With Gwyneth?” she asked on a laugh.
“Nah. Just in general.”
“Please. I can’t believe you ever doubted you could get any girl you wanted. Most guys too, I’d wager.”
“Believe it or not, I wasn’t always this dashing,” I said with a British accent.
“Impossible. You forget I knew you as a teenager.”
“Ask any of my siblings. Or my mom, but be prepared to spend the next three hours looking through photo albums. I was the runt of the litter, Laney not included.”
“You’re six-two.”
“Not until I was eighteen,” I noted.
“Kassius Bennet,” she said, leaning away with a stern look on her face, “I personally know at least five girls in high school who you ruined for life.”
I frowned. “You’re thinking of Luke.”
“Brenna Jacobs, Leah Fairview, Portia Chambers”—she ticked off on her fingers—“Evelyn Morley, and Cassie Argyle. Should I go on?”
“None of those girls actually liked me,” I insisted.
“That’s not what Evelyn said after prom. She said she was in love with you, but you brutally dumped her in the middle of the dance.”
“Because I caught her making out with Brian Sears under the bleachers.”
Her mouth popped open. “No.”
“Yup. Right behind the punch bowl. I saw her dress between the slats. Couldn’t miss it.”
“No one could. She looked like a safety cone.”
“Those girls didn’t like me, trust me. In fact, most of them were more interested in getting close to Luke than being with me.”
“Why?” she asked, face screwed up.
“I think you could ask your sister that question,” I joked, seeing as how Ivy and Luke had been friends with benefits through high school and then some.
“I never got the appeal. He was too …”
“Uninhibited?”
“Exactly. How’d you guess?”
“You like rules too much for a guy like Luke.”
“That’s true. But really, I just didn’t think he was as hot as everybody made him out to be.”
“Everybody says we look alike,” I said with a brow arched.
“You don’t. He looks like trouble.”
“And what do I look like?”
She considered the question with a smile on her face, which tilted back and forth as she inspected me. “Safety.”
I reached for her, drawing her to my arms, into my chest where the word had struck like an arrow. “I am, you know.”
“I do,” she said, her hand on my face and her eyes bright with honesty.
I kissed her so she wouldn’t say more, a tender seam of our lips. And I wondered how to stop myself from falling. Once in motion, was there anything I could do? Would I be too late to throw out my hands, to minimize the damage? Or was I already doomed?
I knew the answer without fully acknowledging it, glancing over it, through it, anywhere but directly in the eye. There was no way to separate myself from the truth—I was in over my head. I was at her mercy. And I couldn’t turn back if I wanted to. Which I didn’t.
So I kissed her until our breaths were heavy, until the function of my brain quieted to only the most necessary of functions necessary to hold her. I kissed her until the car had been still long enough for the cabbie to clear his throat. And the second we were through the lobby and into the elevator of the hotel, I kissed her again. I kissed her down the hallway in a blind stumble for our room, swallowed her sighs and her laughter. I kissed her into our room, the one we’d shared for weeks, long enough that the suite was filled with us—our memories, our nights, all the whispers and all the laughter.
And all I wanted, all I wanted in the world, was for her to be mine.
And she finally was.
The room was dark, unfathomably black. I could see nothing in the infinite darkness, but I could feel her. Hear her breath, the shuffle of fabric and abandoned shoes and bare feet on carpet, and the sound of our lips as they met, parted, met again. Electric was the feeling, and I imagined that if I opened my eyes, I would catch sight of a spark when fingertips brushed skin, where our bodies met, skating over our lips in a crackling web.
Her hands. They were all I could consider as they held my face, the scratch of my stubble loud against her soft palms. Down my chest they roamed with fire in their wake, down to the buckle of my pants.
Her lips disappeared, but her breath puffed against mine, a noisy pant that I matched as she tugged my belt loose with a jingle. The vibration of my zipper zinged against my cock, and once freed, the silken warmth of her hand wrapped itself around me, stroking as if her fingertips wanted a taste strictly for their own pleasure. Blindly, I reached for her face, cupped her jaw, found her nose with mine, then her lips for a kiss. But her hands didn’t stop their slow path up my shaft, cupping my crown before sliding down once more. Her fingers fanned each time they finished the circuit, brushing my sack with gentle authority.
My fingers slipped into her hair and tightened, tugging to tilt her face, to moan around her tongue, into her mouth, down her throat. But still, she didn’t stop. My feet were planted, knees locked—if they hadn’t been, I feared they would have buckled. Her mouth moved in time with her fist and fingers, drawing that feeling from deep in my belly, from low in my base.