“Is that a smile I just saw, Mr. Hawthorne?” I asked, still a little stupefied. “This is the first time you’ve smiled at me. I’ve been trying to count them since week one, and this is number one. A smile…I can’t believe it. I wish I had my phone with me so I could capture this moment. We need to have cake to celebrate.”
I looked to my right and left to confirm that I wasn’t the only one witnessing this, but even though I was glancing around, I didn’t see anyone. The entire room could’ve been staring at us, including Joshua, but I didn’t see a single person other than Jack Hawthorne. This was actually not good news for me, the fake wife, but I didn’t care one bit about that. I’d consider that later, much later, when I was over that smile.
His smile softened, but it was still there. “You’ve been counting my smiles?”
“Trying’ being the operative word here since you like to hoard them like a squirrel hoarding his nuts.”
“I’ve smiled at you, Rose.” He lifted his hand and tucked my hair behind my ear. I didn’t think much about it because I was busy shaking my head at him.
“You haven’t.”
“Maybe you weren’t looking.”
“Are you kidding me? I’ve been looking nonstop.” I lifted a finger between us and his gaze dropped to it. “One time—there was one time I thought I saw your lips twitch, but it was a false alarm, and that’s it.”
I was still grinning, but when I looked at his lips, he had lost the smile and the expression on his face was much more intense. He took a step forward into me and my pulse quickened. When his big, warm hand cupped my face, covering almost the entire left half, I noticed the shift in the air and stood still.
Oh, this is not good.
Eyes locked on mine, he lowered his head just a few inches away from my lips and whispered, “I’m going to kiss you now, Rose.” His eyes were still open and on mine.
I swallowed.
“What?” I croaked, and then I cleared my throat, stuck in place, staring into the depths of his eyes. His gaze moved from my eyes to my lips. “I knew this was a possibility tonight, of course,” I whispered. “But is someone looking?” We needed to put on a show and I supposed the time had come, but why was I suddenly freaking out on the inside? It wasn’t like we were gonna suck each other’s faces in the middle of a charity event.
“Do you care if someone is looking?” he asked.
I mean…that was the whole reason for the kiss, wasn’t it? But did I care? Not really, I supposed. A peck on the lips was nothing. I took a deep breath and nodded, letting it out in a whoosh. “Okay. Right. Lay it on me. Let’s do this.” As his eyes swept over my face, I steeled my voice. “A little faster than that,” I whispered, keeping my voice as low as possible. “Not like a turtle, remember?”
A smile danced on his lips again as if he found what I said extremely funny, but he managed to drop his forehead against mine and our noses touched.
My heart started beating in my throat when his arm rounded my waist and he pulled me just a little closer. Made sense too, I supposed, because I couldn’t just keep my face close but my body away. Closing my eyes, I swallowed hard. My hands were instinctively resting on his chest. This was going to be one epic peck, and I hoped the people around who were watching—whoever they were—appreciated our acting.
His hand was still covering my cheek. “Are you ready for me, Rose?” Jack whispered in a low, insistent voice, and I smelled the whiskey and mint on his breath.
“You’re still taking it too slow—you need to—”
I didn’t get the chance to utter another word because Jack’s lips were on mine, and we were not sharing a nice little romantic peck. No, his tongue was already sweeping in and teasing mine. For a moment, I wasn’t sure what I should do. We hadn’t done this even on the day we’d said I do. My eyes were still open, and I felt a little desperate to end whatever he had started. I even tried to, twice, both times thinking Okay, this is it, he is stopping now so you need to stop too, but the more he teased me with the way he slowly coaxed me into the kiss, pulling me deeper, the more I felt myself slipping. Finally, my eyes started to close on their own. It wasn’t that I wasn’t responding—I was, had been from the moment his lips touched mine—but up until that point, I’d been doing it reluctantly, thinking the entire time it would end in the next second, thinking he’d stop after just one more beat. I was doing my very best to hold myself back, trying my very, very best not to enjoy our kiss.
Then when he suddenly stopped, I could’ve cried. I wasn’t sure if it was from relief or sorrow. Thankfully, he didn’t pull back completely, and I only swayed toward him a little. I forced myself to open my eyes.
“Am I doing okay?” he asked against my already swollen lips, his eyes staring straight into mine. The hairs on my arms stood up and his eyes became my entire focus. They looked darker, deeper, and deep ocean blue became my absolute favorite new color.
I cleared my throat and tried to move my head up and down in a nod. “I mean, it depends on what you’re going for, but much better, er, than a turtle…I think.”
“You think so?” His gravelly voice caused my eyelids to droop, and the way he used his left hand to swipe some of my bangs out of my face, the backs of his fingers gently grazing my temple…
Biting on my lip so I wouldn’t do something stupid, I took a deep breath, nodded, and forced my eyes to open. In the same second, he was on my lips again. As slow and sweet as it had started with his first kiss, with this one, the more his tongue swirled in my mouth, the more he tilted his head and tried to get in deeper, the further I slipped into a dark hole I never wanted to come out of. His hand at my back pulled me forward, a barely noticeable inch or two, but it made it impossible for me not to arch my back and help him along. I wasn’t into public displays of affection at all, but I forgot about every single person that was in that huge ballroom with us. I could’ve been standing in the middle of a stadium in Jack’s arms going at it full force and probably still wouldn’t have cared in that moment.
It was a little rough, our kiss, and somehow I think I knew it’d be like that with him. Rough and demanding and consuming. Knew it even before this madness had started.
When my tongue got its own idea and started to get more into it, I rose up on my toes, basically climbing him with my arms to get more of him, this prickly and rough-around-the-edges man who was apparently mine in public for the better part of the next two years. Leaning in harder to get more, his hand slipped from my cheek to cradle my neck. I felt his other arm go around my waist, bringing me flush with his chest. Maybe he wasn’t that good at communicating with me, but he sure was good at this.
Something I couldn’t exactly identify was rising up to the surface inside of me, and to be honest, more than happy to be that close, I wrapped my own arms around his neck and a groan slipped from my lips. That was when he suddenly stopped and pulled back. He wasn’t as out of breath as I was, but he was definitely breathing hard. Flushed, I just stared up at him in wonder. What the hell had just happened? Was he trying for an Oscar or something? Had he felt whatever I had felt there for a second? A minute? Or had it been an hour?