“Blowouts, huh?” She grazes her finger over my lips and belts out a soft laugh as if she didn’t mind the reference. God, I love seeing her happy. “So those bumps in the road are inevitable?” She takes a moment to glare at me, and there’s something endearing about that look. Perhaps because it’s the one she’s gifted me most frequently. Lex has always been a firecracker, and I’ve always been a big fan of the Fourth of July. We are essentially a match made in a dynamitefactory.
“Each and every one. There’s not a couple on earth who doesn’t go there on occasion.” I brush her hair off her shoulders before picking up a crimson lock and coiling it around my finger. Her sweet perfume calls to me. Same scent she wore way back when—French lavender she once told me. I never forgot that scent. I didn’t need a bottle to remind me of her. I had it ingrained in my gray matter. Lex’s French lavender soul has haunted me in and out of mydreams.
“Even Levi and Low?” She wrinkles her nose when she says their names, and I can’t help but offer a sarcasticsmile.
“Even Levi andLow.”
Lex steps in, her breath warming my chest in bursts. “But I don’t want to talk about them.” Her lips graze over my neck, and it feels so good I can’texhale.
I lean in and brush my mouth over her ear. “Do you want to talk aboutus?”
“I want to reinvent us.” Her breathing becomes erratic as her hips singe against me, and I suck in a quick breath through my teeth. “I want to shine what we have and watch it sparkle in the light. I want to leave the past hidden under a dusty canvas.” She lands a kiss over my shoulder. “I don’t want the memories. I don’t want the pain—the fear or therejection.”
And there it is. Rejection is exactly what Lex felt in the end, and I take full responsibility forthat.
“I think you’re onto something.” I slide my lips from her ear to her mouth. “Let’s move on to the new us. The better, sparkly version.” A laugh trembles from me as I slip my tongue into her mouth. Lex meets me right where I want to be with meandering passionate kisses that have no end in sight. Carefully, I pull us down to the rug with Lex landing by my side, her body holding a tangerine glow from the fire. “We don’t need to hurry.” My fingers glide over the sharp curve of her hip. “We have all the time in theworld.”
“We have tonight.” Her brow lifts with amusement. “I don’t livehere.”
“Yet.”
The idea of a laugh bounces in her chest “I’m not one for a series of Southernsleepovers.”
“I know. You’re the marrying kind.” I lift her hair off her shoulder, exposing her to me fully. “So amI.”
She offers a playful frown. Her cool knee glides between my legs and edges up toward dangerous territory. “Is that aproposal?”
“Nope. I promise—when I’m proposing, you won’t need to question it. You’ll know without adoubt.”
“Without a doubt.” She shakes her head, her lime-colored eyes secured to mine. “That’s something we never seem tobe.”
“That’s about to change,” I whisper as I pull her onto me. Her chest glides soft and easy as it expands over my flesh. “I’m going to bark out orders without a doubt, and you’re going to followthem.”
Lex tips her head back and belts out a laugh. “You wish, Collins.” That triple X pendant I gifted her dangles just inches from my mouth so I catch it with my teeth. “All right. First, we make love, slow and easy—something exploratory where I get to taste and see every last inch ofyou.”
Her cheeks pinch with color by the light of the fire. “Everylast inch ofme?”
“Yes, Lex.” Sure, we’ve had countless sessions that qualified as damn near pornographic, but Lex has always made sure the lights were off, the covers were on. For as brazen as she can be, behind locked doors she’s quite shy about her body. “Every last inch.” My hand slips between her thighs, and I can feel her knees lock together in protest. Then in an instant she loosens. Lex opens for me like a flower under the warmth of the sun, like adare.
“Every last inch,” she says it just below a whisper. “I’m giving it toyou.”
I pull her mouth down to mine, and we begin in on something that feels entirely new. Lex and I aren’t dragging the past into this room tonight. We’ve finally managed to unleash ourselves from our baggage—if only for one night. The problem with denying the past is that you’re destined to repeat it. And God knows I have no intention of repeating our thorny past. Maybe just the bestparts.
Lex glides over me, landing that sweet spot between her thighs square over mylap.
Yes, this part forsure.
It wasn’t all sobad.
Wasit?
