He gestures to a coffee he already prepared for me before he puts his own mug down.
I watch him as he crosses the space between us, tilting my chin up with one hand while the other goes to my hair. I don’t have a chance to react when he grips the tie and tugs, releasing my hair from it.
He then wraps the strands around his hand and pulls, forcing my neck to bend and his mouth descends on mine. The kiss is hungry at first, desperate. He kisses me like I’m his first and last meal, as if I am the breath in his lungs.
It leaves me weak in the knees and when he finally releases me, giving me a quick peck to the corner of my mouth, he smiles and then says, his words against my lips, “I like your hair down, Tiny Dancer.”
“It gets in the way,” I point out, voice breathless.
“Let me know,” He grins, “I’ll pull it out the way for you.”
Killian leaves me with that, striding back up the stairs and all I can do in the meantime is presume what he means. Never in my wildest dreams did I imaginethisis where we would end up.
Chapter Twenty-one
Iwant to touch her, kiss her, wrap her hair around my fist and tilt her head back. I want to claim her for everyone to see, but I can’t.
She is entirely oblivious to the stares she’s receiving as she skips through the store, shoving random shit into the cart I’m pushing. Her iced coffee is making my hand wet, but you know what, I have a great view. Her tight jeans cling to her shape and the sway of her ass makes my mouth water. And I know, under that denim, on her right ass cheek is a small bruise caused by my mouth. She is marked. No one can see it, but I know it is there.
Doesn’t stop me from throwing warning glares at the men who get a little too comfortable undressing her with their eyes.
“What do you think of this?” She pulls out a cushion the color of a periwinkle sunset, a mix between pink and purple. Her style and mine are a complete contradiction, I am shades of grey where she is a rainbow, she is the periwinkle sunset to my storm clouds, but I’ll take her color, and her sunshine and I’ll let it break the fogs and the shadows in my life because she warms where no one else can.
I doubt she even really knows how she slid into the fissures of my broken soul and melded them together with gold.
I nudge the cart toward her, telling her without words to put it in with the rest of the colorful items she’s placed in there. Nothing matches. There’s no rhyme or reason to the things she has selected but it all has her name stamped on it. She selected furniture before we came here, and it should be arriving this afternoon.
Trailing behind her, I follow her down the section with all the art and immediately she pulls out a piece that should honestly be burned.
“This is so pretty!” She hums, moving to put the framed work in the cart.
“No.” I grumble.
She freezes, “What?”
“If you’re going to have art, Savannah, you’re not buying printed work that has no meaning. Art should speak to you.”
“This does speak to me,” She frowns, “Itsays, ‘I’m pretty and want to be on your wall’.”
My expression falls flat, “No.”
“And you’re an expert?”
“I can do you something better than that.” I take the piece from her and put it back on the shelf.
“Prove it.” She crosses her arms and juts out her hip, “Or is this something you want to bulldoze too?”
“That attitude is going to cost you,” I keep my voice low enough only she can hear, and my words hit exactly where I want them to. Her cheeks bloom with color and her fingers curl into her palms. “But fine, you want proof?”
I slide my hand into the inside pocket of my jacket, pulling out the little notebook I keep there with my pencil and hand it over.
“What’s this?”
“Proof.”
She takes it from me, flicking her eyes to me once with hesitation before she opens the black leather cover, worn from use and cracking at the edges.
The first page… her on stage, a quick rushed sketch during her show a few months ago while I hid in the shadows, so our friends didn’t see what I was doing. The lines aren’t perfect, and her features are not refined but it’s her.
