“No, really. If it wasjust a kiss,” he says, not even pretending not to be wounded, “why’d you run off like that?”
“I had places to be, Andrew,” I shout, stealing the wine bottle and knocking it back against my lips. “Aren’t you the king of the casual hook up? Sometimes, people just like to kiss each other, and itdoesn’t mean anything.”
Exasperation must line my face, has to be right there for him to recognize, but he skates the back of his hand against my cheek anyway, tangling his fingers in my hair. My breath turns ragged. My eyes water, my nose burns, my heart races.
“So if I casually wanted to kiss you, right now…that wouldn’t mean anything to you?”
Every word he’s ever said plays like a siren song in my memory as I try my hardest not to look at his lips. But it’s more than this with him. He knows that, and he doesn’t care. Theway this isn’t just about wanting each other, anymore, doesn’t seem to scare him the way it scares me.
His question lands featherlight on my conscience, whispers across it, quietly daring me to forget all the ways I used to hurt after feeling just like this.
“Andrew, come on,” I shake my head. “Why do you have to?—”
“Because I haven’t stopped thinking about that kiss since you ran out that door,” he admits, easily, as I blink furiously through the snow flurry. “And I don’t think you have either.” He makes no attempt to hide his intentions, those eyes boldly dipping to my lips before locking with mine. “Doesn’t have to mean anything. Unless…you have feelings for me?” he taunts, his fingers finding new purchase in my hair as he shows me just how much of a hold he has on me.
“I don’t,” I lie, schooling my expression into one of ambivalence and lifting my brows. All the while, my heart slams against my ribcage.
“Great. So kiss me, Sloane.”
And at the sound of those words, falling from his lips, all the air on this roof, in the world, isn’t enough—I have to take it from him. That’s how hard the feeling washes over me, how intense the urge to fall into him and let him sustain me is. Because he’s called my bluff, seen around the curtain, is holding up the mirror. Because he knows I’m stubborn and I hate to be wrong.
So I lean into him, but only an inch. And I let my anger and the tension spiral into something seductive, gazing up at him through my lashes. I lean in and sink my lips into his, bracing myself against the shock of it.
And just this—his lips against mine—heats me like a furnace, has me forgetting the snow still falling in uneven flurries. It’s everything our last kiss wasn’t, a kiss on myterms. A match to the box, gasoline on the fire. The battle between our lips, the reckless tangle of tongues, as I slide my hands over his shoulder and pull myself close to him, has him groaning, has him incapable of coherence and in the sea of pleasure that is his skin against mine, I can feel the fear receding.
Thisis what I wanted, I think as we tip over and into each other, hungry and unrestrained as our breaths coalesce, our touches deepening into something desperate. I taste him, the wine, the peppermint, our tongues twining around each other in slow torture and when I slip my hands under his sweater, his shirt, driving him crazy with the brush of my finger tips against his warm skin, he shudders. Face buried in my neck, he lays bruising kisses that I can’t help but arch into, that pull the softest whimper from me.
Our coats come off in a haze of lust before I find the band of his jeans, desire coiling around my core. He looks at me with this heavy gaze, heated and hazy, like he can’t think straight, and it only spurs me on more. I push him down to the blanket, run my teeth along the hard edge of his jaw, suck and taste and inhale the cologne on his neck, the sharpness piercing the last of my self control. The way I want this, with brutal intensity, with hot, all consuming recklessness, claws its way to the surface when I make my way down his chest. His heart beats so loud I can hear it, feel it against my hand as it rakes down the fabric of his sweater.
I look up at him, one hand pressing against his jeans, sinking my teeth into my bottom lip as I stifle my smugness and hide just how much I want?—
“Sloane,” he says, his voice hoarse like it literally had to grind to a halt.
I raise my brows and lift the edge of his sweater, trailing my lips along the warm, dark blonde hair dusted skin I find there,never taking my eyes off him. The moment he shifts out of carnal desire—I catch it, silently cursing everything.
“You’re rushing this.”
My breath runs ahead of me, and I fight to calm the anticipation still coursing through my veins. “Am I?” I grin, eyes narrowing, desperate to lose myself in those whims again. To stop talking and lose myself in pleasure.
“You know you are.” He reaches toward me, brushes my hair back, looks at me in that gently enough that I bristle. “What are you so afraid of?”
“Nothing.” I shake my head, my grin slowly falling the longer he peers into my eyes, the longer he only looks at that part of me when so much more is on offer.
“You sure?”
Beneath his cashmere sweater his chest rises and falls, his restraint evident in the bob of his throat. I seize on it, climbing up him until we’re face to face, my hand on the cold ground around his head, our noses almost brushing.
“Maybeyou’reafraid. What if you’re a disappointment?”
“I’m not worried about it,” he murmurs, drawing me in with the overwhelming press of his hand on my low back and brushing his lips against mine. And when I hungrily dive into the kiss, he inches back, a subtle smile playing on his lips.
“If we do this, Sloane, we’re not pretending,” he tells me while every part of him is pressed against every part of me.
“Why would I? I’ve got nothin’ to hide.” I smirk, dipping to press my lips against his when he flips us and grins down at me from above.
“Keep telling yourself that, sweetheart.”
My breath hitches as he drags his lips across my skin, softly kissing up my neck, my jaw. He presses another kiss at the base of my neck, his breath fanning across me until goosebumps erupt, dragging my pleasure through me like a hot scythe.
