Well,thatwas terrifying. “Listen, if we need to end this for tonight, we can. I just grilled you pretty mercilessly, and… Does it leave you tired, after it hits you like that?”
“A little. I don’t think it’s so much from the…thirst…as it is from the effort to restrain myself.” He blinked. “I’ve never told anybody that before.”
“Then if it’s okay, there’s one last thing I want to ask you.”
He nodded, and his face was wholly open to her. He had stopped shrinking, stopped hiding.
Her final question could ruin all of it. Claire wished she could call on her future-sight when she needed it, but it didn’t work that way. She tried to be still and tune in to the source of what she sometimes “just knew,” her heart or her gut or something,but in this moment she had only the sharpness of her reasoning, which said after three years, Tai either wanted her or he didn’t.
Fear dripped down her spine, real fear that he didn’t.
Which meant she had to face it down.
“Earlier you said you chose not to tell me because you see this as the worst thing about you, and because… You said, ‘because you’reyou.’”
The air itself seemed to go still between them. Tai’s lips parted. He gave a slow blink that emphasized the thick fringe of his lashes, and in a moment Claire was no longer asking and listening. Instead she was…feeling. Tai. The pull she used to feel toward him, used to be sure he felt toward her.
“Claire,” he said, turning her simple name into a song.
She had to be sure. Their truce was still young. She wanted his friendship so much, and if she was misreading signals…
Tai’s voice lowered to something like a purr. “If it isn’t there for you, I understand.”
“So I wasn’t imagining back then, that sometimes you seemed like you might be interested…not as friends or business partners, but…?”
He slid his hand through her hair. He held her eyes with his, and the gleam in them now was so bright she couldn’t look away. His beauty was so unique, and his heart… She could finally see his heart, see the shield he kept up so desperately around it because deep inside, Tai Kristiansen wasn’t impervious at all. His heart held splinters and struggle.
“You weren’t imagining it,” he said. “Was I?”
“If you were, would I be doing this?” She leaned into his touch, slid the hand she’d kept on his back up to his shoulder, then down to his chest. His heart gave an extra beat, and she kept her palm there, against this heart that was more vulnerable than she ever would have guessed.
“I know you said you don’t date. I know three years might be too long.” His fingers drifted to cup her cheek, and his thumb traced her cheekbone. “But if I could kiss you right now, you’d know how I—“
Claire’s fingers curled in his tuxedo jacket as she pressed her lips to his. Tai cupped the back of her head in one hand and with the other cradled her back along his arm. She’d known she was hungry for his kiss, but in an instant she learned something else about him: Taihadwanted her too. All this time. Claire toed off her pumps and climbed onto his lap. She pushed her fingers through his black hair, and it was unexpectedly soft.
Their kiss wasn’t soft. Their kiss didn’t build. It was rough, wild, greedy from the moment it began, and it lasted that way, and Claire had never been kissed by someone who could match her like this. She pressed him harder, raked her fingers across his scalp, and Tai met her in every way, gasping out a laugh that pushed both of them closer to an edge they weren’t ready for tonight.
At last they drew apart. Tai’s low, relaxed chuckle curled her bare toes against the couch cushion. She stayed where she was, legs draped over his, half-slouched against the sole throw pillow.
“You,” he said. “I never thought.”
“Trouble with sentences at the moment?” She pushed her finger into his left dimple as he smirked. “You too, by the way. And I never thought either. Or that is—when I did think it, I told myself I was imagining what I wanted to be real.”
“Mmm,” he hummed in affirmation, then grew serious as he brushed her hair back from her face. “Maybe I am imagining it. Still.”
“If I promise you’re not, will you believe me?”
“I want to. It’s just been with me…a long time. I might need some time.”
“What’s been with you, Tai?”
He leaned his head back and closed his eyes. A slow breath filled his chest, then seeped out of him even more slowly. “Fear, I think. Fear for anyone to know. And total certainty that anyone who does know…”
“Kicks you out?” she said softly.
He flinched. “Yeah. That. But you…”
“Instead of kicking you out, we made out.”
