It was too much. Wanting someone—wantinganything—could never end well. Not for anyone. Everything in the natural world had to bend to the laws of physics. What rose had to fall. Even precious things.
“I’m assuming if you’ve been listening…” Bryn reached for Vivian, her fingertips warm against her forearm. Her touch an electric rush igniting from the base of her spine and through her extremities like light was contagious. “That means you like what you hear?”
The cruelty of a touch so soft was unbearable. A touch that taunted Vivian with its absence even when she still had it. A touch that she’d ache for when she was back at home. That would make safety feel like a prison.
“Did you meet Russel?” Vivian asked.
Bryn furrowed her brow as if she couldn’t think of anything she wanted to discusslessthan work. “No.”
Vivian clawed at the life preserver bobbing in the ocean. She clung to it, dragging her exhausted body out of the waves. Away from the crushing want she couldn’t indulge.
“Let’s get back inside. He does all the casting for?—”
“Vivian, stop running from me.” Bryn ran her hand up Vivian’s arm, following the artery up to the frantic pulse in her neck.
“I’m not running.” She couldn’t even add a defensive edge to her tone.
Bryn’s smile was so gentle. So kind. “No?” She cocked her head to the side. “What do you call sitting outside when you forced me to mingle?—”
“It’s important that you make connections?—”
“Vivian,” she repeated her name like a grounding wire. “I don’t care about networking?—”
“You should?—”
“I don’t.” Bryn cradled Vivian’s jaw in her palm. She held her gaze until Vivian stilled. “Can we just stop pretending?”
It was a demand dressed up like a request. Vivian shook her head, but she couldn’t make herself deflect. The best she could counter with was a feeble, “What?” that didn’t even sound confused.
Eyes like crystalline water lapping against powder-white sand, Bryn looked at her with so much compassion the deepest ocean trench couldn’t hold it. “I like you. Like, Ireallylike you. And I think you like me too.”
She ran her blunt fingernails over Vivian’s temple and followed the curve of her ear with lethal tenderness. Her stomach dropped and breathing became impossible. Vivian couldn’t muster the strength to lie. It was all she could do to cling to the meager life preserver in the unforgiving sea.
“And all I’ve wanted to do since I kissed you once is to kiss you again,” Bryn muttered, hand on the back of Vivian’s neck, urging her closer, peeling back her fingers grasping her floating salvation. “To kiss you until my lips are numb and I can’t feel my tongue.”
Against her direct orders, Vivian’s hands found Bryn’s waist. She gripped her hard. Trading one desperate clinging for another.
“And I think…” Bryn pressed her body against Vivian’s, breath warm against her mouth. “I think maybe you’ve been waiting to kiss me too.”
Vivian let go, sinking into Bryn’s kiss. But with Bryn’s lips between hers, she was terrified to find out there was something worse than drowning. There was the intolerable relief of floating.
Body roaring to life with desire so intense it was foreign, Vivian told herself that one night couldn’t kill her. She pulled Bryn in hard, thigh between her parted legs. When Bryn groaned, hot and hungry, before deepening their kiss, Vivian was sure she intended to prove her wrong. That she might succeed in making this night her last.
ChapterTwenty-Five
Vivian slammedthe key card against the door. Despite the grating beep signaling that it hadn’t unlocked, Bryn tried the handle, one arm around Vivian’s waist and her mouth on Vivian’s lips. Vivian tried again, but she’d pressed Bryn against the door frame. Another harsh beep and an unyielding door.
“Someone’s going to see us,” Bryn panted before tugging on Vivian’s bottom lip with her teeth, earning a destabilizing moan that would echo forever in her body.
With her tongue teasing Bryn’s and hands running up Bryn’s sides, Vivian spoke a wordless:I don’t give a fuck. The incomparable sensation of being possessed unlocked some ancient, animalistic need Bryn had never felt in her life. She needed all of Vivian, and she needed her immediately.
Snatching the key from Vivian’s distracted grasp, Bryn broke their kiss just long enough to open the door. They tumbled inside the suite in a tangle of kicked off shoes.
Vivian kissed her like she didn't want to stop, but pulled back to reach behind herself. Bryn grabbed her wrist to stop her from undressing.
“Can I do it?” Bryn’s question was a breathless and nearly unintelligible rush.
Vivian stopped, dropping her hands to her sides. Standing there looking at Bryn, lips parted and chest heaving and throat flushed, Vivian was stunning. Stunning and sublime like the kind of person who would have inspired Sappho to write poetry that would last millennia. That would survive wars and puritanical purges and the unrelenting passage of time to be repeated against the shell of a modern lover’s ear with the same fervor the poet intended.
