After that, she couldn’t think of anyone else. She could only think of him, and herself, in matching black and melding into each other. A fae prince and a now immortal-feeling girl.
They kissed for so long that there were stages of it—the storm strengthening, receding, strengthening again. Sometimes, it would turn too close to explosive: a drifting and then clutching hand, a rolling pelvis, a particularly out-of-control moment where one of her legs lifted, her thigh going to the outside of his, basicallyclimbinghim. Each time, one of them would pull back, only enough to breathe into each other for a calming second before starting again.
Dimly, she realized that it was this way because neither of them were ready to take it to a second location, or maybe both of them were too fearful of breaking this spell. Thiskissing, this conversation, thistussle, where their tongues fought for dominance, where one or the other of them used their teeth, where they coaxed withmoans and scolded with hisses of breath and soothed with strokes of their hands.
Where they taught each other how to be kissed.
Eventually, new sensations assailed her: her hair catching in a splinter of the door she was pressed flat against, one of her petal sleeves tickling too low on her arm, possibly torn. Her lips swollen-feeling, a little raw, her nipples aching, the space between her legs…god, the space between her legs. Hot and wet and pulsing,hurting, and it felt sogood, because that’s what he had said—he said it should hurt not to kiss her, and she wanted to stop only long enough to say,That’s how it hurts, not to do more than kiss you right now.
Then, a voice other than the one in her head cut through the haze. A stream of French, followed by laughter and a few hoots, the sound of it both good-natured and mocking. She could not hope to understand the words, not really, but she thought she caughtembrasser, which maybe meant embrace, maybe meant embarrassed, but neither one was right for what she and Griffin were doing…
Wait.
What they had been doing.
Now that his mouth wasn’t on hers, the noise that intruded was more notable—the laughter, footsteps fairly close. At first, he only turned his face—giving her his right side, the sidewalk his scars, his expression grim and distant. He stood like that, statued in profile, until the footsteps faded, and the truth was, she couldn’t think of much—other than how much longer it would take for him to start kissing her again.
So when he started to step away, she reacted. Her hands grabbing his sides, trying to stop him, but he kept going, quicker now.
Away from her. His hands slid from where they’d been on herbody—one high up on her rib cage, one in her hair. He held them strangely still for a moment, as though they were frozen in the shape of her, and then shoved them in his pockets as he took another step back.
Not so far that he wasn’t still blocking her from sight of the street, but far enough.
Far enough to feel like being hauled out of another world.
He did not look like himself.
Or he did, but not like the Griffin she’d seen tonight.
She tried for something light. Something that would bring him back to how they’d been before, to the memory of what they’d built over the course of today.
“Talk about being the show,” she said. The small smile on her lips felt unusual, what with her swollen lips, her chin raw from his stubble.
He didn’t smile back. No quirk, no curve.
Nothing.
He said, “Sorry.”
Not even anI’mpreceding it.
A sorry, shorn.
“Sorry?”
His hands shifted in his pockets, curled into fists she knew well now: white-knuckled, impenetrable. Made of stone.
“That was—we got carried away.”
“Carried…away?”
She knew, in a distant way, that she was only repeating things, her mouth slowly forming around words that made no sense to her. She was thinking in a different language now, the one he’d taught her:nothing amicable about losing you, starved to death.
This street is mine.
“It was a mistake,” he said, and that one cut through. She couldn’t bring herself to repeat it, but it got her to move, at least. A flick of her wrist, her watch lighting. Twenty-five minutes since she’d last looked at it, in her hot, confusing frenzy to leave that restaurant, to stop looking at Griffin Testa’s mouth and imagining what it could do.
One kiss was a mistake, maybe.
