I wait. I mean it. One word, and I’m across the room.
Her fingers curl into the front of my shirt. I feel the pull before I register what it means, and then her mouth is on mine.
Warm. A little desperate. She tastes like coffee, and her lips are softer than I let myself imagine, and she makes this small sound against my mouth that goes straight through me.
My hand slides from her jaw into her hair. She presses closer and I can feel her heartbeat, fast and hard, matching mine.
Her grip tightens like she’s afraid I’ll be the one to pull away. I answer by pulling her between my knees, fitting her against me, and she melts into it. Into me. Her fingers drag up the back of my neck, and every place she touches rewires something in my brain.
I don’t know my name. I don’t know where I come from or what I’ve done or who’s looking for me. But I know this. The taste of her. The way she fits against me. The sound she just made. I know this like I’ve never known anything.
And for one second, everything in my broken head goes quiet.
And there’s just her.
7
NATALIA
Johnny’s armtightens around my waist, and I stop thinking.
Like someone reached into my skull and flipped a breaker.
His mouth is warm and certain against mine. The taste of him makes my head swim and I don’t care. His fingers are in my hair, gentle, the faintest pull at my scalp sending heat down my spine. I press closer because I can. Because I want to. Because for once in my miserable life something feels good and I’m not going to ruin it by thinking.
A sound slips out of me. Barely anything. Just a catch in my throat when he pulls me tighter, fitting me between his knees, and his grip changes. Goes hungrier. Like that tiny noise snapped something loose in him.
I’ve been kissed before. Clumsy, stolen things behind the pool house when I was sixteen. Quick and forgettable.
This is neither.
His thumb traces a slow circle on my hip through my shirt. My whole body narrows to that single point of pressure. I want moreof it. More of him. More of this wild, reckless feeling burning through me like a lit fuse. Nobody has ever kissed me like they were trying to learn me by heart.
So for one blazing moment, I let myself have it. All of it. The warmth of him, the solidness of his chest, the scratch of stubble against my chin, the way his fingers curl at my waist like he’s afraid I’ll disappear. I sink into it the way you sink into hot water after being cold for too long, and something inside me that’s been clenched since I was old enough to understand my cage finally, finally unclenches.
His mouth moves to my jaw. The corner of it, then lower, just below my ear, and the sound I make this time isn’t small. His breath is hot against my skin and I feel it everywhere. I pull him closer, not thinking about it, just needing less space between us. He makes a satisfied sound against my throat that vibrates through my whole body, and I realize with a kind of dazed clarity that I would let this man take me apart right here in this kitchen and thank him for it.
My hand drifts up the side of his face, fingertips tracing stubble along his jaw—and find the butterfly strips.
He’s hurt. He doesn’t know who he is.
And I just had my tongue in his mouth.
Fantastic work, Natalia. Really top-notch judgment.
I wrench backward so fast I nearly knock the stool over. The kitchen air rushes cold between us. My hand flies to my lips. His taste is still there.
You’ll get him killed.
“This is wrong.” My voice comes out raw. “Your memory. You could be in a relationship. You could be married, for all we know.”
Johnny stands from the stool slowly. Like I’m something that might bolt.
“I could also be completely single.” A muscle tics near his eye. “We’ve been over this.”
“That was before we kissed.”
Heat flickers across his face, like the reminder of what just happened is doing the opposite of what I intended.
