‘Bye, Zach. And thanks for the trick on fractions!’
‘Oh! You’re the maths tutor!’ she chuckles, with palpable relief. ‘Sorry, I thought . . .’ she shakes her head. ‘I’ll just go, shall I? See you later, love.’
‘Bye, Mum.’
I close the door.
Chapter 43
I close my eyes and exhale. ‘Oh . . . my . . . God.’
Zach starts to laugh and there’s something about the awfulness of the situation that makes me join in. ‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ he says.
‘No,I’msorry. I’m cringing. That was ridiculous. I just didn’t want my mother to get the wrong impression about you and me.’
The look of amusement that remains on his face makes my temples colour. ‘And . . . what’s therightimpression?’
I blow out my cheeks. ‘Frankly, who knows?’
I open the door enough to see that Mum’s little Mazda has disappeared.
‘Is the coast clear?’
‘It is.’
I look at the floor and bite my lip self-consciously. When I raise my head again his gaze is fixed on the precise, tender part of my mouth that I’ve just had between my teeth.
‘Thank you, Zach.’
‘What for?’
‘The fractions.’
‘Oh. No problem.’ He smiles and I notice for the hundredth time the way the creases around his eyes fan out in the most pleasing way. I have a sudden urge to touch them.
‘Well, I’d better go. And leave you to your . . . what was it?’
‘Panelling.’
‘Right.’
I reach across to the latch on the door again and he turns to leave. But before he steps over the threshold, he leans in to peck me on the cheek. At least, that’s what it starts as. Hardly more than the kind of air kiss that happens all the time in our line of work. Only now, when his cheek brushes against mine, neither of us moves.
My eyelids flutter closed as I soak in the warmth of his skin. I tilt my chin just a fraction closer to him and press the corner of my mouth in the dip beneath his cheekbone. I can feel his whole body relax, like a sigh that runs all the way through him. He kisses me again. I return it with another. Eventually, I click the latch shut and move into his arms, allowing my mouth to fully meet his.
There is something about kissing Zach that reminds me of the feeling you get from licking buttercream off a spoon. It invokes all of my senses, sparking every pleasurable neural pathway in my possession. What is it that makes that tastesomuch better than the finished cake, the very thing you are supposed to enjoy more? The intense sweetness on the tongue? Its soft, creamy mouthfeel? Or the knowledge that this is reallynotsomething you are meant to love as much as you do . . .
A soft moan escapes from somewhere deep inside me, as I run my fingertips along the nape of his neck and his palms meander down to my behind. I wrap my arms around his neck and we continue to kiss as we make our way to the stairs. I recline onto them as he crawls on top of me and I slide my knees either side of him. I get a full sense of how muscular his shoulders are as his lips trace my jaw and I dig my fingernails gently into the ripples of his back.
‘Oh Lisa,’ he sighs into my neck. There is something wildly sensual about the sound of my name in his mouth. I can feel it tingling and fizzing somewhere in my chest. He pulls back gentlyand allows his eyes to travel over my face, so luxuriantly that it’s as if he is trying to consign every tiny feature to memory.
He reaches up to trace the outline of my eyebrow with his fingertips, then runs it along my cheekbone, all the way to the tip of my chin. When it’s there, he tilts up my head and plants another sumptuous kiss on my lips. Involuntarily, I squeeze my thighs against the outside of his muscular legs.
‘I cannot get you out of my head,’ he says softly.
‘Is that true?’
‘Completely true.’
