She sighed. “Just tell me how I can fix this.”
“Why do you want to fix it?”
“I don’t know? Because—I thought aside from us… asidefrom the physical aspect of our relationship, I thought we were friends?”
Friends.I didn’t want that.
I nodded. “I have heard all you’ve said, I understand the position you might have been put in on that bus, and I apologize for the mental stress I might have caused afterward, but I still fail to understand what you want from me.”
She blew out a breath like I had been making her work out for hours, and then she took the final step closer to me, and I could feel her warmth.
“You,” she stated. “I want you; I want your body, your fucking weirdness, just you… all of you.”
A warm, gentle glow settled inside me, but I locked my jaw as I said, “At this point, you’re picking out my own words and throwing them back at me.”
“Oh, come on, Elio!” she snapped, and it took all my resolve not to smile. “I am doing the best I can here; I want to swallow my own fucking tongue for even saying all of this shit to you! You’re a fucking asshole who looks like he wants to kill me half the time, but I’ve known you for months, and you have wanted to kill me for months, but you ended up fucking me instead and telling me you like me but still want to slit my throat, and here we are!” She breathed out. “Here I am, doing the same while trying not to decapitate you for making me talk too much.”
“Thought you liked talking.”
“You know what? Fuck you, and fuck this.” She walked around me quickly, already opening the door to leave, but I was faster, my front pressed to her back as my hand rose to slam the door shut before she could even open it fully.
With my palm still pressing on the door, a few spaces above and beside her head, and my body still locking hers between me and the door, I gave her a tiny space, and she turned around sharply with a murderous glare. “If you know what’s fucking good for you, you would let me o—”
I caught her remaining words with my lips.
And it took the warmth from her mouth on mine, the thundering hard gripping and tightness in my chest, the nerve-tingling feeling up my spine to my stomach, and the goose bumps arising on my skin for me to realize the mind-rocking clarity of what I’d just done.
I had broken my last rule.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Zahra
Iam in trouble.
Elio was kissing me, and my limbs, my fight, all my fucking resolve had melted with that single buzzing connection. I was standing, but it didn’t feel like I was standing; my brain cells felt nonexistent, my bones were no longer erect, and breathing…what even is that?
Was I breathing before he pressed his lips to mine?
When was the last time I was conscious? Where the fuck am I?
I felt his hand come up to hold the side of my face—gently—as if he was afraid he would break me—and then, he pulled away, and I couldn’t see; I could breathe air back into my lungs, even with how rapidly my heart was racing, but for some reason, I couldn’t see—
Oh, wait.
I opened my eyes, catching the intense gray of his stare, now dark and filled with so much emotion that it had my stomach flipping without warning, watching me like I was his most prized possession—like I was the reason for his existence.
I might be exaggerating it, but goddamn, if that wasn’t the message his eyes sent, I didn’t know what it was. It was too much for me to handle; it was contagious—so contagious that I wanted to push him away and bolt out of this room, off of this cruise ship, out of fucking Mexico.
But my feet were pinned to the ground, my heart was beating in the same rhythm as his, my body was warm all over, and I was a fucking goner.
If my disgusting behavior with texting him didn’t show mehow bad I had it for this man, this kiss just ripped the veil from my eyes.
“I vowed never to do that,” he said, his thumb stroking down my chin to the pulsing vein in my neck. “I vowed to never kiss you or anyone ever again.”
“Why?” I asked, my voice barely a whisper.
“You didn’t like it the first time I did it.”
