“Wh-why did you call me Angel?” My voice shook. My fingers dug deeper into his waist. I could feel his heat through his T-shirt.
Despite my name, no one had ever called me Angel.
His watery, dark-aquamarine eyes dropped to my lips. “First time I ever saw you…” he said, his voice rough and dark as sin, “you were wearing a shirt with a kitten on it. With wings. A fucking sequined kitten. You remember that?”
“No.”
Yes.
But… he remembered what I was wearing the first time we met?
“And some short little shorts…” His eyes wandered down. “With bare legs. And high-heeled boots. And you know what I thought?”
I swallowed.
He leaned in, until his lips were so close to mine I could smell him—all his rough and ready maleness and his sweet-smoky aftershave and the alcohol on his breath. I could smell the joint burning down between his fingers, so close to my face. I could taste him in the air between us like an instantly addictive drug. “I thought, I bet she’s even prettier when she begs.”
I sucked in a breath. I knew he was about to kiss me.
I didn’t move.
My core lit on sweet, heavenly fire as his lips met mine.
And yes, I kissed him back.
Because you know what? Life isn’t easy.
We don’t always get what we want.
We don’t always want what we get.
Inside, we are nothing like what others think we are when they look at us.
We are deeply misunderstood.
And we are complicated. We are so many things; more things than we are not.
Ifeltso many things in that moment as Johnny O’Reilly kissed me in the dark, with only the moon and stars as witness to our seeking tongues, our pounding hearts.
He broke the kiss, abruptly, and I held my breath, reeling. My hands dropped away from him.
What the hell did I just do?
He turned my head in his hands and kissed my neck. “I’ll take my time…” he rasped in my ear. “I’ll make you purr.” His tongue drifted up the curve of my ear and I shuddered.
“Don’t,” I whispered. I pressed my shaking hands to his chest and stepped back an inch.
“Don’t… what?” He looked amused, maybe. And for a split second in the shifting moonlight through the trees, as his eyes met mine again, he looked broken.
I didn’t feel amused. Or broken. I felt confused. I was reeling with emotions. So many feelings at once, I couldn’t lock onto a single one of them.
But I knew I didn’t owe him any explanation. I didn’t owe him anything. I had no idea if he knew I had a boyfriend, but in the end, none of that was his responsibility.
I wrapped my arms around myself as his eyes dragged over me, slow.
Then his hands released me, gently. He brought the joint to my lips. I took a small, hesitant drag, breathing in the musky smoke. He took a drag, too, his eyes never leaving mine.
“You should go back in the house,” he said softly, exhaling smoke into the air.
