I met him halfway. “And what if I do?”
What if I liked it very much?
He didn’t expect me to take the bait; I could tell by the silence that followed, and the height of his eyebrows. His mouth fell open, gasping like a fish out of water, but when words wouldn’t come, his gaze dropped to my mouth.
The blush that had crawled over his cheeks was rampant now, reaching his ears. “Goodness, Sophie,” he murmured, “tease me a little less, would you?”
“Tease you?” I blinked innocently and pointed the strawberry at him. “I don’t say things I don’t mean, Cyrus—”
He leaned in closer, his eyes catching mine, and holding them as he bit into the strawberry. Sank his teeth slowly into the red flesh of the fruit, the juices trickling down his chin.
I inhaled sharply. I know he heard.
I know he heard because his eyes darkened considerably.
My middle burned.Kiss me, the thought erupted, visceral and wanting, coming from somewhere so unexpected it made me lightheaded.Please—
He ate the strawberry, easing back a little, closing his eyes.“I didn’t realize how hungry I was,” he said, cleaning his mouth with his fingers. “It tastes like I remember, but … it’s missing something.”
“Sugar or chocolate,” I forced out.Calm down. He was just teasing, too. He wasn’t serious.“My mom eats them with Cool Whip.”
“No, it’s something else,” he said, and he certainly did seem serious, after all. I’d never seen that look before. I felt buoyant and pinned to the spot all at once. He leaned over again, his nose brushing against mine. “May I?”
“Yes.” My voice was barely a whisper against his mouth.
He pressed his lips against mine. Stern and sharp, kissing me with the sort of confidence that caught me by surprise, the boldness, the surety, as if he’d thought about kissing me for weeks and knew exactly how he wanted to.
Where to start. Where to go. Where to end.
As if he’d mapped it out. The course he’d chart, the path he’d follow, the time he’d take.
And hecertainlytook his time. For a man who was so afraid to waste it, he kissed me like he had all the time in the world.
The thought that he’d imagined how to kiss me, where, for how long, it coiled tight in my belly. I leaned into him, my fingers threading into his copper hair, wanting to feel closer. Wanting tobecloser. Burrow myself into his skin, root myself there underneath his scent of lavender and fresh soil and summer rain. God, what a lovely smell he had.
He leaned into me, his hands dropping from my face, tracing down the sides of my neck, down the curve of my shoulders, fingertips snaking to my middle.
“You taste like I imagined,” he whispered, pupils blown wide, and this close I finally got the chance to look at him—to trulylook. At the freckles that dotted his cheeks in uncharted constellations, and the curl of copper hair that felt just as soft as it looked, and the mirage of a five o’clock shadow just as ginger as his hair and eyebrows and eyelashes—
Maybe, I thought,the garden keeps you because you’re golden hour made real.
“How long have you wanted to kiss me?” I murmured.
“Since I woke up,” he replied, hot words against my mouth. “I have been starving, I think.”
Around the gazebo, there was a ripple of color as the asters and cosmos and star jasmines bloomed, petals bright and lush and lovely, and he kissed me again.
He kissed me voraciously, as if, in the weeks leading up to now, he’d still been waking up, and now he was ravenous. He cradled my face, fingers curling into the hair at the nape of my neck, his other hand sliding around my waist to bring me closer, and I let him. Gladly, wholeheartedly, melting into the kiss like ice on a hot pavement. His mouth captured mine like he wanted to imprint my mouth, my taste, my tongue, into his memory.
This is dangerous.
It was a sudden cold realization in my bones.
This is foolish.
What if I couldn’t find the real door and he ended up stuck here? What if we ran out of time? What if I couldn’t stop him from coming into this garden, and what if—
What if Icould?
