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He nodded. “I should’ve asked you first.”

I smiled. Yes, you should have.

“So…” He bit his lip, which was kinda adorable. “Will you punch me again if I kiss you?”

“No.” I ran my hands up his arms, over the outlines of tight muscles beneath his shirt, and finally admitted what I had kept hidden for a long time. “But I will if you don’t.”

He drew me against his chest and dropped his chin. Our warped, mirrored reflections blurred seconds before I closed my eyes and let his lips find mine, a small gasp escaping from both of us when he did.

Oh my God.

I had been kissed before, some good, most just meh. But this? This was what I always imagined a kiss should feel like.

Slow.

Curious.

But hungry. Like hearing a whisper of a secret that left you craving more.

Yes. More.

I parted his lips with my tongue, tasting sweet Nilla Wafers, and my fingers dug into his back, aching to feel closer to him. We stumbled through a few more arches until we bumped against a rounded mirror that opened into a room I didn’t know existed. The mirror slammed shut behind us, leaving us alone in the dark, with only a sliver of light near our feet.

For a long moment, my forehead pressed against his chin. The rapid rise and fall of his chest under my hands told me he was just as breathless as I was.

But did he feel the same heat searing through his body?

The same weightlessness?

I let my fingers trail up his neck, let one of my thumbs brush over his swollen lips and that perfect dimple.

A second later, like two star-crossed, warped, confused comets, burning brightly to the point of a reckless explosion, we collided. He lifted me off the ground and spun me around. My legs crossed behind his back, pulling him against me as my back banged into another wall. Thankfully, this one didn’t move.

But his mouth did. Leaving a trail of kisses along my jaw before he followed the freckles down my neck.

God dammit, Reed Fulton, you’re good at this.

I moved my mouth down to where the stubble turned smooth on his warm, sunburned neck and flushed all over from the noise he made. Our hands reached everywhere for each other, searching, exploring, and Jesus, it felt so good.

Then voices drifted in from outside the secret room. He jumped, brushing his lips across my forehead before I unwound my legs and dropped—regretfully—back to the floor, which did nothing to help my wobbly knees.

“Eliza,” he whispered into my hair.

He had said my name at least a hundred times in all the years I’d known him.

But it had never sounded like that.

Like a revelation.

A beat before his mouth met mine again, I echoed, “Reed,” hoping it sounded the same.

Like someone who had left behind a part of themselves.

Someone who didn’t quite believe that the unbelievable had just happened.

Someone who had floated away from the hall of mirrors and spun around as if on a carousel.

Chapter Fourteen