Then he lowered his head, and claimed her mouth. This kiss had a different flavor than any of the ones they had shared before.
It wasn’t tinged with grief. And it wasn’t filled with the kind of reverence that the one in the garden had been filled with.
She had lost that. That moment of pure emotion, and it wasn’t her fault.
It was his fear. She knew that. Understood it.
But she could let it go. For now.
She could just accept this, as it was.
He cupped the back of her head, and deep into the kiss, sliding his tongue against hers, one arm tight around her waist as he held her against the firm, muscular wall of his body.
Out there in the sun. No masks, no one to watch.
They weren’t shrouded in darkness, weren’t hiding in the shadows.
They weren’t shrouded in grief.
Not in fear.
She wasn’t going to have to go home to her stepmother’s house tonight. She could stay with him. They could explore this.
They actually had all the time in the world. To try to sort out what this was. To try to sort out what it could be.
That was terrifying. Comforting.
Because that meant they had a lot of time to hurt each other.
But a lot of time to heal each other too.
Maybe it meant that she couldn’t continue to hang onto that part of her that wanted to protect herself.
Anger, she had found, was easy. Anger insulated you. Anger kept you from being hurt. It allowed you to turn the barbs that were being directed at you onto the other person.
It had been a revelation, because she just wasn’t an angry person, but everything that had happened to her in the last few months had let her brew something vile and toxic inside of her, and she had found it to be a wonderful source of strength and protection.
But it had to stop.
It had to. She had to make room for this.
And for all the endless possibilities in it.
He kissed her, his hands moving down over her midsection, moving up to cup her breast. He kissed her, like he was dying. Like there was nothing else in the world he wanted.
And she kissed him back, because there wasn’t anything else she wanted.
She was every inch that girl who had come to him that first night, except this time she knew what it could cost her to push him too far. This time she knew what she was risking, and here she was, kissing him anyway.
It was legendary, and terrifying. She had never been so brave.
She tightened her hold on him, surrendering herself to the violent need inside of her.
He growled, kissing a line down her neck, down her collarbone, to her shoulder, where he nipped her.
“I need to see you,” he said.
He pulled her bikini top away, exposing her breasts to his hungry gaze.
