He leans in. Slow. Giving me time to object. Time to remember this is fake.
I don’t object.
His lips touch mine. Soft. Careful. Testing.
Then deeper. His hand cups my jaw—cool fingers against my sun-warmed skin. My fingers curl into his shoulders.
The water moves around us. The sun beats down. Somewhere, my sister is filming this.
I don’t care.
When we break apart, he’s looking at me like I’m the only real thing in his world.
“That—that was very convincing,” I whisper.
His thumb traces my lower lip. “I wasn’t acting.”
CHAPTER 15
JULIAN
The water is warm around us. The Bahamas sun is beating down on us. And I have just made a catastrophic mistake.
I kissed her.
Not what we practiced—the careful choreography of casual intimacy designed to convince her family. This was something else entirely. Authentic. Real. Her soft lips against mine. Her fingers digging into my shoulders as she pulled closer.
No alcohol affecting judgments. No excuses. This was decades of careful distance collapsing in the span of a single breath.
“That—that was very convincing.” Poppy whispers, her voice uncertain.
My thumb traces her lower lip. “I wasn’t acting.”
The words hang between us, dangerous and true. Her blue eyes—the same ones that have caught every slip in my carefully constructed facade—have widened. I can see her processing, filing, trying to reconcile what I’ve just admitted with the contract that defines our relationship.
Every instinct tells me to retreat. To dismiss this as method acting. To rebuild the wall I’ve been demolishing since the night she sent me that application, her face bare of makeup, her voice raw with honesty.
But I can’t seem to do it. I pull her closer. Let my forehead rest against hers. Breathe in the salt air. The sunscreen. And something beneath it that’s uniquely her.
For one perfect moment, there is no Damien. No Prague Rule. No centuries of loss teaching me that love is just another word for future grief.
There is only Poppy. Only this.
She inches forward for another kiss.
“Are you sure about this?” I want it. More than anything. But I want her to want it.
“Yes,” she says ever so gently as she seals it with a kiss.
Even more passionate than the first two kisses.
After two and a half centuries of watching lovers come and go, of feeling my own heart calcify with each passing decade, I recognize the dangers of what is happening between us. She awakens hungers I’ve spent lifetimes learning to control.
This time we both surrender completely, her pulse quickening against my slow-beating veins, her heart racing while mine keeps its ancient, unhurried rhythm, breaking down any fortress I might have built to protect her from what must inevitably follow.
After we break our embrace, our bodies are still magnetized, fingertips lingering on each other’s skin. Her breath comes in shallow waves against my mouth. My thumb traces the pulse at her throat, feeling it hammer beneath the delicate skin. I can’t look away from her. I won’t look away. It’s as if centuries of existence have merely been a prelude to this single, scorching moment.
Then Poppy’s gaze drops, severing the connection.
