“Incredibly,” he confirmed severely. “I wasted so much time there.”
The smile on my face stretched wider. So much of this was a waste of time, but as my gaze fell to his lips, I couldn’t shake my mom’s voice.
And in the end, if you do it right, none if it will have been a waste at all.
I didn’t know whether this was right, but I knew the ache in my chest, and the way he made me feel when I was near him, and if that was wrong then let this be a waste of time—let me waste it here.
“I don’t think you wasted any time. You used your knowledge to help Eula pick out flowers for the bicentennial, didn’t you?”
“I still think she should’ve gone with lilacs,” he replied.
I hummed. “I think sunflowers fit better.”
“Hydrangea. They come in all sorts of colors.”
“Yarrow.”
His nose wrinkled. “Yarrow?”
“It’s pest resistant, drought resistant, it attracts butterflies Some say it’s even a cure for a broken heart.”
His eyebrows rose a fraction. “Ah, the truth comes out. The gardener is a romantic.”
“I’m not, really,” I replied, and married the space between us, placing the flower behind his ear. “Harrie said I had a love life like a lint dryer.”
“A tragedy,” he replied, and kissed me. My hands slid up to his collar, then the sides of his neck, tracing the line of his jaw with my fingertips. His breath went shallow under my touch. “Not yarrow,” he whispered, his cobalt gaze sliding up to mine, turning wine dark like the sea. “Camilla.” He held my hand against his cheek and bent his face into it, kissing the tender part of my wrist. “Buttercups. Orange blossoms.”
Flowers for yearning, for charm, for something old and eternal—something that lasted.
“Mistletoe,” I whispered, but what I meant waskiss me again.
And he understood.
He snagged my mouth with his, rough and urgent, kissing me like he’d missed me for years. Savoring, his tongue tracing my bottom lip, tasting me like he wanted to commit the way our mouths moved together to memory. I closed my eyes and sank into the feeling. He leaned against me, one hand on my wrist, holding it tightly as I cupped his face, his other on mythigh. His fingers inched upward, underneath my fraying shorts, his thumb falling into the crease of my hip, digging into the soft flesh there.
“You smell like daisies today,” he said against my mouth.
“I was trimming them earlier.”
“The ones on the west side of the hedge maze? I always loved it over there.” He kissed my cheek and then trailed his mouth down my face and burrowed himself into the side of my neck.
“They’re my favorites,” I admitted, feeling myself blush, my breath coming quicker.
On the vines, buds bloomed into bright yellow flowers, and in the soft summer breeze, windflowers burst with pinks and oranges and blues, but we didn’t notice any of it, lost in the taste of honey. He pressed our foreheads together, breathing in the scent of me. “I fear I want so much of you. When you first woke me up, I felt so hollow—dormant—as if I’d forgotten what it felt like to be alive. But with you, Sophie? Here? Now? I can’t remember what it felt like to feel nothing.” He hesitated, searching my eyes. “I like you so much, Sophie.”
My heart felt so full it could burst. I cupped his face in my hands and whispered, “Kiss me again.”
His pupils dilated at the command. “You could say please.”
“Kiss me again,please.”
His mouth brushed against mine, teasing. “Just a kiss?” he purred.
Yearning burned, deep and hungry, in my belly. “What else do you have in mind?”
“I’ve got a good imagination,” he replied, his voice warm with adoration. Then he stole another kiss and roughly pushedme all the way back against the wall, the hard brick digging into my shoulder blades. His teeth nibbled against my bottom lip, sharp and coy, as his long fingers traced the side of my face.
The buttoned-up refinement he’d tried so hard to wear was coming undone one kiss at a time, reawakening something warm and wild.
