Page 84 of Lyric & the Heartbeats

Lyric nodded. “Kiss me before I change my mind.”

She didn’t have to ask him twice. Adra cupped her face, her skin impossibly soft against his palm, and he lowered his head, brushing their lips together softly once, twice, and a third time before he slotted their lips together.

The sweetest hum vibrated into their kiss from her, and she parted her lips beneath his.

It was just a single kiss, but it had the power to bring him to his knees. Adra had almost forgotten… he’d grown accustomed to Emerson’s harshness. The bristles of his stubble, the hard planes of his body, the sharpness of his jaw.

Lyric was everything but harsh. She was soft, and her kiss, at first, brushed against his lips like a butterfly’s wing—light, barely there, possibly a figment of his imagination.

But it was no dream, not as she inched closer, placing her palms on his chest. At her touch, Adra noticed another striking difference: how small she was.

He could scoop her up and cradle her to his chest. He could engulf her in his arms and never let go.

Having her right in front of him, her smaller hands placed on his chest, her face cradled in his palm, it hit him how… precious she was.

I should treasure this.

“Adra might give in so easily, but I won’t. Not before you beg for it,” Emerson taunted from nearby.

Adra lifted his head, parting his lips from Lyric’s. He registered the blissed-out look on her face before he turned his head to Emerson. His gaze followed at the last second, stamping the image of her glossy lips and hooded eyes to memory.

He glared at Emerson.

“No. We’re not turning this into some game,” Adra argued.

Lyric was so headstrong, so adamant about not needing anyone, he didn’t want her to look back on this moment and think of herself as weak, or as someone who had to beg. Not when she had the power to utterly destroy him.

Them.

Because Emerson was just as lost as Adra was.

He knew it too, and agreed only a moment later after studying the conviction in Adra’s gaze.

With a soft nod, he circled around to Lyric’s back, staring up at Adra as he pressed his lips to her neck for a featherlight kiss. Her pulse jumped in her throat, as if eager to meet him.

“Fine, no games,” he muttered. “That alright with you, Lyric?”

“Mm-hmm. Yes. Yup,” she agreed, each eager affirmation like a crash into the door of his resolve. She leaned back into Emerson and stretched her arm out, gently clawing her fingers into his shirt to pull Adra forward too. But over her shoulder, Emerson dipped his chin, his gaze sliding past Adra to focus on something in the direction of the far wall.

The ice bucket.

So he’d been harboring the same idea Adra had in the hallway. This moment mirrored many of the fantasies he’d recently entertained for a brief period of time before guilt would sneak up on him. This time there was no guilt, and a kind of giddiness burst in his stomach. He’d almost call them butterflies.

He didn’t get butterflies often. At least not with Emerson. Usually they were too busy racing to the finish line, wrestling the pleasure out of one another.

But this was Lyric, and every part of him knew it.

It wasn’t a battle for dominance, it wasn’t a competition to see who could pleasure the other more.

It was a gift.

And Adra wasn’t one to squander something so rare.

He took both her hands in one, lowered them slowly, and stepped back. Her ocean eyes blinked open, questioning, before Emerson reached a hand around the front of her body, gripped her chin, and guided her lips to his. Adra backtracked carefully, unable to tear his gaze away from the sight of them together.

Watching their lips mold together and break apart again to make room for breaths reminded him that he’d barely tasted her.

Adra grabbed the ice bucket, plucked a shard from the pile, and slid it between his lips. He crunched it down to nothing by the time he reached Lyric again and placed his hand over Emerson’s to pull her face back to him.