Page 29 of Up In Flames

“No, I don’t think so. That’s our old way of thinking.” Slowly, I get to my feet. I don’t want to frighten her, and my size sometimes does that to people, but I need her to see what I’m seeing. The parallels. The interconnection. The possibility. Hands up in front of me in a placating gesture, I move towards her. “And I’m not nuts. I’m realistic. We spent how many years despising each other for the exact same reason, a reason devoid of any real fact? That’s mutual something. Plus, if I’m being honest, I’ve seen you around town, and each time my dick gets hard. That may not be love, but it sure is lust. It certainly means that we have chemistry, at least from my side. I’m pretty sure you feel it, too.”

Those beautiful blue eyes widen. “For a guy who doesn’t swear, you’ve got one hell of a potty mouth.”

“What, dick? That’s not a curse, it’s a noun.” I pause to wonder if I’m really going to do this, but I already know I am. I’m not letting her get away without understand what I feel. What we could both feel. “But if you want the words, then here are some more: when I felt your pussy against my fingers, it felt so right, here,” I cover my chest with my fist, “that I haven’t stopped feeling you since. I feel you in my veins, Nina. You’re in my head. You’re on my palms. You’re in every single part of me.”

“Dick included, I suppose?” she snaps.

I measure the final step so that I end up standing right in front of her. I bend to reach for her hand and place it over my aching erection. It’s not a subtle move. There’s no seduction in it. It’s just an open invitation.

When I remove my grip, her fingers remain, testing my thickness. “Dick very much included.”

She blushes an even brighter red but doesn’t remove her fingers. Instead, she gently squeezes. I’m practically doubled over in the tight boxer briefs I slipped into just because I knew they’d help contain me, but I don’t know if she can feel that.

“I think there’s no way that’s getting inside me.”

Her words punch me with a force capable of knocking me to my knees, until I realize she’s not saying she doesn’t want me inside her. She thinks I won’t fit.

My fingers toy with the hair that sweeps against her cheeks. “If you want it, it’ll fit. I’ll make you scream with the pleasure of it, Jelly Bean, that’s a promise. You’ll be dripping so much honey, I’ll glide right in.”

She swallows, her throat working. “That’s a mighty big assurance from a guy who was a virgin until college.”

In a quick move, I lift her in my arms until her mouth lands even with mine. Her lips part on a gasp, but I wait, eyes-to-eyes, and when she doesn’t object, I say, “You don’t have to take me on faith. I can prove it to you.”

A tiny mewl like a little lost kitten brushes against my mouth. The sound wings its way to my heart and stays there.

And so, I press my lips to hers, gently. Softly. Testing, and giving her a way to disengage if that’s what she wants to do.

But her lips open fully under mine, just like the answer to a prayer.

CHAPTER 9

Nina

Fuck, I’m kissing him. I’m kissing Sampson, my enemy who’s not my enemy anymore, and his lips are so hard and soft at the same moment, and my entire body feels as if I’ve just stepped into a tub filled with water and plugged-in electrical appliances. And all of me wants more.

I’m held in his strong arms against gravity, and I wouldn’t have thought there’d be a difference from standing on my feet, but there is. I feel lighter, like I’m flying, like I never have to touch the ground… and like I’m finally safe, when I didn’t even realize I was in danger. I grasp his large head, and force his lips to mine, sucking off his face, as we used to say in high school—and I never comprehended how accurate the expression was.

And he sucks off mine, but in smaller measure, little licks and twirls of his tongue mixing in with vacuuming me right up into the heart of him. And I’m lost. And maybe found.

It’s not a getting-to-know-you kiss. It’s a kiss of coming back home. It’s ravenous hunger and a missing-for-too-long. It’s a remembering and a forgetting.

When I need to breathe, lightheaded from the onslough, I pull back. “Wow.”

His green eyes glitter like fine emeralds. “Wow, indeed.”

My palm brushes his cheek. “We shouldn’t. You’re injured. I don’t want to send you back into the hospital.”

“I’m fine. I don’t feel a thing. No, that’s not true. I feel one very specific thing, and that’s a need to fuck you. Come on. Let’s take this horizontal.” He begins to carry me back in the direction of his bedroom, but stops, his gaze heavy on mine as he searches my face. “You want this?”

Do I? Only like oxygen. “I want this.”

“You’re sure? Because we’ve been enemies a lot longer than we’ve been friends, and if you’re uncertain, that’s okay. I’ll wait. I’m not going anywhere, even if you say no, not unless you want me to leave.”

“What? And leave you to get amnesia from too many triplets, or maybe from that university professor? Or—whoever.” Whoever keeps this place so pristine, I mean to add, but I can’t bring myself to address her directly, the woman who arranges flowers and provides pretty cutlery. Though I should. I don’t want to be the cause of him cheating on someone he’s serious about, and there are so many signs that he lives with someone: the flowers, the wrought iron flatware, the blanket carefully folded over the back of the couch…

One of his patented smirks creases his face. “You’ve been keeping up with my dating life,” he purrs. “That’s promising.”

“It’s Mossburg. Hard to miss what its leading eligible bachelor is up to. And is ‘dating life’ what we’re calling fucking now?”