Page 19 of Read My Lips

Ridiculous assertion: Us being together. Right. How hilariously unlikely.

Simon’s thumb traced a nonsense pattern over the ridge of my knuckles, and my brain fused. “Erm.” I tugged my hand free. Why did he keep touching me if it was all so bloody improbable? “Excuse me, Mel was practically begging you to give her an alternative explanation and you were stood there like a lemon.”

“Yes. Thank you for the I’m Spartacus routine. The thing is, it’s not entirely convincing we absolutely had to have each other right then and there when you’re getting twitchy over me standing too close.”

I jutted my chin up so fast I nearly headbutted him. “I am not getting twitchy about you standing too close.”

“No?” His cat-lick of a glance dragged right down the length of me, only it didn’t make me feel remotely clean.

“No.”

Tilting my head against the glass transformed Simon into a silhouette against the rapidly lightening sky. No surprise he eclipsed everything else. My backwards self-preservation drive had me holding my breath until my lungs burned and the colours throbbed, but he didn’t look away.

I bottled it first, glancing to the door again. Mel stretched out an arm and pointedly tapped the face of her watch. He was right. They weren’t going to buy this just because I stood up and told them it was true. Mel Booker wasn’t born yesterday.

Action required, stat. “We’d better give them something to look at then, hadn’t we?”

“Excellent idea. Exactly what I was thinking.” Simon flashed his eyebrows, fizzing with mischief. “Do try not to fall over.”

I full-on gulped. His eyes dropping to my mouth had absolutely jack-all to do with understanding what I was about to say. I wasn’t about to say anything.

His lips were right there. And then they were on mine.

Oh. They were as well, weren’t they?

And my breath was dead-rat level disgusting. Why did I not carry breath mints?

Too late now. Too bloody late.

Simon’s hands went for either side of my head, clamping me still, and I eyeballed him, utterly frozen, drowning in the golden brown of his irises, like those sailors who got sirened down to the depths of the Mariana Trench and liked it.

He kissed me. With his mouth and his lips and choirs of angels peering down from the clouds waiting for me to get with the programme. Eyes closed, swooping violins. Kissed me.

And I stood there with my fingers twitching, like a powered-down robot who’d forgotten it had arms.

He eased back. My brain fizzed, sparking uselessly, and a sound like a pair of deflating bagpipes wheezed right out of my lungs.

Simon stepped back, probably horrified. I was horrified.

“...Are you alright?”

I gasped, sucking in a breath like I’d been freshly defibrillated. “Never better. Why d’you ask?”

“No reason at all. I thoroughly enjoy kissing reanimated corpses.”

Three years I’d been dreaming about this moment. Three years, and I ballsed it up completely. Well why stop at only slightly awful?

I grabbed his arm before he backed off, yanking him forward again, hand to the dome of his skull like I was trying out judo moves, and he jolted off balance. Up on my toes. I went for it.

And our teeth clashed – chalk on chalkboard – my ankle buckling as I back-stepped into the box gutter. Simon’s forearms slammed against the wall either side of me before I dragged us both down. Clinging on to him, I banana-ed in the middle, scrabbling for balance. And he started shaking, laughing breathily right against my mouth.

“Ben, you’re such a disaster.”

Importantly, though, he didn’t pull all the way back. The words sounded like an insult, but his eyes warmed his lazy smile, and he tasted of coffee and mornings and contentment. His shirt was laundry-powder clean, and underneath his jacket where my fingers buried themselves, his sides were rumpled-bed-sheet warm. When his tongue slid against mine, I sort of demi-gasmed at the sucker punch of perfect.

Maybe he had a disaster fetish. He did fix them for a living.

His thigh nudged between my legs. I deserved a medal for not spontaneously splurging like a pent-up seventeen-year-old with a sun-ripe peach. What a beautiful mess.