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So I smiled my yes and asked, “What about that curse?”
“I’ll take my chances.”
“And you’ll keep wearing those jeans?”
He leaned in a little and whispered, “I even got another pair.”
My laugh was only for him. “How could I refuse?”
“Guess you can’t.”
Before I could be a smartass, he kissed me with tender care, a soft thing that weighed the same as his heart. And I was light as a feather in his arms as it dawned on me fully that he wanted me, wanted me so much that he was ready to leave his life behind for me. For this. For a smart-mouthed bee farmer in a nowhere town.
And I wanted him to stay. For the first time, being with someone, letting him in, felt like the greatest gift I could ever receive, not the burden I thought it would be. Having him for mine and being his was all I wanted, and I’d never known. Not until him.
Only with him.
The kiss broke. We swayed, beaming at each other.
Never had I been so blissfully terrified to feel happy.
Because I’d put my faith in him.
And I prayed he wouldn’t break me.
24
The Dark Of Night
GRANT
Hours later, I kissed Jo in the dark, slow and hot, backing her up the porch stairs and into my place without ever breaking the seam of our lips.
We’d left as soon as we could under the promise of Daisy and Poppy to make sure that their mother didn’t go home with my father or vice versa. The party had ended, the night a success in so many ways, for so many reasons.
I hadn’t known I was going to tell her how I felt. I hadn’t even known I wanted to stay until I said it. I mean, I knew I wanted to stay, I just didn’t think I could. Or that she’d want me to.
I’d never been so happy to be wrong.
There was no rush, no urgency in the kiss. Her hands slid between my shirt and jacket, sliding it over my shoulders and down my arms. Her fingertips patiently untied the knot of my tie with a whisper of black silk. Those fingers unfastened my buttons one by one, stopping under my ribs when I finally broke the kiss.
She was shadows and moonlight in the vastness of the night. That softest of light brushed the bridge of her nose, her cheekbones, reflected from her eyes and the space behind parted lips. Her bare shoulders down to the deep neckline of her dress beckoned, and I took the invitation to trace the moonlit planes I’d come to know so well.
In such a short time, just a moment of my life, my gravity had shifted. And in the middle of it all was her. She was what I saw when I closed my eyes. She was what I wished for when I woke.
Her lips quirked in a smile. “What?”
“Hmm?”
“You’re smiling.”
“I was just thinking maybe you’re a witch after all.”
Her laughter stirred my heart. “You’re not feeling itchy, are you? I did this voodoo thing when you got to town that didn’t take.”
“It’s the only explanation I can come up with for how I feel that makes sense.”
“Not my charm and grace?”
A chuckle. “Let me have this, Jo.”
Her face softened. She stepped closer. “That’s the thing. You can have whatever you want.”
“Anything I want?” I asked, cupping her jaw.
“Anything at all,” she answered against my lips.
So I took them for mine.
If this was what it felt like to be happy, I hadn’t known the feeling before. I’d felt accomplishment. I’d experienced the rush and awe that came with seeing the world. But never had I felt this. Elation, because she was mine. Satisfaction that she wanted me too, a deep sigh of rightness. Desire to show her what words couldn’t say. But underneath it all was a desperation, a fear that I would lose the first person I’d ever needed.
In her lived a future I’d convinced myself was a dream, the kind of dream that movies and marketers used to sell us a life we could never have.
I never believed it was real until her.
My fingers slipped down her neck, to her shoulder, hooked the strap of her dress. Slid it over the curve as our lips opened and closed, our tongues seeking slowly. The thin fabric slid away, exposing her breast, and quietly I traced its shape, found the peak of her nipple but only grazed it, teasing us both. I freed the other breast—our lips parted. Her eyes closed, her head bowed, her forehead meeting my lips as I lowered the zipper, and her dress slid to the floor.
She was unclothed in the moonlight, but it was me who was naked, exposed, left disarmed and powerless.
She saw me, the me I’d buried beneath years of loneliness, years of schooling that self to hide, to protect himself. I’d turned into a version of my father, his manifesto the foundation of my life, my worth. No one could ever love me but me. Life was a one-man show. Power was as good as love, and vulnerability was equivalent to death.
