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He tastes like summer, like freshly mown grass and sunburn. His thumbs stroke my cheekbones as he kisses me sweetly, not aggressively, not rudely. He kisses me like a first kiss should be: gentle and sincere.
When he places me back down on my feet, I can see he is smiling, even blushing a little bit. I almost want to scratch him behind the ears.
Zeke looks a little startled when I walk up to him next, but he gives me a cocky, lopsided smile when he realizes this is really happening.
“I’m not sure I can compete with Trevor,” he admits.
“I’m not sure you can either,” I shrug.
He blinks twice, then smirks knowingly. “What if I want more than a kiss?” he challenges.
“A kiss is all I’m offering at this time,” I shrug.
“At this time,” he repeats, squinting. “Can I pass until the stakes are little bit higher?”
I want to laugh at his cleverness. Spencer thinks he’s smart, but he doesn’t have anything on Zeke. This is the man who’s read the most books in this attic. He knows things.
“It’s up to you,” I smile.
I have a delicious feeling of remorse as I walk away from him toward Diego. That was a pretty clever move. Now I am really curious about what kissing Zeke is like.
Diego rises to meet me, his hands automatically sliding out to catch me as I approach, reaching up to cup the back of my neck. He pushes me off-balance and picks me up all at the same time, giving me a delicious feeling of vertigo, of being swept away into his arms.
Where Trevor was sweet and unassuming, Diego is deeply naughty. The way his tongue flickers around the tip of my tongue reminds me of other oral delights beyond just kissing. The tip trills in my mouth, taking my breath away.
This is flamenco, a dance, and exhilaration of lust. My belly clenches and I feel myself swaying against him, practically ready to wrap my thighs around his hips.
I have to push him away, actually climb down out of his arms. If he had ever done that to me before, we would’ve been fucking in the art school stairwell before I even knew what was happening. It was that intense.
He bites his lower lip, drawing the back of his hand up to drag it across his mouth and smiling at me.
“Hot,” is all he says.
I shake my head in dizzy disbelief, but I realize I still have to give Spencer a chance. I think my mind is made up, but I did say it was a competition. It wouldn’t be right to just turn away from him.
But to my surprise, when I walk up to him, he’s a different man again. The bravado is gone, momentarily. Pushed aside. He takes a tendril of my hair off my cheek and tucks it behind my ears, and stares into my eyes. Really looks at me, looksintome.
He keeps looking at me until I can feel it, like a click. Like a mountain climber’s rope latching on to a guide rope. A connection. A wordless reaching out until he finds me, deep inside myself.
He smiles, because he feels it too.
When his arms slide around my shoulders, I rock toward him. He can do what he likes now. I am on the other end of his rope. He doesn’t close his eyes when he kisses me either, and we watch each other, aware of the vibrating bridge that joins us, making the kiss almost secondary.
When we break away, it feels poignant. It feels like something I didn’t want to happen.
They gather around me as I back away, calculating my decision. But really, I made up my mind at the very beginning. And even though everything was wonderful—miraculous, even—I always knew where I would end up.
“Trevor?” I whisper into the silent room.
“Aw, no fair!” Diego chuckles. “Why is it always Trevor?”
The look of happiness on his face is all I could have asked for. He grabs a pair of pajama trunks out of a drawer and shuffles sheepishly to the queen-size bed in the corner of the room. It’s late, and I am beyond exhausted. Everything feels like it happened in a dream today.
But check me out,I tell myself,going with the flow. Playing along. Not being so rigid.
Dean Rhodes would be so impressed if she knew.
Trevor is such a gentleman, he folds back the blankets and lies down in the bed, dwarfing it with his size. Leaning up on his side, he pats the empty space of the mattress next to him and smiles at me through tousled waves of his hair.
