AllFreeNovel
Share Us
My head bows as if drawn by a magnet. Ivy tilts hers upward just in time for our mouths to collide.
How can this be the first time I’ve really kissed her? These lips have caught my attention so many times, but those glimpses of them is nothing compared to their softness against my own or the eager breath that spills over them with an intoxicating heat.
All of it feels right—the press of her mouth, the silkiness of her hair when I run my fingers over it, her lithe body beneath mine.
I lift myself up slightly so I can deepen the kiss, and Ivy slips her arm free. She wraps it around the back of my neck and teases her fingers up into my hair.
The simple gesture sets off a cascade of sparks through my scalp. Fuck me, we’ve barely started kissing and I’m already painfully hard.
I can’t rut against her like the animal I turned into last night. If I fuck this up, I don’t know if I’m ever going to get another chance to show her what she means to me.
I break the kiss to peer down at her, with a twitch of my head when my sight starts to fail me. Ivy meets my gaze, flushed and still smiling, looking nothing but pleased with our current position.
Her hand leaves my hair to trail over my neck along the collar of my dress shirt. “If you’re all so determined to have your own Signy, I suppose I’ll give it my best shot.”
A laugh sputters out of me, alongside a swell of emotion that hums through my pulse and condenses at the base of my throat.
I know exactly what I need to say. What’s been becoming true for longer than I’ve been willing to admit it, and maybe that’s why I’ve been so terrified.
Part of me wants to duck my head so I don’t have to take in her response, but that would be a coward’s way. I adjust my eyes with a little tick to the side just as I speak, so I’ll see her face as clearly as possible in the first moment.
“I love you.”
Forty-Three
Ivy
Igape at Stavros, everything narrowing down to the three words ringing in my ears. Did he… did he really say what I thought I heard?
In my startled silence, his expression shifts, his mouth tensing. He moves as if to push himself right off me, but I snap out of my daze in time to catch the front of his shirt.
I still don’t know how to answer him, but my arms move of their own accord. They loop across his shoulders, hugging him closer to me instead.
Stavros bows his head so our foreheads rest together. I hear him swallow.
He manages to find the droll tone that’s both amused and annoyed me over our weeks together. “I shocked the words right out of you. That’s some kind of accomplishment.”
My laugh comes out choked. I tilt my head to seek out his lips.
Somehow sinking into a kiss feels easier than saying anything back just yet. My emotions are still roiling inside me, plenty of previous shock mixing with amazement and affection.
Can I really doubt his admission when he’s opened up to me about so much else? He put all his regrets and weaknesses on display just to reassureme.
Well, Julita says softly.That’s not where I was expecting this conversation to end up, but I’m glad I got to see it. He’s right in everything he said about you, Ivy. And I think I’ve played voyeur long enough.
Her presence dwindles in the back of my skull. Stavros’s heat still encompasses me, his body dwarfing mine though no longer trapping it.
He loves me.
I can’t quite wrap my head around the idea, though every time I remember his voice saying those words, another giddy flutter passes through my chest. I never thought…
Well, I never thought I’d hear him say most of the things he has tonight.
My heart aches with all the thingsI’mnot saying. But it’s not as if I could return the same exact sentiment yet.
Less than an hour ago, I considered it possible he’d end up dragging me to the executioner someday. A person needs a little time to catch their balance when the ground they thought they were standing on tips over.
I’ve wanted him… for much longer than I’ve liked. I think I started falling for him that night after the catastrophe of a ball when he admitted how much he’d come to appreciate my dedication—and revealed a sliver of the anguish he’s fully bared this evening.
