Page 49 of Every Heartbeat After

Without realizing, I’ve closed the distance between us, lying alongside him to get a better look. I trace the uneven surface of that crooked bridge with a delicate finger, though I know the physical pain has long since passed. “How did you break your nose?”

He shakes his head, then closes one hand around my wrist and turns over my hand, exposing my inner forearm to the light. “How’d you get this scar?” he asks, pointing to the puckered white skin near my elbow.

“I fell out of a tree when I was nine.” He doesn’t stop trailing his fingers over it, and I don’t want him to. “Your turn.”

“Got in a fight with the guy who was in bed with my ex.” His nostrils flare, and his eyes close briefly. When they reopen, his features have relaxed ever so slightly. “I had so much anger, but looking back, he didn’t owe me anything. He hadn’t made me any vows.”

“Eh, he owed you human decency,” I correct, and he lets out a raw-sounding chuckle. “But I know what you mean. Sometimes you feel so much inside you that you have to do something physical to get it out. For some people that’s fighting or working out or getting tattoos. For others, it’s all three.”

“Oh yeah? And what kind of person are you?”

“The kind who never sits still.” I flatten my lips. “Also, the tattoo kind. But only one!”

This time, his laughter is genuine. It shakes his whole body, and the bed in turn. “What tattoo did you get?”

I roll my eyes, then hook a thumb in the waistband of my shorts and pull it downward, exposing just enough that he can see where my tan line ends and the small blot of ink begins. “Namaste symbol. Had a brief stint where I was convinced I wanted to become a yogi.”

“As in the bear?” he quips. I reach for a pillow to slam down on him, but he captures my arm and pins it to my side as he clicks his tongue. “I thought you weren’t the violent type.”

I rip my arm from his hand and pull back the covers, climbing underneath them and giving him my back. “I don’t know, Kit. Something about you just demands it.”

The mattress shifts and sags as he rolls to his feet, pads across the room, and turns off the light. When he returns, he tucks himself into the blankets. Even with a foot or so of distance between us, his heat seeps into me, heightening my senses until I swear I could map his body on instinct alone.

We lie there without speaking, the sound of our breathing its own conversation, as I try to forget how his hand felt locked around my arm. Pinning me. The warmth of it, like fireworks beneath my skin, simmers for so long I’m afraid I won’t be able to sleep.

“Thank you.” Kit whispers the words into the dark, so softly I’m not certain I really heard him. But when I roll over to investigate, there he is, a breath away, eyes glittering in the dim glow cast by the moonlight leaking through the blinds. “For today. For being here.”

His breath smells like mint, and it mixes with the headiness of his hair cream to create something delectable. Something like a memory. The scent of our kiss at the aquarium. At the Horseshoe.

My exhale stalls in my throat, forming a knot that I can’t swallow past. I told myself I could do this. Be his friend. Even psyched myself up to share his bed without succumbing to this feeling. But now that he’s so close that it’d take no effort at all to close this gap and sink into him, I’m suddenly not so sure of my ability to resist.

Then he bridges that gap, tucking a stray hair behind my ear, and I loose that breath like it’s on fire.

“Penny for your thoughts, Tess?”

I shake my head against the pillow, the flannel sheets scratching my cheek. “You can’t afford my thoughts.”

He huffs a laugh. “I think I’ve been saving up for this moment my whole life.” I can feel his gaze roving my skin, heating every nerve ending that it touches until I’m flush right down to my throat. “What if I promise you an entire carton of mint chocolate chip ice cream?”

My pinched smile bursts apart in a laugh. “You’re ridiculous.”

“And you’re beautiful.” He says it like he can’t help it. Like the words were poised to leap from his tongue whether he parted his lips or not. “Not even beautiful. That word doesn’t do you justice. You’re magnetic, Tess. I can feel your pull as sure as my own heartbeat.”

“Sounds dangerous,” I breathe. My brain is short-circuiting. All I know is Kit’s presence and the amount of effort it would take to touch him, which is so very little.

His lips part, and his tongue traces them, leaving them glistening. Kit is always handsome, but something about his face cast half in shadow, painted only by moonlight, has my blood on the verge of a simmer. I haven’t felt an awareness like this since my first crush at thirteen, and even then, I don’t remember it being nearly this intense.

My clit throbs between my legs. I pin them closed, trying to soothe the need rising there like the tide. Kit’s nostrils flare, as though he can scent my desire, and when he speaks, it comes out more like a growl. “Feels more dangerous to ignore it.”

I don’t want him to be right. I want to be perfectly in control and so firm in my convictions, but my damn body hasn’t gotten the memo. My hand finds his, and I guide it back to my hip, where those fireworks spark an inferno that scalds me from the inside out. He tugs me closer, till our bodies are flush against one another. The hard plane of his chest is firm against my breasts. I can feel his length pressing along my lower abdomen. Then his hand slowly slips from my hip, along the exposed skin of my thigh, to hook around my knee and draw it over his leg. If he couldn’t tell I wanted him before, the heat of my core against his cock is probably a dead giveaway.

“Kit—” I whimper.

“Just ask me,” he says wickedly. “I’ll take all that aching away if you’ll just say you want me to kiss you.”

Through the haze of desire comes the memory of his vow not to cross that line until I ask him to. Pride rears up inside me. The only emotion strong enough to squelch this hunger. I push off him, severing the connection that had me near drunk with its effect, and retreat to the far end of the mattress, which is admittedly not far enough.

I still feel him. Smell him. Still want him so badly my fingers tremble, until I bite them down on the edge of the comforter and clutch it to my chin.

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